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Published by: Institute of History, Research Centre for the Humanities, Hungarian Academy of Sciences

2019_2_Laszlovszky

Volume 8 Issue 2 CONTENTS

pdfFinding Batu’s Hill at Muhi: Liminality between Rebellious Territory and Submissive Territory, Earth and Heaven for a Mongol Prince on the Eve of Battle*

Stephen Pow and József Laszlovszky
Central European University
laszlovj
@ceu.edu

 This study offers a reconstruction of a crucial event of pan-Eurasian historical significance—namely, the Battle of Muhi in 1241—by focusing on two primary source accounts of Batu Khan ascending a hill shortly before the battle. The two sources are not related to each other, and they represent two fundamentally different source groups related to the battle. By using a complex analytical approach, this article tries to identify the character and significance of the hill in question—something made difficult by the fact that there are no hills or mountains near the battlefield today. The attested purposes that Mongol rulers and troops had for ascending mountains are explored for clues. A hypothesis emerges according to which Batu likely ascended two different types of hill, one being a small mound (kurgan) of the type which characteristically dotted Hungary’s landscape around the battlefield. The other hill, which he ascended for religious ritual purposes, was probably one of the more prominent features in the area of Szerencs about thirty kilometers from the site of the clash. Several earlier attempts to identify the hill are now revisited in this study with two different types of approaches. Combining a unique range of textual accounts with recent archaeological findings, we suggest a drastic and perhaps more accurate reinterpretation of the course of events leading up to the important battle than the interpretations which have been proposed so far. Furthermore, by looking closely at the different narrative structures of the sources we can identify attempts by medieval authors of Central European and Asian texts to contextualize this event within their general interpretations of the battle. Thus, the main arguments of this article cross real and figurative frontiers in contemporary accounts of the episode and in their modern interpretations. This research forms part of an interdisciplinary research project carried out by a group of scholars dealing with the historical, archaeological, and topographical aspects of the Battle of Muhi.

Keywords: Mongol invasion of Europe, Batu, Mongol Empire, Battle of Muhi, battlefield archaeology, kurgan, Kingdom of Hungary

Introduction

In the ruling ideology of the Mongol Empire, a distinct dichotomy was drawn between two types of polity. In relationship to the Mongols and their heaven-ordained empire, any other nation could only exist as a submissive people (il irgen) or a rebellious people (bulγa irgen).1 Therefore, when the Mongols invaded the territory of a recalcitrant foe who refused to submit to Mongol demands, this represented a passage from peaceful submission to chaos and war. Indeed, this transition across the border to break down rebellious nations that put up resistance to their authority must have carried symbolic weight, particularly for Mongol leaders and princes, when they set out on campaigns. In the case of Batu Khan and his fellow Chinggisid princes advancing through the passes of the Carpathian Mountains to invade the Kingdom of Hungary in early 1241, this sense of liminality must have been particularly stark. The passage through the rugged Carpathians at the outset might have been an omen of things to come. Hills and mountains played a significant role in the historical events of the Mongol invasion period in the kingdom, most notably as refuges for the populace and sites of rare successful resistance.2 That story is well known. However, for descendants of Chinggis Khan, hills held an additional and unique spiritual significance. They were sites of another type of liminality between Earth and Eternal Heaven (Möngke Tengri), a place of communication between a ruler of the world and its divine overseer.

Therefore, it is interesting to note that in two primary sources, written within a couple decades of the events, a hill plays a role in the Battle of Muhi. Fought in April 1241 between the Hungarian royal army and the Mongols under Batu and the famed general Sübe’etei, the battle was the most important episode in the entire invasion, and it was a clash of global historical significance.3 Yet the two accounts of Batu ascending a hilltop are very mysterious, because the battle occurred in a flatland area of the Great Hungarian Plain. The general area of the engagement is known today, but there are no real hills near the medieval village of Muhi, the presumed site of the Hungarian camp, or on either side of the Sajó River, where, according to the sources, the battle unfolded. Granted, there are the Carpathian Mountains to the north in the present-day Slovakian border region and those farther away in Transylvania. Closer by are the hills of Zemplén, more than thirty kilometers to the northeast, but none of these hills or mountains are close enough to the battlefield that they could have played any role in the events there.

This study attempts to identify Batu’s hill, as we might call it. Our hypothesis is that this detail as described in two different sources cannot be simply neglected, and we should explore why the authors of the accounts of the battle included this element in their descriptions. To that end, we will first describe both primary source accounts related to it. Then, we explore the larger body of references to the Mongols and their activities involving hills. In this discussion, we will show that there were two broad categories of activity for which the Mongols specifically sought a hilltop. In this context, the role of hills in military tactics and religious-ritual activities are taken into consideration. Finally, we offer a plausible identification of the hilltop—or possibly hilltops—and a hypothesis which is intended to explain the sequence of events in this battle of pan-Eurasian significance.

At different times, Hungarian historical research has dealt with the issue of the hilltop episodes related to the Battle of Muhi, but even according to the most recent studies, the various explanations which have been offered so far are not convincing.4 More recently, the Hungarian sinologist Sándor P. Szabó proposed new solutions in his study dealing with the place names in Chinese sources connected to the Battle of Muhi and mentioned the hill problem.5 The historian John Man personally drove around the area of the battlefield and concluded that the accounts of a hill in the preliminary events to the battle must simply be an error by medieval authors.6

Before accepting a wholesale dismissal of the claims found in the sources according to which Batu, the principal Mongol commander, mounted a hilltop shortly before the engagement at Muhi, this essay first aims to identify the hill, or hills, in question. This is important, because the Battle of Muhi retains a degree of mystery, and our present knowledge of exact places where stages of the battle unfolded is far from precise. As we pointed out in an earlier study, in order to make better sense of the battle as a series of events, we must pinpoint more accurately the geographical locations where various key events mentioned in the surviving sources occurred. These manmade and natural features include a bridge where the engagement was centered, the Hungarian camp which was surrounded by the Mongols, the highway along which the Hungarians retreated, and of course the hilltop which Batu ascended before ordering his troops to attack.7 Some past excavations have uncovered significant finds associated with the events, including an excavation of the medieval village of Muhi, while recent battlefield archaeological research utilizing metal detectors has unearthed new artifacts, such as weapons and jewelry.

More significantly, the same project has identified the medieval village of Hídvég (literally meaning “end of the bridge”). Perhaps surprisingly, the medieval settlement has a different location from the present-day village of Sajóhídvég (literally meaning “end of the bridge at the Sajó River”), even though it was depicted in eighteenth-century maps at its present location. This is a very important topographical point, as the first extant mention we have of the settlement Hidvég is a charter written in 1261. Granted, that was two decades after the battle itself, but this late appearance is due to the destruction of earlier charters in the invasion; the villages of the settlement system in the region only appear in the written sources towards the end of the thirteenth century or in the first half of the fourteenth century. Archaeological evidence, however, confirms that most of these villages were already present in the area in the earlier centuries of the Árpád Era. Thus, the medieval village Hídvég, appearing in the charter of 1261 as Hydueghe, can now be identified. We cannot be absolutely sure that the bridge mentioned in the accounts of the battle was located at this village, though it seems likely. Some wooden structures have been identified in the Sajó at various parts of the riverbed, but their exact dating is currently being worked out with the help of underwater archaeological investigations and dendrochronological studies which are now underway. This is also a part of the present research project, which plans to identify a significant number of topographical points connected to different events of the battle. By and large, the site of the battlefield can be quite accurately identified within a zone of at least 25–30 square kilometers. This means that the landscape features, including any related hills or mountains, can be analyzed in the context of the descriptions of the battle.

We have also tried to make better use of the scanty but valuable details of the battle in Asian sources. For instance, the site of the battle in the Chinese–Mongolian biography of Sübe’etei is recorded as the “Huoning” River (漷寧)—the original Mongolian was perhaps something like “Qorning.” Previously, this place name was not identified. An earlier translation of the biography by György Kara did not offer any suggestion for this name as it appears in the source.8 More recently a solution for this problem has been offered; in all likelihood, it is a reference to the Hernád River (in Slovakian it is called Hornád), which forks off the Sajó close to the medieval crossing point. Identifying the river as the Hernád/Hornád sheds some light on the preliminary troop positions from a Mongol perspective on the eve of battle.9 This interpretation of an important Asian source, originally recorded in Mongolian not long after the events, would help confirm that the area of the battlefield can be found near Muhi, and the “hill” mentioned in other sources should be sought in the general area if one wishes to interpret that detail of the sources as well. It should be noted that there is another interpretation for the Huoning River. Szabó argues that it is in fact meant to convey “Kerengő-ér” (Kerengő-stream), another feature in the area which has been proposed as the site of the Hungarian camp.10 In the context of his recent study, he also raised the issue of the hill. In any case, his conclusions do not change the general localization of the battle, and therefore we should still be seeking a hill in the same area.

The Two Accounts of Batu Ascending a Hill

Both accounts according to which a hill played an important role in the events surrounding the Battle of Muhi were recorded in the mid-thirteenth century. However, the very different social, geographical, and linguistic contexts of their composition make it certain the two narratives did not inform each other in any way. The first account we will look at is found in the Historia Salonitana of Thomas of Split (1200–1268), a high-ranking clergyman in Split (Spalato), a city on the Dalmatian coast which was under the rule of the kings of Hungary at the time. The author was a personal acquaintance of King Béla IV and other leading magnates of the kingdom. According to his account, Batu, the Mongol prince and supreme commander of Mongol forces during their westward campaign in Europe in 1241–42, used a hill for military-reconnaissance purposes. The story relates that a body of Mongol troops had retreated slowly from the central part of the kingdom (the area of the Hungarian camp near Pest), pursued by the Hungarians to the Sajó River in the northeast part of modern Hungary. Having crossed the river, the Mongols were then encamped and made a stand. The Hungarian and Mongol armies faced each other across the river, though according to Thomas of Split, the Hungarians could see only some of the Mongol forces, as the Mongols had hidden in thick woods along the bank. The Hungarians likewise made their camp, which would be the site of the ensuing battle. At that point, the Mongols’ senior commander Batu “ascended a hill to spy out carefully the disposition of the whole army.” The specific terminology (“in quondam collem conscendens”) implies that this was just some or any hill—certainly not a mountain or some defining feature of the landscape that was of any particular importance. The term applied to the landscape feature, collis, is etymologically related to “hill” or mound. In the context of the Hungarian Plain, medieval charters describing floodplain zones in this region used “mountain” (mons) for higher, elevated places, even if they are only 15–25 meters higher than the surrounding area.11 Thus, collis here probably means a mound (kurgan) on the plain. In any case, having seen the cramped disorganization of the Hungarian camp, Batu returned to his comrades and told them to be confident, since their enemies had taken poor counsel, obviously lacking military sense, by laying out their camp as a sort of sheepfold. Then, “the very same night,” he ordered a surreptitious advance across the Sajó against the Hungarians. He managed to surround their camp and won a decisive victory after they began to flee in panic.12

The second account of the Battle of Muhi which makes mention of a hill is found in the Tarikh-i Jahan-gusha by the famous Persian historian and administrator, Juvayni (1226–1283). According to this account, upon advancing into Hungary, Batu sent his brother Shiban ahead with 10,000 troops to determine the size of the Hungarian army. Shiban came back to Batu after a week, having scouted out the enemy position. He reported that the advancing Hungarian forces outnumbered the Mongol forces twofold in terms of numerical strength. Faced with this news and with the Hungarian and Mongol armies coming into proximity, Batu anxiously ascended a hilltop. For one day and night he “prayed and lamented; and he bade the Moslems also assemble together and offer up prayers.”13 The following day, the Mongols prepared for battle, and Batu ordered an attack which initiated a hotly contested struggle that ultimately ended in his victory when the Mongols entered the Hungarian camp and overturned the tents of the king. Regarding the terminology for the hill Batu ascended, it is referred to as a pushta ( ), which is defined in Francis Joseph Steingass’s Comprehensive Persian–English Dictionary as, “A little hill, an embankment; declivity; a heap; the shoulder-blades; a load; a faggot; a buttress, prop; a vault; a quay.”14 Like the Latin account, the Persian narrative states that Batu “went up on some hill” (“bar pushta-i raft”), in this case by using the suffix -i to indicate indetermination. This was “some” or “any” hill, rather than a particularly special location. It was certainly not a high mountain, since the word for that is koh (هوک).15

Thus, in passages from two unconnected sources, we see that the specific language in both cases paints a picture of a nondescript or modestly sized hill, rather than a prominent mountain. However, the described purpose for Batu’s ascension differs in the two sources. In the account offered by Thomas of Split, Batu ascended the hill or mound with a strictly military purpose in mind—to view the positions of the Hungarians. According to Juvayni’s account, Batu’s ascension had a fundamentally religious purpose—to seclude himself and pray for victory. The different explanations offered for why the Mongol leader ascended the hill invites a wider discussion here of source accounts of the Mongol practice of climbing hills and the reasons for it.

Mongol Purposes for Ascending Hills: Military and Religious Functions

In the available sources, we can find many accounts of Mongols—often those in leadership roles—ascending hills for purposes that fall into two broad categories: pragmatic, military purposes and ceremonial, religious purposes. Looking at the first category, we see that hilltops were useful to the Mongols, particularly as vantage points from which to conduct reconnaissance, but also as strategically valuable strongpoints. There are many records of commanders of campaigns initially climbing a hill like Batu did to survey the enemy’s positions and the lay of the land. Chelota, the Mongol general overseeing the campaign to subjugate Korea in 1256, is recorded to have unfurled his banners and climbed a prominent mountain, Munsusan, with several other leaders to view the topography of Kangdo (Ganghwa), the island where the Korean monarchy was holding out.16 Likewise, Khubilai, still a prince and not yet khan, was campaigning against the Song Dynasty in 1259 and ascended the mountain Xianglushan (香罏山) to survey the Yangzi River, along which the Song were conducting an effective defense. His efforts paid off. He saw a vulnerable ferry crossing on the river, ordered an attack on it, and some of his troops even succeeded in breaking through the defenses to the southern riverbank.17 These accounts lend credence to the report by Thomas, since they indicate that the surveying he described was part of the customary military tactics used by Mongol leaders.

In addition to top commanders, ordinary Mongol troops also made a strategic habit of occupying hilltops during their advances into enemy territory. A report of Song Chinese emissaries to the Mongols in the 1230s, the Heida Shilue,18 noted that during their advances, the Mongols intensely feared ambushes, so they sent out light vanguard cavalry, who habitually climbed high hills to gain vantage points. These scouts then reported their observations, along with information taken from captured locals, back to the main army.19 Elsewhere, we read that the very first thing the Mongols did during invasions was to ascend the local hills to inspect the terrain and glean the true situation of the enemy.20 In a very different context, the French Dominican friar Simon of Saint-Quentin made observations about vanguard Mongol troops and their strategic use of hills:

 

When they set out to invade another territory […] they occupy the whole extent of the land […] They ascend the mountains in the immediate vicinity all night long. Morning having come, they send out their vanguard troops, mentioned above, into the plains. The local people, struggling to escape the vanguard troops, flee to the mountains believing to save themselves there. Instantly, they are killed by the Tartars who were in hiding and descended on them.21

The Mendicant friar’s references to light vanguard troops (cursarios) and the references in the Chinese reports to vanguard or advance troops (前鋒/先鋒), which in both cases are reported to have ascended mountains to reconnoiter, in all probability refer to the same type of troops and habitual tactics. The papal emissary, Carpini, described how the vanguard troops (praecursores), very lightly equipped with only their tents, arms, and mounts, went ahead of the main army with the sole task of killing or putting the inhabitants to flight; plunder would be collected after the main army advanced into the area.22 The Tartar Relation by Minorite friar C. de Bridia contains unique information which supports the general picture of Mongol forces advancing in segments. The author describes how, when the Mongols invaded a country, their army moved swiftly but cautiously in wagons and on horses, bringing along wives, children, slaves, herds, and all their property. Vanguard skirmishers (cursores) went ahead to spread havoc and kill, preventing the mobilization of local resistance, while the larger multitude with the families and property followed at a distance, as long as serious resistance was not encountered.23 Thomas of Split mentioned that when the Mongols first broke through the frontier barriers and entered the Kingdom of Hungary, they basically rushed by the first peasants they encountered without showing their “ruthless nature” yet, something which could suggest that the vanguard troops had a more important mission of reconnaissance at that early stage.24 Rashid al-Din, referring to a Mongol campaign in China in 1231, described the Mongols advancing in a wide hunting battue (jerge), ascending mountains, and moving across the plains.25

The sources mention other instances when the usage of hills blended military aims with ritual functions. Simon of Saint Quentin mentioned that when Mongol forces took a city or castle by siege, “as a sign of their glory and victory and for certainty about the number of those killed, and to strike terror in other people, they erect one of the fallen in a lofty and eminent place as a marker of a thousand, suspended upside down by his feet.”26 Old nomadic traditions long before the Mongol Empire may have seen the strategic usage of hilltops combined with ceremonial and religious practices. The semi-legendary record of the Magyar arrival in Hungary, the Deeds of the Hungarians [Gesta Hungarorum] (c. 1200), mentions that when the Magyar tribes first migrated into the Carpathian Basin, three of their chieftains raced to the top of Mt. Tokaj on horseback, and in fact the mountain was named after the figure who allegedly reached the summit first. They surveyed the landscape and then held a ritual feast, an áldomás, sacrificing a horse on the spot.27 Though legendary, this account might show that Mt. Tokaj, jutting out imposingly on the plains, was immediately recognized by nomadic invaders as both useful militarily and sacred. It is interesting to note that the route of the main Mongol forces in 1241, as much as we can reconstruct it from sources, must have passed near Mt. Tokaj, a very significant landscape feature, much higher than anything else in this region and perched on the edge of the Great Plain with its remarkable volcanic shape. It is curious that the author whose work shows a strong familiarity with the geography of northeastern Hungary in particular28 suggested one could ride a horse up the rugged hill. In any case, returning to Mongol accounts specifically, we see this mixed usage of hilltops again when we read that, as a young man, Temujin (Chinggis Khan) went up a tall hill for the pragmatic purpose of surveying the landscape to see if enemies were near but felt as though God (Tengri) were communicating something to him when the saddle slipped off his horse.29

This relates directly to the other major activity related to ascending hills that we frequently find in the sources—a religious ritual for which Chinggis Khan himself seems to have set the precedent. Before a serious and dangerous military undertaking, we read of Chinggis Khan several times ritualistically being alone to commune with the divine on or near a mountain. Juzjani, a historian in the Sultanate of Delhi, related that when Chinggis Khan was going to go to war against the powerful Altan Khan of the Jin Dynasty in 1210–11, he first assembled his people at the base of a mountain and they fasted for three days, repeatedly chanting, “Tengri!” During that time, Chinggis Khan sat in a tent with a rope around his neck, and on the fourth day he dramatically emerged, shouting that Tengri would grant him victory.30 They then marched to war and won against amazing odds. In Rashid al-Din’s version of this event, Chinggis Khan actually ascended “the hill” alone, “as was his custom,” and prayed for victory and vengeance on the Jin Dynasty.31

Chinggis Khan repeated this practice when his next major war erupted against the Khwarazmian Shah in 1218, following the well-known massacre of his merchants by the governor of Otrar. According to Juvayni, upon receiving news of the massacre, Chinggis Khan went alone to the summit of a hill, feverish with rage, bared his head, and for three nights he prayed for vengeance, since he was not the instigator of the conflict.32 Descending the hill, he immediately made ready for war, in which he again would emerge as victor and which would make him a figure of global historical memory. The wording employed in this passage, “He went alone to the top of some hill” (tanha bar bala-yi pushta-i raft), is the same terminology used again later to describe Batu’s hilltop seclusion before the Battle of Muhi. The only difference is that it emphasizes that Chinggis Khan went (raft) to “the top of” (bala-yi) a hill. An indeterminate suffix clearly indicates that Chinggis Khan ascended “some hill,” rather than a particularly special hill. The idea that Batu’s ritual before the battle with the Hungarians was made in conscious imitation of his grandfather was evident to contemporaries. Rashid al-Din essentially copied Juvayni’s account of the Battle of Muhi, but in describing Batu’s going up a hill, he added, “as had been Chinggis Khan’s custom.”33 Related to Batu’s conscious imitation of a ritual which Chinggis Khan is recorded to have performed before two very daunting wars against powerful enemies, it is interesting to note that Juvayni concludes his account of the Mongol victory at Muhi by noting that it was “one of their greatest deeds and fiercest battles.”34

The apparent Mongolian custom of seclusion on a hilltop seems to mirror old Middle Eastern and Near Eastern traditions of ascetics or prophets in the wilderness, at least when this practice was described by Islamic and Christian authors. Indeed, Chinggis Khan is presented as an almost Moses-like figure in Simon of Saint-Quentin’s account of his followers choosing him as khan:

 

They all unanimously approved of his counsel and chose him, and his successors, as their ruler, and they promised to be obedient to him forever […] Having thus been elected, the next day while they all convened, he ascended a high mountain [in montem altum ascendit] and, exhorting them, said, “You all know that until now three sins have always been rampant amongst us—namely lying, thieving, and adultery…35

However, while in Persian, Arabic, Greek, or Syriac hagiographical texts, a holy ascetic would likely ascend a proper “mountain” (koh, jabal, oros, tur), Juvayni recorded that Chinggis Khan climbed more modest “hills.” This might well be a conscious variation from the established literary precedent rather than something accidental.36 Another interesting element is Juvayni’s claim that Batu instructed the Muslims in his army to pray shortly before the Battle of Muhi. This fits with the general Mongol policy of allowing their subjects to practice any religion openly, provided they loyally served the Mongols. Simon of Saint-Quentin seemed surprised at the degree of Mongol liberality in this regard, noting, “The law of Muhammad is proclaimed five times a day openly by Saracens within earshot of [the Mongols’] army and in all the cities they have subjugated in which Saracens dwell. As well, the Saracens in their army and all their cities preach [Islam].”37 So, there is nothing improbable about this episode, but what is interesting is what Juvayni as a Persian administrator and scholar in the Islamic tradition might have intended by highlighting it. As a subject of the Mongols, he perhaps wished to describe an episode which revealed sympathy for Islam among the highest princes of the empire, as this story might encourage his fellow Muslims, faced with the awkward situation of Mongol rule, to believe that a conversion of the animist nomads was imminent. Moreover, because it highlighted the important role that the Muslims had played in the victory, his account again appears to have been motivated by a desire to present a picture of harmony between Mongol princes and their Muslim subjects. Though this particular passage from Juvayni’s narrative is not the topic of our present investigation, its interpretation would benefit from further studies connected to the Islamization process of the Mongols. Batu is clearly shown in the episode to be following an old tradition begun by Chinggis Khan but also relying on the spiritual influence of his Muslim followers. The combination seems to have brought about success even in what was evidently a very difficult struggle.

The Reconstructed Scenario and Identity of Batu’s Hilltop at Muhi

The discussion above has established that a clergyman in Split and a Persian governor of Baghdad both separately described Batu ascending a hill shortly before the Battle of Muhi in 1241. In both cases, the terminology suggests a relatively modest hill, rather than an imposing mountain, but the accounts diverge fundamentally on the reason for which Batu ascended the hill. Based on several descriptions in sources of Mongol invasion tactics, the scenario described by Thomas fits with the practice of commanders and “vanguard” forces climbing a hill for reconnaissance. The ascension of a hill by a grandson of Chinggis Khan for religious reasons, as the event is described by Juvayni, fits more with the image of a Mongol khan performing a traditional preparation for an important war—a ritual activity not undertaken in the actual course of a battle. Given the evidence of Mongols ascending all the hills in an area for scouting purposes and the many examples of the ritual, quasi-ascetic seclusion of khans on hilltops, we have to at least consider the possibility that the two accounts are describing episodes on two different hilltops.

The following hypothetical reconstruction of the events, based closely on the source material, suggests candidates for the hilltop activities described by Thomas of Split and Juvayni. Regarding Thomas of Split, he unquestionably provided the fullest account of the battle, and, when combined with the description provided by Rogerius, we can reconstruct the movements, activities, and positions of the Hungarians before the Battle of Muhi with a good degree of accuracy. Because of the nature of their informants, these authors obviously could not provide similar levels of detail concerning the activities of the Mongols, and they disagree on a fundamental issue. Rogerius stated that Batu himself advanced with his army within half a day of Pest on March 15, 1241. Rogerius implied that the entire Mongol army under its chief commander advanced close to the Hungarian camp at Pest, and when the Hungarian army moved against it at last, the whole army under Batu withdrew.38 Rogerius’ account seems to be confused, because it states that the Mongols broke through the border defenses at the Russian Gate, likely the Verecke Pass in the Carpathians, only on March 12, 1241.39 This would suggest that the entire Mongol army (evidently with baggage, wagons, herds) moved 300 kilometers across most of Hungary in three days—a feat which is doubtful even for a small detachment, let alone the whole army. In contrast, Thomas claimed that Batu was the senior commander of the army, but “they sent on ahead of them a squad of cavalry. These troops rode up to the Hungarian camp, making repeated shows of themselves and challenging them to battle” before taking off in rapid flight, firing arrows, when the Hungarians at last pursued them.40

On this crucial issue, Thomas must be correct. His claim echoes the descriptions of the Mongol use of vanguard troops, which quickly moved far ahead of the more cautious main army, a practice detailed in many sources, including those outlined above. More importantly, his account agrees with the Asian sources, which provide versions of the invasion of Hungary originating from Mongol accounts. Juvayni related that Batu sent ahead his brother Shiban in advance with a detachment of 10,000 troops to do reconnaissance on the Hungarian army. Shiban returned after a week and reported to Batu that the Hungarian army was twice the size of the Mongols’ forces, news which caused the chief commander to ascend a hill as the armies drew close, praying and lamenting in apparent anxiety about the coming battle.41 Sübe’etei’s biography in the Yuan Shi, which was translated from a lost Mongolian original written in the mid-thirteenth century, states that the Mongol princes were divided along five different routes as their forces broke through the Carpathians and entered the Kingdom of Hungary. Sübe’etei operated in “the vanguard” unit, which went ahead, executing a plan to “lure” (誘) the king’s army to the “Huoning River” (“速不台出奇計誘其軍至漷寧河”).42 The translation into Persian of a Mongolian report on the invasion found in Rashid al-Din’s historical compendium agrees that the Mongol princes had entered Hungary along five distant routes. Thus, it appears that Batu, Shiban, and Sübe’etei were facing Hungary’s royal army without the contingents of the other Chinggisid princes, who were in Transylvania and Poland attacking other enemy forces simultaneously.43 This might partly explain the widespread anxiety in Batu’s army documented in the Yuan Shi and in Mendicant reports.44

Asian sources, which are more reliable when it comes to the Mongol perspective, create a picture of a vanguard detachment having gone ahead of Batu and having carried out a premeditated plan to lure the Hungarians to a site chosen well in advance of the battle. This means that Batu and evidently the bulk of his army, including followers, herds, wagons, etc., were already east of the Sajó River well before the Hungarians arrived in pursuit of a vanguard contingent. Judging by his version’s agreement on these details, Thomas of Split was well informed. He was aware that the Hungarian forces outnumbered the Mongols at the battle and he also stated that when the Hungarian forces arrived at the Sajó River, they realized that “the whole multitude of the Tatars” (universa multitudo Tartarorum) was already encamped on the other side of the river.45 This suggests the premeditated choice of the battlefield long in advance. In other words, there seems to have been a plan for the vanguard to lure the Hungarians to Batu’s already waiting main army. This position was likely chosen because the Sajó and Hernád Rivers provided a defensive line from which the Mongols could choose the time and place to attack. The natural gallery forest that runs along the floodplain of the Sajó would have concealed Mongol movements as they executed their plan to surround the Hungarians from several directions. There is textual evidence that this obscuring strategy was effective against the Hungarians. In a letter dated to July 1241, Emperor Frederick II offered an account of the battle based on what he had heard directly from the bishop of Vác, who had come to his court as an ambassador of the king of Hungary to seek help. The armies were thought to be still five miles apart from each other (distarent quinque tantum miliaribus) when the advance Mongol unit suddenly sprang forward and surrounded the Hungarian camp at dawn.46 This suggests that the Hungarians thought the Mongols were still a considerable distance away since, in addition to the night darkness, the gallery forest along the Sajó obscured the Mongol positions and movements.

Most significant for our understanding of the battle, this interpretation of the sources suggests that vanguard forces were deployed in the leadup to the fighting, while Batu and the main body of the Mongols remained in the northeast of Hungary, never venturing as far as Pest before their victory. Thus, it is feasible that Batu was even considerably east of the Sajó River in the days before the battle, which then means we should consider hills that were not in the immediate vicinity of the site, especially since the sources on Mongol tactics note that they habitually ascended all the hills in a region during an invasion.

A key issue in determining the hilltop from which Batu reportedly viewed the Hungarian camp relates to the location of the camp itself. Several sources agree that during the battle, the Mongols struggled to force their way across the Sajó River in the area of a bridge spanning its banks. This crossing became the focal point of some of the heaviest fighting before the Mongols managed to force the Hungarians back and surround their camp.47 The exact identifications of the site of the Hungarian camp and the bridge on the river are still tasks for the present research project. There is evidence that the courses of the Sajó and Hernád have shifted somewhat in the intervening centuries. For instance, a detailed map made in 1771 indicates the remains of an old bridge (Vestigum Pontis antiqui) east of Ónod and the Sajó. So, these questions are further complicated by the problem of the interflow of the Hernád and Sajó rivers. The exact location of the confluence in the mid-thirteenth century is still a research problem, but there is clear evidence for its being situated at a different place compared to the present-day interflow. In fact, the very latest archaeological surveys of the area confirm that the site of medieval Hídvég—and therefore the location of the bridge over the river—must have been located at a site between the present channels of the rivers Sajó and Hernád, rather than at modern Sajóhídvég (east of the Hernád), as has long been assumed (Figs. 1 and 2).

The map produced in the First Military Survey of Hungary undertaken by the Habsburg Empire (1782–1785) allows us to see the eighteenth-century landscape and road network.48 This is very useful, because though five centuries had passed between the battle and the survey, it still depicts the area before the utterly transformative effects of modernization and huge population growth on the landscape. The general vicinity of the Hungarian camp was Muchi Rudera (Fig. 3), literally the ruins of Muhi, the actual location of the Árpád-era village and late medieval market town after which the battle was named in the modern secondary literature and general public discourse. Archaeological excavations have confirmed the existence of the medieval village at the site indicated in the survey.49 The present-day village of Muhi on the riverbank was in fact called Poga in the Middle Ages, and it was renamed Muhi only in 1928 to commemorate the battlefield. Besides the village ruins, we notice on the survey map the existence of several small kurgans west of the Sajó River and to the east of the medieval village. These artificial prehistoric burial mounds (kunhalom) can be found in many parts of Hungary. There are also natural mounds near the Sajó, on the western side of the river, in the area of the battle; some can be quite high, and they were used as permanent settlement sites for a long period in the Bronze Age.50 These are in fact close to or in the immediate area of the Kerengő-ér, discussed earlier and sometimes proposed as the site of the Hungarian camp (Fig. 4). Recent archaeological investigations with metal detectors have found evidence of weapons and other artifacts located west of the Sajó River at a site where the remains of one of these mounds stand, suggesting that fighting took place there between the Hungarians and Mongols; clearly such features of the local landscape played a role in the battle. However, it is important to note that any mound that Batu might have used to survey the Hungarians before the fighting commenced must have been on the eastern side of the river.

Regarding Thomas of Split’s account, it is plausible that Batu used a kurgan as his vantage point. While the First Military Survey map shows several natural mounds on the western side of the river where the Hungarians were situated, we do not find artificial burial mounds (kurgans) in the immediate vicinity of the east side of the bank, where the Mongols were situated before the battle. However, on the map we see three mounds north of Tiszaluc, that is, east of the Sajó River and present-day Sajóhídvég. These mounds have already been discussed in the secondary literature in the context of the text of Thomas of Split,51 but we wish to offer some new points of argumentation concerning the wider interpretation of this Latin source. The relevant mounds (kurgans) are situated roughly ten kilometers from what is likely the site of the medieval bridge or crossing on the river on a very prominent elevated landscape dotted with three kurgans, two of which were important enough to be named in the survey (Fig. 5). There is one with no name, and close to it is another kurgan named “Eperiesi Halom” (Eperjesi halom). It is interesting that Eperjesi halom is right next to a road which leads to the Sajó River crossing at Köröm, a place which has been often identified as a possible crossing on the river during the battle. Much more intriguing for the purposes of this study is the third mound of a higher elevation and seemingly greater importance named “Strásahalom” (Strázsahalom), which means a hill used for reconnaissance, i.e. a vantage point used for viewing enemies. There are similar mounds with the same name in other parts of the Great Plain (for example Strázsahalom near Cegléd or Strázsahegy near Hatvan), where the same explanation is given for the name. At the same time, we need to note that this name is modern, as it is derived from a South Slavic language milieu and was not used in the Middle Ages. While Eperjesi halom is a typical kurgan site, relatively small with steep sides in a very flat area, Strázsahalom and its landscape is quite different. It is situated on a high plateau north of the Tisza River and the kurgan was erected on the highest point of this natural elevated slope. It is significantly higher than anything else in the area and offers a splendid viewpoint from where one can see Mt. Tokaj, the mountains near to Szerencs, the gallery woodland of the Tisza, the Sajó and Hernád Rivers, and the whole plain on the eastern side of the Sajó.

In any case, without a closer option, it is possible that Batu made use of this distant hill; its name proves that it was used for reconnaissance at some point in the past, and it was the most significant high ground in the general area. As evidence of that, it was depicted again in the Second Military Survey’s map (1819–1869), with only the “Strázsa” kurgan being named among all local kurgans (Fig. 6). It is indicated on the map as the highest point in the landscape. On the Third Military Survey’s map, created in the late nineteenth century, both the Eperjesi and Strázsa mounds are indicated. Eperjesi is marked without a name, but it is indicated to be 136 meters above sea level, while Strázsahalom is named and listed as being 156 meters above sea level. As such, it was the highest point in the area. As clear evidence of this, this third survey’s map offers another name for the mound in brackets, “Messzelátó.” This means literally a vantage point from where you can see a long distance (Fig. 7). Thus, Strázsahalom must have been the most significant landmark in the Middle Ages and the highest point in this otherwise flat area. In the framework of our new research project on the Battle of Muhi, we will conduct some visibility experiments at the site, and with the help of GIS analytical methods, we will also be able to investigate various aspects of the topographical situation. While the shape and size of Eperjesi halom did not change, as it has never been ploughed, the area and the kurgan itself of Strázsahalom has been under agricultural cultivation and because of erosion, some changes have occurred. This means that it must have been higher in the Middle Ages than at present.

Modern agriculture has also worked changes on the surrounding landscape, but it is possible to see Strázsahalom and determine the view it provided. Granted, it was distant enough that Batu could not have viewed clear details of the Hungarian camp from it. Still, we must be aware of a key detail in our source on the matter. Thomas of Split noted that Batu viewed the Hungarian camp, determining from its overall layout that the Hungarian king was a poor strategist, and “then, the very same night” (tunc, eadem nocte), he ordered his troops to attack.52 From our own personal survey of the site it seems very probable that the torches and campfires of the Hungarian camp, situated on a mound on the western side of the Sajó river, would be clearly visible during a night in April. After all, it could be that Batu only saw a torchlight outline or the campfires of the troops (in early April it is ordinarily cold), something which would be visible for dozens of kilometers on a clear night. It is only 11 kilometers from Strázsahalom to the site of the Sajó River in the direct vicinity of medieval Hídvég, so if the Hungarian camp was somewhere nearby on the other side of the river, it was likely not more than 12–13 kilometers away from the vantage point. Another factor we should take into consideration is the presence of gallery woodlands in the floodplains of the Sajó River, which would have obscured the view of the other side if one were trying to conduct reconnaissance close to the river, even from a local kurgan. However, if one were to move farther away to a significantly higher point, one could then see the campfires or torchlights above the trees on a clear night from quite a distance. For what it is worth, the battle occurred very shortly before the new moon, when, under ordinary conditions, it would have been a dark night.53

In addition to the landscape features suggested above as candidates, we can also consider the remote possibility that similar kurgans once existed nearer the eastern banks of the Sajó and Hernád Rivers, across from the Hungarian camp, before the military surveys were conducted. On that side, there are some modest points of elevation, like Kövecses halom (110 m. today) and Németi halom, another kunhalom which appears in the First Military Survey. Perhaps there were nearby mounds that were already leveled in earlier centuries for agricultural purposes long before the Habsburg military surveys were made. In the earliest survey, one notices much agricultural land already along the Hernád River. But this is not a likely scenario. The type of agricultural practice that involved leveling the landscape and flattening kurgans started only in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The gazetteers of the Great Plain’s kurgans give a very clear indication of these modern losses.54 Furthermore, the term “Strázsa” indicates that Strázsahalom was a far higher mound than the surrounding features. So, all things considered, it seems to be the most likely candidate in the area for Batu’s vantage point.

Regarding the hill in Juvayni’s account, the vague terminology allows us to imagine some modest artificial mound like Strázsahalom serving a double purpose of vantage point and site of ritual seclusion. Yet, these drastically different purposes suggest that Batu may well have used a different hill; Juvayni made no mention of Batu seeing or attempting to see the Hungarian army during his time on the hill. In fact, the passage implies that the Hungarians had not yet arrived. Moreover, it is hard to believe that a Chinggisid prince on the eve of battle would have considered a modest artificial mound as a suitable site to commune ritualistically with Tengri in the model of his divine ancestor. About 30 kilometers northeast of the medieval ruins of Muhi, the isolated, impressive, and natural hills in the vicinity of Szerencs–Nagy-hegy and Fuló-hegy–seem likely candidates (Fig. 8). We might also consider Bekecs-hegy, which is one of the most impressive hills on the edge of the Great Hungarian Plain, and which is situated very close to Szerencs. If one were travelling from the northeast, as we know the Mongols were in 1241, these three would be the most “hill”-like landscape features, and they stand out rather dramatically on the plain. Certainly, this general area and particularly Nagy-hegy (called Mount Szerencs in medieval works) were interpreted to have been both sacred and useful to earlier nomadic invaders of the Carpathian Basin.

The Mongols are recorded to have broken through the forests and wooden barricades in the northeast Carpathian border region, employing 40,000 men with axes to clear the way.55 If we believe the Deeds of the Hungarians, a work thought to have been written around 1200 and predating the Mongol invasion, the Magyar tribes, when they entered the Carpathian Basin, proceeded by the same route and even employed peasants to clear a pathway through the Carpathians, like Batu and the Mongols allegedly later did.56 The semi-mythical account tells us that their leading chieftain, Árpád, was immediately drawn to the hills of Szerencs, from which he examined the surrounding landscape. He made his base there initially. Indeed, the name “Szerencs” in Hungarian is tied to luck, suggesting this favorable association.57 According to the story, the Magyar chieftain allegedly remained at the site and sent his followers deeper into the country to conquer and explore. When they returned with reports of victories, Árpád held a pagan feast for a week at Szerencs, and then the whole body of the nomadic Magyars camped by the Sajó River at the site of the later battle of 1241 before advancing into the heart of the Carpathian Basin.58 If the possibility had not been ruled out on the basis of the paleographic study of the manuscript,59 the similarities between the Magyar and Mongol invasions almost invite a renewed discussion of whether Anonymous could in fact have been Béla IV’s notary rather than the notary of Béla III.60 However, evidence suggests that the conventional view is valid.

The stories in the Deeds of the Hungarians might be mere myths, but then the startling parallels between the routes and actions of the Magyar prince, Árpád, and the Mongol prince, Batu, become even harder to explain. These parallels might support the view that the traditional accounts of the Magyars’ arrival in the Carpathian Basin have a historical basis. Regardless, the hills of Szerencs and more distant Tokaj have a striking appearance on the flat plains, and they would be strategically valuable sites for nomadic invaders. Just as legends held that Árpád cautiously remained in the Szerencs area and sent vanguard divisions to explore the land, it is possible that Batu chose a similar strategy several centuries later. This scenario is more realistic than the notion that the Mongols brought families and carts full of property very close to the location of a battle which they feared they might well lose, with their herds scattered all over the area. The friars and Chinese diplomatic reports mentioned that Mongol troops brought their families during major invasions, as mentioned, and we can be sure this was the case in Hungary. We read details of Mongol children and women taking part in massacres of the local population in 1241.61 Mongol armies included the family members of the highest leaders, as we see in an account of an unsuccessful second major Mongol invasion of Hungary in 1285. The Jochid royal campaign leader and future khan of the Golden Horde, Töle Buqa, “with his wife,” retreated to his territory east of the Carpathians under desperate circumstances.62

Thus, it is plausible that the Mongol army followed a complex strategic system in 1241, and when Shiban was far ahead provoking the royal army near Pest, Batu was somewhere around Szerencs or Tokaj. While Tokaj is the most striking feature of the landscape (it figures prominently in the Deeds of the Hungarians for instance), it seems too far from the Muhi battlefield, so the hilly area near Szerencs was more likely the site where Batu ascended a hill (or two). The masses of the non-combatants, herds, and plunder were situated there at some distance from the battle and much closer to the mountains so that in the event of defeat, they could escape. In this scenario of uncertainty, Batu would have engaged in his ritual of spiritual preparation mentioned by Juvayni, going to a hilltop after having received news that he was facing daunting odds in the impending struggle. If so, this mirrors descriptions of Mongol behavior on campaigns detailed in Asian and Franciscan sources, which assert that Mongols were extremely cautious during advances into enemy territory, and they kept their families back in highly risky situations.

Conclusions

This paper has offered new speculative suggestions concerning which hill(s) Batu ascended near a battle site which was likely preselected by the Mongols because of the river barrier and gallery forest along it, which would conceal their movements (Fig. 5). It was an aim of the Mongols to conceal their positions and advances across the river in order to encircle the Hungarian camp in the predawn darkness. Regarding the crossing, the bridge where there was documented fighting between the Mongols and Hungarians is the key feature and, as mentioned earlier, we are now taking steps to identifying it as another aim of the larger project.

Less speculatively, this paper has also highlighted the two broad purposes for climbing hills described in the sources. The hills near Szerencs would be suitable for a solemn religious tradition described by Juvayni, an activity which can be interpreted as a movement between the frontiers of the earthly and heavenly spheres, whereas any sufficiently high, nearby kurgan would suit the purpose of reconnaissance described by Thomas of Split. This sort of military reconnaissance signified movement between the territory secured and pacified by the advance of the Mongols and the frontier zone of conflict with the Hungarian army. For Batu, it would have been the frontier between territory in submission and that which was still in rebellion.

Batu may only have ascended a single hill (or perhaps none). If he only ascended one hill, it is interesting to consider that a Persian and a Dalmatian author each saw a very different purpose in the act. Continued battlefield archaeological work at Muhi is right now revealing new findings which enrich our understanding of the events. Even for the connected topographical or landscape archaeological investigations, it is essential to analyze why different textual sources refer to significant landmarks in the area of the battle. Perhaps the issue of the hilltop, too, will be further clarified and deepen our understanding of the Mongol political, military, and spiritual associations with hills and mountains. At the same time, this hilltop episode illustrates how very different sources which emerged independently in European or Mongol-ruled milieus can mutually contribute to our understanding of the important battle. The episode also underlines that such details should be discussed within the narrative structures of each text, carefully contextualizing the aims of the authors behind these sources. While for Thomas of Split, details of the military tactics of the invading army were regarded as particularly important issues, the religious spiritual aspects of a Mongol ruler’s behavior and its connections to a Chinggisid tradition were far more important issues for a Persian author writing a history of the Mongol Empire.

Acknowledgements

The basic concept of this article was developed by S. Pow. Historical events in the written sources on the invasion were discussed by both authors. General interpretations of these sources were made by S. Pow, while the discussion of relevant Hungarian secondary literature is the work of J. Laszlovszky. The issues connected to the battlefield archaeological investigations and the topographical features of Muhi were discussed by J. Laszlovszky. We wish to thank Georg Leube (University of Bayreuth) for his helpful advice on Persian philological issues. We would also like to thank Balázs Nagy (Department of Physical Geography, ELTE) for his advice on the battlefield site and for supplying useful figures. We are very grateful for the LIDAR survey results provided by HELM Solutions for our present research project.

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1 Allsen, “Mongol Census Taking in Rus’,” 50.

2 Laszlovszky et al., “Contextualizing the Mongol Invasion,” 423–31, 437; Nagy, Tatárjárás, 175–201; Pow, “Hungary’s Castle Defense Strategy,” 234–36.

3 Laszlovszky et al., “Reconstructing the Battle of Muhi,” 30.

4 Négyesi, “A muhi csata,” 302; B. Szabó, A tatárjárás, 128.

5 P. Szabó, “A muhi csata és a tatárjárás,” 259–86.

6 Man, Genghis Khan, 271.

7 Laszlovszky et al., “Reconstructing the Battle of Muhi,” 32–33.

8 Katona, A tatárjárás emlékezete, 83–84.

9 Pow and Liao, “Subutai: Sorting Fact from Fiction,” 65–66.

10 P. Szabó, “A muhi csata és a tatárjárás,” 270–75.

11 Laszlovszky, “Dedi etiam terram,” 9–24.

12 Thomas of Split, History of the Bishops, 262–63.

13 Qazvini, Tarikh-i Jahan-gusha-yi Juvayni, 325; Boyle, History of the World Conqueror, 270–71.

14 Steingass, Comprehensive Persian-English Dictionary, 252.

15 Ibid., 1064.

16 Schultz and Kang, Koryosa Choryo II, 352.

17 Yuan Shi, 61–62.

18 For the Chinese text of the Heida Shilue, see: https://ctext.org/wiki.pl?if=gb&chapter=922402#p62

19 Olbricht and Pinks, Meng-ta pei-lu, 183.

20 Ibid., 190.

21 Richard, Histoire des Tartares, 43.

22 Van den Wyngaert, Sinica Franciscana, 80; Dawson, The Mongol Mission, 35.

23 Painter, “The Tartar Relation,” 98–99.

24 Thomas of Split, History of the Bishops, 260–61.

25 Thackston, Rashiduddin, 310.

26 Richard, Histoire des Tartares, 46.

27 Bak, Rady and Veszprémy, Anonymus and Master Roger, 44–45.

28 Ibid., xxiii.

29 Thackston, Rashiduddin, 46.

30 Raverty, Tabakat-i-Nasiri, 954.

31 Thackston, Rashiduddin, 283.

32 Qazvini, Tarikh-i Jahan-gusha-yi Juvayni, 169; Boyle, History of the World Conqueror, 80–81.

33 Thackston, Rashiduddin, 321.

34 Boyle, History of the World Conqueror, 271.

35 Richard, Histoire des Tartares, 28–29.

36 Special thanks to Georg Leube (Bayreuth) for his deep literary and philological insights on this point.

37 Richard, Histoire des Tartares, 47.

38 Bak, Rady and Veszprémy, Anonymus and Master Roger, 168–69, 180–81.

39 Ibid., 156, 160–61.

40 Thomas of Split, History of the Bishops, 260–61.

41 Boyle, History of the World Conqueror, 270.

42 Pow and Liao, “Subutai: Sorting Fact from Fiction,” 63–66.

43 Boyle, The Successors, 69–70.

44 Painter, “The Tartar Relation,” 82–83; Richard, Histoire des Tartares, 77.

45 Thomas of Split, History of the Bishops, 282–83, 260–61.

46 Luard, Matthaei Parisiensis, 114. A mile in medieval terminology is ambiguous but often could be considerably longer than the modern designation.

47 Painter, “The Tartar Relation,” 82–83; Pow and Liao, “Subutai: Sorting Fact from Fiction,” 66–67.

48 The First Military Survey of the Kingdom of Hungary (1782–1785) is accessible at: https://mapire.eu/en/map/firstsurvey-hungary/

49 Laszlovszky et al., “Reconstructing the Battle of Muhi,” 33.

50 Fischl, “Bújócskázó bronzkori lelőhelyek.”

51 Négyesi, “A muhi csata,” 302–3.

52 Thomas of Split, History of the Bishops, 262–63.

53 Négyesi, “A muhi csata,” 296.

54 Ecsedy, The people; “Ex lege” védett; Rákóczi, “Újabb lépések,” 1–11.

55 Thomas of Split, History of the Bishops, 258–59.

56 Bak, Rady and Veszprémy, Anonymus and Master Roger, 34–35, 160–61.

57 Ibid., 47.

58 Ibid., 58–59.

59 Ibid., xix–xxiv.

60 Vékony, “Anonymus kora.”

61 Thomas of Split, History of the Bishops, 272–73.

62 Perfecky, The Hypatian Codex, 96.

* Our work was supported by the grant of the Nemzeti Kutatási, Fejlesztési és Innovációs Hivatal (National Research, Development and Innovation Office), project registration number: K128880.

arab.jpg
Fig.%201.%20River%20confluence%201.jpg

Figure 1. Interpretation of historical changes of watercourses of the Sajó near Ónod and of the river confluence site of the Sajó and Hernád based on geomorphology, cross sections, and LIDAR survey. The upward spikes on the graph are representative of trees.

Fig.%202.%20River%20confluence%202.jpg

Figure 2. Another interpretation of historical changes of watercourses of the Sajó near Ónod and of the river confluence site of the Sajó and Hernád based on geomorphology, cross sections, and LIDAR survey. The upward spikes on the graph are representative of trees.

Fig.%203.%20Muhi%20Rudera.png

Figure 3. “Muchi Rudera,” the ruins of the medieval town of Muhi in the First Military Survey Map. Source: “Königreich Ungarn (1782–1785) – First Military Survey.” Digitized by Arcanum. https://mapire.eu/en/map/firstsurvey-hungary/?layers=147&bbox=2109136.4761014967%2C6019595.635189405%2C2134914.8638906726%2C6026283.875164358

Fig.%204.%20Csullo%20halom.jpg

Fig. 4. UAV-based surface model of a supposed battle location (Csüllő) suggested in past scholarship on the basis of finds.

Fig.%205.%20Vantage%20point%20to%20crossing%20point.png

Figure 5. The distance between the likely vantage point area and the supposed crossing point of the Sajó near Ónod. Source: “Königreich Ungarn (1782–1785) – First Military Survey.” Digitized by Arcanum. https://mapire.eu/en/map/firstsurvey-hungary/?layers=147&bbox=2109136.4761014967%2C6019595.635189405%2C2134914.8638906726%2C6026283.875164358

Fig.%206.%20Second%20military%20survey.%20Strazsa%20dom.png

Figure 6. “Sztrázsa domb,” the only named kurgan in the region in the Habsburg Second Military Survey. Source: “Hungary (1819–1869) – Second military survey of the Habsburg Empire.” Digitized by Arcanum. https://mapire.eu/en/map/secondsurvey-hungary/?layers=5&bbox=2108467.652103985%2C6020316.891614754%2C2134246.039893161%2C6027005.131589707

Fig.%207.%20Third%20military%20survey.%20Messze%20lato.png

Figure 7. Strázsahalom as depicted in the Habsburg Third Military Survey, with altitude (156 m.) and a comment that it offered a distant view of the surrounding area. Source: “Habsburg Empire (1869-1887) – Third Military Survey (1:25000).” Digitized by Arcanum https://mapire.eu/en/map/ thirdsurvey25000/?layers=129&bbox= 2108620.5261604865%2C6019892.496637743%2C2134398.9139496624%2C6026580.736612696

Fig.%208.%20Szerencs%20to%20Muhi%20Rudera.png

Figure 8. The distance between Szenrenc and the ruins of the medieval town of Muhi. Source: “Königreich Ungarn (1782–1785) – First Military Survey.” Digitized by Arcanum. https://mapire.eu/en/map/firstsurvey-hungary/?layers=147&bbox=2109136.4761014967%2C6019595.635189405%2C2134914.8638906726%2C6026283.875164358

2019_2_Skorka

Volume 8 Issue 2 CONTENTS

pdfOn Two Sides of the Border: The Hungarian–Austrian Border Treaty of 1372

Renáta Skorka
Research Centre for the Humanities, Hungarian Academy of Sciences
skorka.renata@btk.mta.hu

The present paper explores the history of the emergence of mixed Hungarian–Austrian commissions in the late Middle Ages. The history of the mixed commissions offers insights into the process during which royal power shifted, in the strategies it adopted in order to address everyday and manifold breaches and dissensions which were common along the border, by negotiations rather than by military intervention. As attested by the sources, this negotiation-based system of conflict resolution between the two neighboring countries appeared in the last decade of the thirteenth century. In the next century, the idea of dividing the Hungarian–Austrian border into sections and submitting the regulation of issues concerning the territories on the two sides of the border emerged, first in 1336 and, then, at the very end of Charles I’s reign in 1341. Under Charles’s son and successor, King Louis I, the first attempt to establish a mixed Hungarian–Austrian commission was made in 1345, resulting in a fairly complicated system. The first documented session of the mixed commission can be connected to the year 1372; it was the border settlement agreed on then that was renewed and adjusted to the requirements of his own age by King Sigismund of Luxemburg in 1411.

Keywords: Hungarian–Austrian border, fourteenth century, mixed commissions, Angevins, Habsburg, Sigismund of Luxemburg

The Western border of the Kingdom of Hungary, which ran along the eastern provinces of the Holy Roman Empire (which at the time were under Habsburg rule), is interesting from the perspective of the historian for several reasons. Not only are there numerous written sources on the history of this border, but these sources suggest that this border was often the site and subject of events which suggest that the histories of the two neighboring polities were much more connected by the border than divided. These connections included the tensions which arose in issues such as the everyday lives of the estates which stretched across the border, the leaseholders’ attempts to cultivate the vineyards and ploughlands of the neighboring countries, the nobles’ changes of allegiance to the side of neighboring rulers, the movements of thieves and rogues who were fleeing from one side of the border to the other, the long-distance traders traveling through provinces with rich stocks, the retailers with local interests, the landholders who shared utilities and owned ferries on the two banks of the border rivers, and taxpayers who paid their taxes in the currency of the neighboring country. These recurrent and, from the perspective of political history, seemingly insignificant conflicts could have had an impact on the relationship between the two countries. In settling disputes, royal power could waver between two possibilities; it could choose armed intervention, by which it could further worsen the diplomatic balance, or it could choose to solve a problem through negotiations. Because of the high number of infringements and the diversity of the cases, negotiations required permanent, recurrent, and, because of the special location, bilateral negotiations, investigations, and legal remedies, which rulers executed with the assistance of representatives. This led to the formation of the mixed Hungarian–Austrian commissions in charge of border disputes in the fourteenth century. The present study gives an overview of the stages of the formation of this commission and provides a detailed analysis of a so far entirely neglected document from 1372 which is the first evidence of a meeting of these commissions. However, as the source is known only in fragmented transcriptions, the starting point of the present work is the renewal of the treaty from 1411, the period during which Sigismund ruled.

“Antecedents” in the Sigismund Period

On October 7, 1411 in Pressburg (today Bratislava), the king of Hungary, Sigismund of Luxemburg, betrothed his two-year-old daughter Elisabeth to the eleven-year old duke of Austria, Albert V of Habsburg, who took measures actively supported by his future father-in-law to be freed from the guardianship of his older relatives, Ernest and Friedrich IV.1 Two days before this event, the king of Hungary and his young protégé issued a document in which they renewed a treaty (dieselbe ordnunge wider czu vernewen) that which was concluded by their predecessors, the late Hungarian King Louis I, and the dukes of Austria Albert III and Leopold III, but put in action by six members of the noble elites (sechs redlicher manne) from Hungary and the Habsburg provinces. The document in question, signed on October 5, 1411 in Pressburg (most probably similarly to its Angevin-period predecessor), in order to facilitate agreement and peace between the two countries, concentrated solely on the border.2 At the time of the renewal of the border agreement, Sigismund started to reclaim the strategically important castle, Devín.3 He ordered the voivode of Transylvania, Stibor, to redeem the castle that stood at the confluence of the Danube and Morava rivers and was considered one of the western gates of the Kingdom of Hungary, with its belongings along with the castle of Ostrý Kameň from Lesel der Hering, to whom it had been in pledge for a long time (vor czyten).4 We know about Hering that in 1397, as a loyal subject of the Habsburg family in Austria, he received Walterkirchen on the border of the Margravate of Moravia and Austria as a pledge from Albert IV and William, dukes of Austria5 and that, along with numerous members of the Austrian elite, he appeared at the provincial assembly of Eggenburg at the end of May 1411, where the supporters of the young Albert V secretly took an oath to support the child kept in custody,6 setting the stage for the border agreement and the betrothal in October.

The 1411 border agreement, however, probably has roots not only in the Hungarian estates pledged to Austrians. Violent acts were committed on both sides of the Hungarian–Austrian border, and the people who committed these acts spared neither the lives of the locals nor the lives of the landowners nor their wealth. The case of the Scharfenecks, who owned lands in Moson County by the border (quasi in metis seu regni nostri confiniis situate) from the first decade of the fifteenth century, offers a good example.7 Frederick von Scharfeneck and his brother, Hermann, whose father John, originating from the Electoral Palatinate, had been living in Hungary since 1376, held the castle of Kittsee beginning in 1390. In the donation charter of the castle, they obliged themselves that no matter who they pledged or sold the castle and its belongings to, namely Pama, Mannersdorf am Leithagebirge, and Hof am Leithagebirge, these lands could not be alienated from the Kingdom of Hungary and the territory of the Hungarian crown.8 The building of the castle of Scharfeneck or Sárfenék in Moson County can be associated with the two boys (hence Hungarian historiography refers to them as Sárfenekis).9 According to the sources, the estates of the Scharfenecks by the border were threatened from the Austrian territories. As is clear from an account from March 1409, two of their villages, Mannersdorf am Leithagebirge and Hof am Leithagebirge, were threatened by complete depopulation due to the raids of plunderers and rogues, in answer to which the Scharfenecks received permission to resettle them.10 Frederick Scharfeneck neither seem to have tried to keep away from a little fray himself. According to a record dating to the beginning of 1412, he made forays into Austria and plundered the land of Pilgrim and Hans von Puchheim called Seibersdorf on the right bank of the River Lajta (in German Leitha), and he set the manor on fire there, occupied their castle, and, heading towards the lower course of the Lajta, did the same with the estate of the Hundsheimers.11 These forays might have happened in the previous year, so exactly when the border agreement was concluded.

If a ruler gave away or pledged Hungarian incomes to the members of the Habsburg family, this created a hotbed of conflict in the form of enduring violations of the border. In 1402 Sigismund, in compensation for his 16,000 golden florins of debt, pledged the incomes of the thirtieth customs places of Pressburg, Rusovce and Sopron (dreissigist zu Prespurg, zu Kerphemburg und zu Ödemburg) to Albert IV, duke of Austria, so that Albert could then run with his own thirtieth collectors and staff, which means that they had the right to assess and collect the customs on foreign trade at these three places in accordance with the thirtieth and chamber laws and customs (als des dreissigisten und unser kamerrecht und gewonheit ist).12 It is probably needless to say that these kinds of positions in the economy created numerous opportunities for abuse, and the foreign toll collectors could provoke hostility among the inhabitants of the kingdom, while the relationship between the towns close to the border and the Habsburg provinces was not untroubled at all.

Sopron, which in the fourteenth-century sources is referred to as a town on the border, as a gate of the Kingdom of Hungary (civitas Supruniensis in confmio Theutonie sita, quasi porta regni),13 made a complaint in 1408 to Leopold IV, duke of Austria, because of a raid against the town (von des angriffs wegen) in answer to which the duke buffered his responsibility by remitting the case to his brother, Ernest, claiming that the burghers of Sopron themselves also believed that he may have been behind the action as initiator.14 An entirely different view is reflected in a letter of a supporter of Duke Ernest, Erhart Sechel, who informed his lord of the plunders committed by the people of Sopron and the “people from the surroundings of Sopron” (gancz gegent) in Styria and Austria. Sechel, who probably was about to come to Hungary to merchandize, did not dare travel on his own, but despite his precautions, his goods were taken from him, and he himself was caught and brought to the castle of Bernstein (Pernstein).15 Accordingly, it is likely that, in the restriction of the personal freedoms of the Habsburg subjects, the castle that stood in Vas County (certainly not in the vicinity of Sopron) and its owners, the Kanizsai family, had some role. A royal diploma dating to June 1388 indicates that at the beginning of the Sigismund period, there was a practice in place of holding up (arrestatio) merchants from Vienna and Austria (mercatores de Vienna vel de Austria) at Óvár and Győr. 16 By every indication, the town of Sopron had serious conflicts with a member of the Stuchs family (mit demselben Stüchsen), who had holdings on the other side of the River Lajta around Trautmannsdorf.17 This is why, in 1408, Leopold IV was pleased that the town planned to keep peace with him and ordered his subjects not to attack the territory of the Kingdom of Hungary.18

One further change has to be noted in the first decades of Sigismund’s reign that affected the western section of the border of Hungary, namely, the final dissolution of the Árpád era border defense system. In 1391, Sigismund made a donation to László Sárói, ispán (comes) of Temes, estates in Zaránd Country in return for his service to King Louis I, king of Hungary, Queen Elisabeth, and Queen Mary since Queen Mary’s childhood.19 The ispán then exchanged these estates with the king for the estate of Güssing and the market town of Kőszeg that year. Thanks to the exchange, Sárói had an estate complex by the Hungarian–Austrian border that held the promise of major income. In addition to the market and customs incomes of Kőszeg, he also gained possession of Őr (Ewr; present-day Oberwart), Rudersdorf (Radalfalva), Kalteneck (Hydegzeg; part of present-day Bernstein), and Heiligenkreuz im Lafnitztal (Kerezthur), along with the customs collected at these places, Stegersbach (Zenthelek), with its customs and market incomes, and twenty smaller settlements.20 Sárói’s newly acquired estate complex was bordered by the River Lafnitz, which from the Sigismund-period onwards was referred to as a border river.21 Sárói, however, was not satisfied with the size of his lands, and in November, he picked out the Őrség, the area at the headwaters of the River Zala. This time, the donation hit a snag, or moreover met with opposition. As the local community, commonly referred to as Zala-defenders (universos spiculatores nostros vulgariter zalaewr nuncupatos), whose ancestors were settled in the area before the castle system became established to act as guards by the border, did not fail to express their protest and outrage. In February 1392, their delegates visited the king, who was staying at Eisenstadt, and drew his attention to the fact that László Sárói committed violations of rights when he asked for giving these people along with their lands to him, as they had not been given away by any previous kings, and they were free and were obliged with defending the country. Accordingly, they crabbed the installing of Sárói into the land. The king brought the case to the royal council, according to the decision of which Sigismund had acted rightfully when, excusing the guards from the obligation and burden of guarding the region (a iugo, conditione et onere ipsius spiculatoris servitutis), he had given them and their lands to Sárói as a donation, as they were subjects and were some extent committed to their lord (hereditarii subditi forent et conditionaliter obligati).22 Following this, on January 20, 1393, the king turned to the chapter of Esztergom and asked it to install László Sárói under the title of the previous donation to the lands of the Zalafő (Zalafew) estate and its belongings, namely Őriszentpéter (Zenthpetur), Ispánk (Yspank), Kisrákos (Rakos), Pankasz (Pankaas), Nagyrákos (Naghrakos), including its customs income, Szatta (Zatha), Szomoróc (Zomorok; part of present-day Kercaszomor), Kapornak (Kapurnuk), Hodoš (Hodoos), including its customs, and seven further settlements, despite the fact that he did not have himself installed within the given time, not having taken into account the possible objection of the defenders.23 The fate of the speculators of the Őrség, whose settlement was made possible by the order of Stephen V issued in 1270,24 was sealed with the act in February 1393. The assessment and position of guards (who originally belonged to the group of service peoples, but whose function – officium – was not to produce material goods, but rather to guard the frontier), because of their armed service in the Árpád era, was probably better than that of most service peoples.25 Some of their groups could also maintain their favorable position during the reign of the Angevin kings. In 1355, King Louis I transcribed the privilege letter of the royal guards of Őrimagyarósd confirmed by King Charles I in 1329.26 In 1327, Charles did the same with the guards who lived and owned lands between the Güssing and Berstein castles,27 and in 1339 he confirmed the freedoms and service of the royal guards of Gattendorf (spiculatores regiae maiestatis de Katha).28 The decrease of the social status of the speculators of Zala to tenant peasants is not imperative, as we know guards whose families Ladislas IV raised from the community of guards by granting them five hides of land (de consortio et collegio ipsorum speculatorum cum quinque aratris terrarum),29 and Charles I confirmed their status at the request of their descendants.30 These people first belonged to the group of servientes regis, then to the nobility, who went to war in the army led by the king (inter nobiles regni nostri computentur sub vexillo regio militantes).31 The dissolution of the aforementioned Árpád-era relic in the first decades of the reign of Sigismund cannot be solely attributed to the personal endeavors of László Sárói, but rather to the outdating of the arms of the guards on the western confines, which were not effective in the new military challenges of the fifteenth century.32 The extent to which it posed a threat for the Hungarian king or the Habsburg dukes to give a contiguous territory along the border which previously had been in royal hands to a landlord is another question. In the history of the Hungarian–Austrian border section, it was a recurrent event that either a Hungarian oligarch, using his land of significant size by the border, raided and plundered the provinces of the Habsburg dukes for decades or a noble who owned lands by the border taking advantage of the location of his holdings, partially or fully changed, from the side of Hungarian kings and swore to serve the Habsburg dukes.33

It was a general endeavor in the first decades of the Sigismund-period to settle the question of the Hungarian–Austrian border section and the desire to maintain peace on both sides of the border. With almost no exceptions, the preference was to see disputes settled through negotiations at conference tables. In the second year of his reign, in June 1388, Sigismund informed his subjects, mostly the inhabitants of Óvár and Győr, that he and Duke Albert III had decided to send some from their lords to the border (ad confinia regni, and ad limites Austriae) to negotiate and discuss the remedy, correction, and redemption of the incursions across the border, damages, harms, and discontents of the peoples of the two countries.34 On June 4, 1389, Sigismund addressed a letter from Buda to the duke informing him of his decision to appoint István Lackfi, palatine, Imre Bebek, judge royal, Leusták Jolsvai, master of the court, and Miklós Kanizsai, master of the treasury, to participate in the negotiations in question.35 Lackfi at the time, apart from being palatine, was also ispán of Moson and Győr Counties. Kanizsai also held the countships of Zala, Vas, and Sopron.36 So, because of their positions and lands, they were involved in the circumstances of the counties along the border. The document issued after the meeting has been preserved. It informs us of the negotiations of the appointees of Albert III, Hermann, count of Cilli,37 Johann von Liechtenstein marshal, Wulfing von Stubenberg, and Johannes von Dietrichstock master of forests in Austria (magister forestariorum Austrie) with the Hungarian party, which were held in Sopron on 18 June. However, one can identify a change in the delegates of Sigismund compared to those named on June 4, as instead of Leusták Jolsvai, master of the court, János Hédervári, the bishop of Győr, was present. On the Hungarian side, a prelate became a member, which as we shall see, had a tradition. According to the agreements reached at the meeting in Sopron, both rulers had to appear in person on the Day of Saint Giles (1 September) in the towns of Pressburg, and Hainburg so that the remaining disputed questions, on which no resolution had been reached, could be investigated and settled in the coming months. The two rulers and their subjects had to keep to the resolutions of the commission. It was also stated that both parties would attest that their people would not hold the subjects of the other ruler imprisoned or impede their free movement. In Sopron, resolutions were also made specifically on merchants; it was put down in writing that whoever participated in trade (whichever accepted route he took) should be able to do so as had been customary in the period of King Louis, Dukes Albert II, and Rudolf IV. If a new inequality were to raise its head, and should it appear in Hungary, it has be reported to the palatine and the master of the treasury, and if this were to happen in the lands of the Habsburgs, Johann von Lichtenstein and Wulfing von Stubenberg should be notified, the four of whom then should meet at a given place and date, and if necessary, negotiate and settle the question.38 The meeting at Sopron clearly indicates the intention of the rulers: to speed up and automatize the investigation and the remedy of the various incursions (which as noted above were frequent) by a mixed commission and to ensure that the rulers would intervene in this process only in cases of absolute necessity. The intent in the case of Sigismund could be explained by the fact that at the beginning of his reign, in order to solidify his rule in the Hungary, he was held spellbound by more important internal political difficulties than by the incursions across the borders, and he had to consider his ambitions in foreign policy, and this of course could ease the situation of the ruling Habsburg dukes as well, who frequently came into conflict with one another. However, as we shall see below, the system of the border commissions was not a Sigismund-era innovation, but rather was part of the Angevin-era legacy, as were the permanent unresolved disputes of the Hungarian–Austrian border sections.

There is no sign of the royal meeting settled for September 1 by the meeting at Sopron in the sources, and it is certain that Sigismund resided in Buda between August 20 and September 12,39 while in all likelihood Albert III was in Vienna.40 One cannot be certain that the two rulers met at all before the death of Albert III in 1395 in order to make up for the postponed meeting to negotiate the question of the border. On October 24, 1398, however, Sigismund issued a diploma at Ilok (Neunhofen), in the southern part of the country, in which he notes his agreement with the son of Albert III, Albert IV, and his cousin, the eldest member of the Habsburg family at the time, Duke William, in order to secure peace between the Kingdom of Hungary, Styria, and Austria. According to their agreement, every inhabitant of the countries in question, whether rich or poor, prelate or noble, ordinary (unedel), merchant and pilgrim, should be able to travel from these countries to the other with their goods freely, without the hindrance of his or her person or belongings. It was also stipulated that if a Hungarian subject were to lay a claim against a subject of the dukes, he would have to bring the case to the country which was legally authorized. Sigismund assured the dukes that no attack or other kind of incursions from the territory of the Kingdom of Hungary would take place in their provinces with his consent and any Hungarian subject who did not keep this agreement would be held accountable. If domestic people or foreigners caused loss and injustice in Austria or Styria and then sought protection in Hungary, the Hungarian king forbade his subjects from giving the person refuge. It was also stipulated that a subject of the Hungarian king could only buy or hold estates as pledges in Austria and Styria from that time on with the knowledge and consent of the dukes. If this were to happen against the will of the dukes, the buyer would immediately get his money back and had to eschew the property. The holdings that had already been (altes erb) in other hands, including vineyards and plow lands, (weingerten und ekerpau) however, were exceptions and could be kept without any obstacles. Finally, the Hungarian king appointed deputies who, in his absence, were entitled to serve in his stead in the disputes of the Hungarian–Austrian border section. By the border in Pozsony County (grafschefften Prespurger), Count Péter Szentgyörgyi and András Stiborici “Podczesfi,” i.e. one of the most influential noblemen in the county and the brother of the ispán of Pozsony were appointed. By Óvár (Altenburger) (indeed Moson), Sopron (Ödenpurger) and Vas (Eisenburger) counties, the as participants of the 1389 Sopron meeting already introduced János Hédervári, bishop of Győr, Miklós Kanizsai, former master of the treasury and István Kanizsai, master of the court were in charge. It is worth remembering that the latter family played a role in holding Erhart Sechel prisoner in Bernstein in 1408. And in case of a need for action on the border of the Wendish March41 and Styria, the king appointed Eberhart, bishop of Zagreb and Miklós Garai, ban of Slavonia.42 With regard to the 1398 arrangements, which mostly but not exclusively were meant to maintain peace by the Hungarian–Austrian border, some aspects are worth emphasizing. The most important of these aspects was the lack of mutuality. The points only seem to have applied to the subjects of the Hungarian kings, and only represented their perspective. It is possible that the two Habsburg dukes also issued a document similar in content which concerned their subjects; these documents, however, did not survive (if indeed they existed). The other circumstance that is worth noting concerns not the royal appointees authorized in the border issues, but the division of the border section, which also was not an innovation introduced by Sigismund of Luxemburg (I will return to this later).

As is clear from the incidents discussed above from the first decades of the fifteenth century, the 1398 arrangements certainly did not fulfill the hopes of the parties involved. This is how, in 1411, Sigismund signed a border treaty with Duke Albert V, who was freed from the guardianship. Unlike in the cases of his previous efforts, Sigismund considered an Angevin-period document signed between the two countries as an antecedent.

Antecedents from the Angevin Era

At the beginning of this article, I noted that the border treaty signed in Pressburg on October 5, 1411 renewed a document originating from the period of Louis I, Albert III, and Leopold III. The late-Angevin-period source is almost entirely unknown to historians,43 and it is known only in eighteenth-century transcriptions. It is also important to note that none of the transcriptions preserved the text in its entirety,44 so when analyzing its contents, we can only base our conclusions on the 1411 confirmation, although there are differences between the texts of the two agreements, as I will indicate in my discussion of the relevant passages.

The border treaty in question was signed in October 1372, almost on the anniversary of the armistice between Charles IV, Holy Roman emperor, and his supporters, the Austrian dukes, and the opposing Louis I, king of Hungary and Poland and his Bavarian allies, which was in effect until June 5, 1373.45 After that, in October 1372, Louis I negotiated with Charles IV on the Hungarian–Czech border. On October 16, he sat down with the Austrian dukes, Albert III and his brother Leopold III, in Sopron to settle disputes. At the Sopron meeting in 1372, similarly to the negotiations in 1389 in the same town, the focus was on the Hungarian–Austrian border section. The rulers put down in writing their intention to prevent new incursions across the border and hostilities along the border of their countries in the future. The Hungarian king vowed that neither he nor his subjects would attack the other side of the border,46 but if that were to happen, the two dukes or a duke and his master of the horse had to inform the palatine and the bishop of Zagreb at their earliest convenience, and the palatine and the bishop of Zagreb would then have two months to investigate and rectify the case.

In addition to the plundering and incursions across the border, there were other old unresolved issued concerning the border in question. These issues were negotiated six days after the Sopron meeting on October 22, in Wiener Neustadt. In the Styrian town, the rulers were represented by appointees consisting of three persons on each side; on the side of the dukes, Heidenreich von Maissau master of the cup-bearers and master of the horse, Albert von Puchheim, master of the table, and Kadold von Eckartsau, the Elder; on the Hungarian side, István Kanizsai, bishop of Zagreb (Stephan Gottes gnaden Bischof ze Agram), Imre Lackfi, the palatine (Emerich großen graff ze Hungern), and a third person unidentifiable on the basis of the transcription.47 (Lackfi is the brother of the abovementioned István, who took part in the 1389 negotiations, and also was ispán of Vas and Sopron at the time.) Based on the Hungarian members of the border commission, by the time of Sigismund’s reign the bishops of Zagreb, the Kanizsai family, and even the Lackfis must have had some experience in settling disputes by the border. The members of the commission asked Hermann, count of Cilli in consort, to have the final word in the case of a tie. The count can certainly not be identified as Hermann, count of Cilli, who participated in the meetings of 1389. Rather, it must be his father, who lived until 1385, but the Cilli counts, who then only owned lands in the territory of the Holy Roman Empire, were definitely major authorities in the questions of Hungarian–Austrian border disputes.

The decisions made on October 22, 1372 certainly addressed the issue of fishing rights (vischwaide) on the River Morava, which divided the part of Austria that fell to the north of the Danube River from Pozsony County, which according to the document on Austrian side were due to the landlords by the bank, and on the Hungarian side, the castellan of Dévénykő48 (burggraffe auf dem Tebenstain), who shared the river fifty-fifty.49 In the 1411 confirmation by Sigismund, it is clearly expressed at this point that the River Morava is the border between Hungary and Austria, and neither of the two parties can enter the territory of the other (da sol di March die grenicz und das gemerke sin zwischen Ungern und der Österreich, und sol ouch ein teyl, den andern an seinen teyle nicht ubergryffen).50 The 1372 treaty, however, held the fishing rights of those who had this privilege from ancient times. The border treaty also touched on the subjects of the dukes who owned vineyards in Hungary and put them in a position of advantage, as they did not have to pay the thirtieth on the vine they produced there, but only had to pay the tithe and the vineyard tax, (die uff dem ungrischen weingarten ligen haben, von dem das in dorynne wechset, und es sy dorinne verpawch, keinen dristigsten geben sollen, doch ussgenommen bergrecht und czehenden) which were the same as the duties paid by the Hungarian inhabitants. The arrangement made it possible for everyone who had had the right to do so from ancient times to pay the duties on vine in Viennese denars. It was also stated that the border was by the River Lajta, where the river runs along the border, but where the border and the river split, the old borders had to be kept. Hence, the order stated that no one could divert the Lajta with a ditch or dam (soll die Leutha niemand abkehrn weder mit graben noch mit wühren).51 If anyone had holdings on the Hungarian side of the border, they could not be disturbed, but if anyone had a related claim, the claim had to be made in Hungary. The same was true vice versa, i.e. the claims related to lands of the Austrian side of the Lajta had to be enforced in Austria (which reminds us of one of the points of the 1398 arrangements of Ilok discussed above). According to the treaty of 1372, the same principles were applied with regard to the fishing rights on the Lajta and other border rivers as on the River Morava. On the Hungarian side, the subjects of the Hungarian king and on the Austrian side the subjects of the dukes had the right to build mills and mill buildings (müllen und müllhäuser) by the bank. In order to provide water for the mills, the water could be backed up by dams directly upstream from the mill. However the earlier rights related to mills had to be respected. With regard to the importance of the arrangements, before 1372, there was only one treaty in the Hungarian–Austrian relationships that addressed similar questions. It was the 1225 peace treaty, which allowed Hungarian soldiers to build mills by the rivers along the border, even on both sides, but the water could not be diverted in a manner that would cause the majority of the water not to flow in the original riverbed.52 With regard to the ferry between Devín (Teben) and Rottenstein (Rotenstein), the 1372 agreement declared53 that the subjects of the Hungarian king could transport anyone and anything to the Austrian side, but they could not pick up anything or anyone at Rottenstein, as there, the men of Hans Straissing had the right to ferry to the Hungarian side, from where they could not ferry anyone or anything to the Austrian side.54 It was also stipulated that anyone had the right to choose freely what they produced on their lands. It is only included in the 1411 confirmation that punishment and fine was due if someone arrested or had somebody arrested in his lands (endhalden noch endhalden lassen soll), but in the meantime, no one could let anyone cross his lands if the man or men in question were about to threaten or attack anybody else (angryffen oder beschedigen wollte). But because of the document issued in Sopron on October 16, 1372, these stipulations may have been included in the border agreement of Wiener Neustadt as well.55 According to the 1411 confirmation, if anyone had a claim against an inhabitant of the other country, he had to announce this claim in the territory of the Hungarian and Austrian towns, according to the customs and laws, and he had to respect the laws of that country under pain of punishment. If someone failed to respect the laws of that country or committed perfidy, he joint efforts would be taken against him.56

The border treaty reached by the mixed commission in 1372 and the circumstances of its formation, namely the lack of specific regulation of the establishment and functioning of the commission, alludes to the customary nature of border commissions in settling similar disputes. Traces of this tradition go back to the last decade of the thirteenth century, to the peace treaty of Hainburg signed in 1291. The peace treaty, which put an end to the military campaign of the last Árpád ruler, Andrew III, is interesting from a number of perspectives, but in the context of the current article, the circumstances of its formation and one specific passage of the document are particular relevant.57 The treaty was reached during a meeting of a body consisting of eight representatives appointed by the two rulers on August 26 in the friary of the Friars Minor at Hainburg. Each of the two parties were represented by two clerics and two members of the lay elite.58 According to one stipulation of the treaty, the Austrian party chose two Hungarians and the Hungarians chose two Austrians and, in Styria, each party chose one person. These people were invested in the provinces in which they resided with full power to investigate, inform the ruler, chastise people who caused damages, and return the goods taken within a month of learning about the losses suffered.59 Though the text of the peace treaty indicates that four people were to be appointed at the next meeting of the two rulers, i.e. Albert I, duke of Austria, and Andrew III, there is no trace of their selection in the sources, nor is there any indication that the tasks assigned were actually performed. The plan to settle conflicts in the treaty of Hainburg can be considered a forerunner to the similar structure and purpose of the plans which were reached in the mid-fourteenth century.

The next document in chronological order which testifies to the attempts to address the issues of the Hungarian–Austrian border dates to the Angevin era. In 1336, Charles I, king of Hungary, signed an armistice with Albert II and Otto I, dukes of Austria, with the mediation of John, king of Bohemia.60 According to the document, for the period until June 8, 1337, both sides of the Hungarian–Austrian border were placed under the control of three border supervisors (tres custodes limitum), one to the north of the Danube, one to the south, and the third was in charge of the issues of the Styrian–Carniolan section of the border.61 This kind of north-south division of the border adumbrates the abovementioned 1398 Ilok arrangement of Sigismund, which basically sketched out the same triple division.

In the last years of the reign of Charles I, the conflict resolution methods envisaged by the 1291 agreement with regard to the Hungarian–Austrian border section were clearly adopted. On November 13, 1341, close to the end of his life, the king came to an agreement with Duke Albert II at Pressburg according to which they both chose three people from the counselors of the other person who would then be present on March 6, 1342 at Pressburg and Hainburg and would begin negotiations concerning the common border to investigate the losses and trespasses and remedy and make recompenses for them. The duke chose Peter, bishop of Srijem, Pál Nagymartoni, judge royal, and Tamás Szécsényi, voivode of Transylvania from the Hungarians, while the king chose Ulrich von Bergau, Ulrich von Pfannberg, and Ludwig von Otting. They also chose substitute members, Miklós Zsámboki, ispán of Turóc and Konrad von Schaunberg, so that in case of illness or absence of the members, the commission meeting would not be cancelled.62 Nagymartoni’s family had holdings in Sopron County along the border and, moreover, he had Austrian connections, as he had married the daughter of the landgrave, Albert von Pottendorf, Elisabeth.63 It is also striking that, with regard to the representatives of the king, a member of the ecclesiastic elite was on the commission. This later became a common phenomenon, while it was not characteristic of the Austrian side at all. It cannot be ruled out that the membership of a cleric on the commission was a guarantee of literacy.64 Despite the careful preparations, nothing indicates that the 1342 commission meeting actually took place.

The tendency, however, could have been promising, as Louis I, the successor of Charles I, already committed himself to setting up a mixed commission at the very beginning of his reign. Following the change of the ruler in the summer of 1342, the diplomatic overtures between the Austrian and Hungarian parties on the border section restarted in May 1345. In his diploma, issued at Visegrád, Louis stated to the subjects of the Austrian duke Albert II that he is open to providing compensation for the damages and losses caused by the Hungarian party.65 In the middle of December 1345, Louis I arrived for a meeting at Vienna, where he came to the conclusion with Albert II that they should continue and, furthermore, improve the negotiation system initiated in 1341. According to the decision of the Hungarian king and the Austrian duke (similarly to the armistice of 1336), the Hungarian–Austrian border section was to be divided into parts. (The division of the north-south positioned confines is not a fourteenth-century thought, as the structure decided in 1336 and is 1345 was almost identical to the territorial division of the former Carolingian marches.66) Furthermore, judges were ordered from both the Austrian and the Hungarian sides to preside over the border sections. Their task was to investigate and remedy the unlawful acts and damages of the previous period. Accordingly, people with territorial competence in the issues were appointed from the Kingdom of Bohemia to the Danube, from the Danube to Hartberg in Styria, from Hartberg to the River Drava, and from the Drava to the Wendish March (Marchia). To the section by the River Morava, on the Hungarian side Csenyik Ugodi Cseh, castellan of Červený Kameň, and Tamás Vörös, castellan of Újvár, were appointed, while on the Austrian side Konrad von Schaunberg and Leitold von Kuenring were chosen. To the section by the River Lajta, the aforementioned Pál Nagymartoni judge royal, whose family had local interests by the castles of Forchtenstein and Kobersdorf, and for the first time (but as we know not for the last time in the history of the border commissions), the Lackfi family was also represented, namely by István Lackfi, voivode of Transylvania. From the Austrian side, to the same area, Ulrich von Pfannberg and Eberhard von Wallsee were appointed. Along the river Lafnitz, on the Hungarian side, palatine Miklós Zsámboki and, again, judge royal Pál Nagymartoni were chosen, while on the Austrian, Ulrich von Wallsee and the Styrian Gottschalk von Neidberg had jurisdiction. For the southernmost border section, Miklós of the Hahót kin, ban of Slavonia and Cikó of Pomáz, castellan of Cheresig, were chosen, while the two Styrian nobles were Rudolf, count of Cilli (who also established the role of his family in issues of the Hungarian–Austrian border) and Ott von Liechtenstein. The mandate of the appointees lasted until February 2, 1346, by which time they had to investigate and remedy the previous alleged injustice. The importance of the case is indicated by the fact that on the Hungarian side, the most important office holders from among the barons also took part in the work. The rulers in December 1345 also thought of the long-term peace of the border sections. Namely, they also stipulated in writing that if in the future new damages were done, then the commission with jurisdiction in the area should reassemble and settle the case by coming to a decision within a month’s time. Prepared for everything, they also decided that if a commission would not be able to decide on the compensation correctly, the harmed person could not take the case in hand and seek redress or revenge, but rather should seek compensation from his lord.

At the Viennese meeting in December, decisions between the two rulers were made on further issues as well, namely on the issue of the Hungarian agricultural lands which were close to the border, with special regard to the Austrian lessees of vineyards.67 The question had been a source of tension between the two powers long before. In February 1324, Charles I took measures against the long-term Habsburg-subject lessees (a longo tempore retroacto) of lands in Moson and Sopron counties bordering the Duchy of Austria because the piece of lands called Alramus by the River Sár, i.e. the Lajta, was torn from the Hungarian king and the country (a nobis et regno nostro reputis metis nostris) by violating the border and was given as lease to Austrians.68 At the end of the same year, the king ordered the ispán of Sopron County and his vice-ispán to forbid the Austrians from using the lands of the country and the incomes from its crops (prohibeat quoslibet Australes ab usu et perceptione usus fructuum et utilitatum terrarum regni nostri). He also stipulated that Hungarians could not work in vineyards or forests and could not cultivate lands in the territory of the Kingdom of Hungary or by the River Lajta that are in Austrian hands by his or his predecessors’ grace and permission.69 The actions of Charles went against a system that had been in place for a long time by then, which let lands in lease, mostly vineyards by the border to Austrians for cultivation during which period upon paying the ordinary taxes the lessees could own their lands freely.70 The Habsburgs took all the measures to protect the interests of their subjects, so they could not bow to the aggravations of the Hungarian king, and in 1328, they got Charles I to accept Austrian lessees holding vineyards to continue vine cultivation on the border of the Kingdom of Hungary upon paying the usual land tax. It is also clear from the diploma of Albert II, duke of Austria, which settlements along the border were most interested in leasing vineyards in Hungary. On June 24, 1339, the duke gave permission to the burghers of Hainburg to bring the vine they produced or bought (pauwein und kaufwein) from harvest until the day of Saint Martin (November 11) from Hungary to Hainburg, but the latter they were not allowed to transport their goods any further than the town.71 Albert issued a permission with similar content to the burghers of Wiener Neustadt on November 8, 1342 allowing them to take the vine they produced in the Kingdom of Hungary through the Semmering Pass to Bruck an der Mur and Judenburg and through Schladming to Friesach and Rottenman.72 The 1345 agreement again provided the lessees of the vineyards of Devín (Dewen) Mountain with benefits, who from that time on did not have to pay more than half a Viennese denar as vineyard tax, which was the customary sum. In connection to this, one may recall the 1372 agreement, which specifically allowed the paying of the land tax in Viennese denars to those who had had the right since ancient times. The importance of the question of vine cultivators is well reflected by the fact that the decision dates to the same day and the renewal of the Hungarian–Austrian political alliance, and that rulers felt that they had jurisdiction in this issue.73

The system of mixed commissions set up in 1345, which was complicated in comparison with earlier attempts to address the issues at hand, became clearer when put into effect in 1372. The importance of the latter case is enhanced by the fact, that unlike on previous occasions, the commission was not only set up in writing but actually functioned in practice. The overview of somewhat more than a century in the history of the Hungarian–Austrian mixed commissions which were founded in order to maintain peace along the border offers insights into and examples of the process during which royal power shifted, in the strategies it adopted in order to address everyday and manifold breaches and dissensions which were common along the border, by negotiations rather than by military intervention. The stages of this practice can be identified in the Angevin era, from the change of perspective at the end of the reign of Charles I to the signing of the agreement of 1372. The points of the arrangement held true in the first decades of the fifteenth century, which is why it deserves special attention. Moreover, this is the first known document by neighboring rulers which set up a mixed commission. The text of the document has only been preserved in fragmented transcriptions, but its thanks to the renewal in 1411, it can be reconstructed. One of the lessons of the mixed commission system that was in charge of the Hungarian–Austrian border section is that while it aimed to unburden the rulers from decision making, it actually brought the two neighbors closer.

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1 On the betrothal, see Mályusz, Zsigmond király uralma, 123; Hönsch, Kaiser Sigismund, 142. On the state of Austrian internal policy: Niederstätter, Die Herrschaft Österreich, 198–99.

2 The quotations in the main text come from: MNL OL DF 287 078. Edition and summary of the document: Codex diplomaticus Hungariae, vol. 10/5, 125–30, Zsigmondkori oklevéltár, vol. 3. no. 1022.

3 Redeeming Devín certainly was not successful in 1411. In an undated memorandum that can be dated to between the autumn 1412 and the beginning of 1414, Sigismund, who was abroad, advises the ailing Stibor to take military action against Hering, who had been keeping the castle of Devín in his hands for years. In his detailed order, he suggests that it is needless to build siege bastions opposite the castle, as his bigger cannon, which, including the big ballista, was at Buda, along with Master Mihály (“non oportet, ut ec adverso castri Dewyn bastitas parare facias, quoniam bambarda nostra maior cum magna mangana seu machina, que unacum magistro Michaele Bude existunt, unde sufficiunt ad expugnacionem predicti castri…”). He furthermore ordered that the voivode, in accordance with János, archbishop of Esztergom, should call Péter Forgács, bishop of Győr, and the other royal nobles and the nobles of the neighboring counties to launch an insurrection and a siege of Devín. Heimpel, “Aus der Kanzlei Kaiser Sigismunds” 179–80. The campaign however, probably due to the death of Stibor at the beginning of 1414, was not completed. Devín finally was redeemed from Hering by palatine Miklós Garai in 1414. Engel, Archontológia 1301–1457, vol. 1. 300.

4 For the edition of the Sigismund diploma: Wenzel, Stibor vajda, 145, Zsigmondkori oklevéltár, vol. 3. no. 1085. Devín was redeemed by Sigismund from the Moravian margrave, Jodok in 1390, and probably was pledged to Hering then. Cf. Engel, Archontológia 1301–1457, vol. 1. 300. Sigismund redeemed the castle of Ostrý Kameň in 1390 from the Moravian margrave Prokop in 1390 and then donated it to Stibor Stiboric in 1394. It is not clear when was it pledged, but the castle was probably redeemed in 1411, along with Devín. Cf. Engel, Archontológia 1301–1457, vol. I. 308.

5 StiAscho Urkunden 1397-04-02. (I used the image available on Monasterium.net, where the document is under the register number: 1397 IV 12.)

6 WStLA – HA Urk no. 1882. (I used the image available on Monasterium.net.)

7 Sopron vármegye története, vol. 1. 590.

8 April 24, 1390: MNL OL DF 104 816, Zsigmondkori oklevéltár, vol. 1. no. 1463; Engel, Archontológia 1301–1457, vol. 1. 407.

9 The castle was named after their family castle in the Holy Roman Empire. In 1416, following the extinction of the Scharfeneck family, István Kanizsai took it as a pledge. A year later, he handed it on to the Wolfurts. See Engel, Archontológia 1301–1457, vol. 1. 348. and vol. 2. 261.

10 “Per creberimas invasiones predonum, profugorum et proscriptorum australium quasi ad totalem devenissent desolacionem…” Sopron vármegye története, vol. 1. 590.

11 Lampel, “Die Leithagrenze,” 126; Lichnowsky. Geschichte des Hauses Habsburg, vol. 5. CXXV–CXXVI. no. 1365.

12 MNL OL DF 287 048, Zsigmondkori oklevéltár, vol. 2. no. 2019.

13 Sopron szabad királyi város, vol. 1/1. 27.

14 MNL OL DF 201 991 (erroneously dated to May 27, 1408 in the MNL OL DL-DF database).

15 Sopron szabad királyi város, vol. 1/2. 8–9.

16 Codex diplomaticus Hungariae, vol. 10/1. 431–33.

17 It was probably Georg Stuchs. See Trauttmannsdorff, Beitrag, 78–86.

18 MNL OL DF 201 996.

19 A Balassa család levéltára, no. 196.

20 Ibid., no. 197.

21 The River Lafnitz formed the Styrian and Vas County section of the Hungarian–Austrian border between Neustift an der Lafnitz and Königsdorf. There are only few references to the river from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and in the perambulation of Buchschachen in 1331 the river is not referred to as a border river. MNL OL DL 99 934; Anjou-kori oklevéltár, vol. 15. no. 347. The earliest reference to the river as a border river dates to 1423, when János Gersei, ispán of Vas and Zala counties, informed the noble judges that one his noblemen was attacked at Gattendorf and was taken to the Austrian border and thrown into the Lafnitz with his head tied between his legs. Arrows were then shot at him, and he was murdered with exceptional cruelty. “Ad terminos et metas Austrie deducendo et capite eius inter pedes ipsius ligato ad aquam Lapynch proiciendo…” Zsigmondkori oklevéltár, vol. 10. no. 1174, and no. 1512.

22 A Balassa család levéltára, no. 199.

23 Ibid., no. 204, and no. 206.

24 Hazai okmánytár, vol. 8. 129. The order of Stephen V issued in 1270 to the guards of Őrimagyarósd has been discussed by Attila Zsoldos, see Zsoldos, “Confinium és marchia,” 110–12.

25 Ibid., 111.

26 Anjou-kori oklevéltár, vol. 13. no. 645.

27 Codex diplomaticus Hungariae, vol. 8/3. 179.

28 Ibid., vol. 8/4. 375–76.

29 Az Árpád-házi királyok okleveleinek kritikai jegyzéke, no. 2635.

30 Anjou-kori oklevéltár, vol. 11. no. 428.

31 Az Árpád-házi királyok okleveleinek kritikai jegyzéke, no. 2635.

32 Mályusz, Zsigmond király uralma, 135.

33 On the relationship between the fourteenth-century landowners by the border and the Austrian provincial elite and dukes, see Groß, “Zur Geschichte.” On the second half of the fifteenth century and the beginning of the sixteenth, see Péterfi, Egy székely két élete; Péterfi, “A Lajtán innen.” On the Austrian connections of the Kőszegi family in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, see Skorka, “A mohó farkas.”

34 Codex diplomaticus Hungariae, vol. 10/1. 432.

35 MNL OL DF 258 468. (Photo 43–45.)

36 Engel, Archontológia 1301–1457. vol. 1. 4, 38.

37 It was Hermann II, the future brother-in-law of Sigismund, who died in 1435.

38 MNL OL DL 39 269, Zsigmondkori oklevéltár, vol. 1. no. 1063.

39 Engel and C. Tóth, Itineraria, 62.

40 Lichnowsky, Geschichte, vol. 4. DCCLXXVII. no. 2177–2184.

41 It belonged to Carniola in the second half of the fourteenth century.

42 MNL OL DF 258 005.

43 The existence of this source is only referred to in an inauguration speech to the Hungarian Academy of Sciences held by Imre Nagy on the history of the Lajta as a border river. See Nagy, “A Lajta mint határfolyam,” 459.

44 MNL OL DL 24 809 (fragment), MNL OL DL 87 470, MNL OL DF 258 468, and MNL OL DF 286 412. The quotations in the present study are from the following document: MNL OL DF 258 468 (images 39–43). The text of the transcription of the border treaty was published in printed form in 1830: Böheim, Chronik von Wiener-Neustadt, vol. 1. 96–99.

45 The conflict unfolded concerning ownership of the Margravate of Brandenburg; for the diplomatic events, see Skorka, “A Habsburgok és a magyar Anjouk,” 652–54.

46 “Wir, noch die unsern dheinen angriff newung noch ufflouf tun noch machen sullen uber die gemerke unsrer Lande…” MNL OL DF 257 995.

47 Based on the transcriptions, the name reads as Eschliniunus, or Oschlinang.

48 It is probably the same as the castle of Devín.

49 On the importance of the mills, fishing and other riparian rights in the pre-industrial period, see: Winiwarter et al., “The Environmental History,” 108–18.

50 Codex diplomaticus Hungariae, vol. 10/1. 126.

51 On the border river diversions, see the article of Bence Péterfi in the present issue of the journal.

52 Urkundenbuch des Burgenlandes, vol. 1. 101–2.

53 On the ferry between Devín and Rottenstein, see Walterskirchen, “Zur Geschichte.”

54 The name Hans Straissing is not present on the confirmation of 1411, only that of the Austrian dukes. The agreement is interesting, as in his inauguration speech to the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Imre Nagy suggested that Rottenstein belonged to the castle of Devín from “beyond memory.” Nagy, “A Lajta mint határfolyam,” 451.

55 Codex diplomaticus Hungariae, vol. 10/1. 128–29.

56 Ibid., 129.

57 On the history of the military campaign, see most recently: Skorka, Előjáték egy házasságkötéshez.

58 Ibid.

59 Codex diplomaticus Hungariae, vol. 6/1. 180–85.

60 For the antecedents to the armistice and its details, see: Skorka, “A csökkentett vámtarifájú út.”

61 Diplomataria sacra ducatus Styriae, vol. 1. 275.

62 Codex diplomaticus Hungariae, vol. 8/4. 495–97.

63 Anjou-kori oklevéltár, vol. 26. no. 184.

64 Even in the case of the treaty of Pressburg concluded in 1491 one finds examples of deputies of the Hungarian aristocracy who were illiterate. Cf. Neumann, “Békekötés Pozsonyban,” 297.

65 Codex diplomaticus Hungariae, vol. 9/7. 484.

66 Brunner, “Der burgenländische Raum.” 247.

67 On the vineyards, see Prickler, “Zur Geschichte des burgenländisch-westungarischen Weinhandels;” Prickler, “Adalékok a szőlőművelés történetéhez;” Prickler, “Weingartenbesitz.”

68 Codex diplomaticus Hungariae, vol. 8/2. 536. On Alramus, see Kring, “A magyar államhatár kialakulásáról,” 14–15.

69 “Non permittendo laboratores laborare in vineis Australium quorum-cunque, nec percipere silvas vel coli alios agros suos, quos quidem Australes in regno nostro circa aquam Saar de nostra vel progenitorum nostrorum gratia et concessione hactenus possederunt.” Sopron szabad királyi város, vol. 1 /1. 87.

70 “Sub antiquo et consuetu censu et pensione solita reservamus, sine quovis impedimento colendas, et pro ipsorum usibus libere possidendas.” Anjou-kori oklevéltár, vol. 12. no. 422.

71 Lichnowsky, Geschichte des Hauses Habsburg, vol. 3. CCCCXLIII. no. 1207.

72 Ibid., no. 1317.

73 Codex diplomaticus Hungariae, vol. 9/1. 285–86.

2019_1_Bán

pdfVolume 8 Issue 1 CONTENTS

Inner Territory and What Lies Behind It: An Inquiry Into the Hungarian Urban Hierarchy in 1930

Gergely Károly Bán
University of Debrecen
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The study of the emergence of the Hungarian urban hierarchy raises a number of methodological questions concerning the complex settlement structure and the unique urban development of the Carpathian Basin. Research on the Hungarian urban hierarchy reveals a strong positive correlation between the position of the cities in the hierarchy and the complexity of their urban functions. The aim of my inquiry is to provide a complex picture of the Hungarian urban hierarchy of the 1930s, or, more precisely, the potential hierarchies. I approach this issue from various perspectives. As there are different definitions of cities in judicial (administrative), statistical, economic, sociological, and geographical contexts, the questions remain open: what do we consider a city, and what makes a settlement a city in the interwar period in Hungary? One of the cornerstones of my research is the issue of the outskirts. In administrative terms, we can speak about a unit, but due to the differing patterns of urban development in Hungary, the relationship between the core territory and its periphery is complex. Since the classic homestead theory has been challenged, hierarchical investigations have had to address the problems involved in dividing the data between urban cores and urban peripheries. Hierarchic rankings based on the incorporation of outskirts are quite different from rankings which omit the latter zones, which tend to be dominated by scattered farms not linked functionally to the urban core. The differences also show strong regional patterns. This study, based on statistical data, tries to highlight these differences in the urban hierarchy using this new approach. This way, it becomes possible to put the study of the Hungarian urban hierarchy in the interwar period on a new methodological footing which differs in several significant ways from the foundations of earlier research on the subject in Hungary.

Keywords: periphery issue, settlement structure, urban hierarchy, Hungarian urban network, historical geography.

 “If society is inevitably spatial and the concept of space is impossible to separate from its social content, it not only means that social processes are to be analysed as they spatially present, but also means that what we consider to be spatial features are to be analysed theoretically and within social concepts.”1

In today’s era of interdisciplinarity, when the breakup of formal boundaries between disciplines is a common phenomenon, it is not easy to find a common language, common sets of concepts, and shared methods for different disciplines to use in their common research fields.2 A good example of this is the research on urban history, especially the research on urban hierarchies. The complexity of this research topic is illustrated by the fact that it is a relevant field and perspective of inquiry in several disciplines, including geography, history, sociology, statistics, and economics. If we were to ask which discipline offers the most relevant, most fitting definition for the city as a form of settlement, then the answer is, simply, all of them.

Any discipline that has the city within its scope of interest has had to come up with a fitting definition, fitting, at least, from their respective points of view. Understandably, each discipline identifies different factors as decisive, thus leading to different notions of the city. “In the case of a complex, complicated entity such as the city in particular, we can consider these differences natural.”3 Each discipline paints a one-sided picture of the city’s essence as it looks at the city from different angles and uses different conceptual sets to approach what it considers the most relevant feature of the city. Even if these essential factors are listed in a complex definition, the weight and the importance of them would also turn out to be differentiated at different moments in time. So, as a researcher, I cannot decide which discipline is right and which is not, because as a whole, these factors are not comparable across disciplines. “Sociology is no exception: it cannot shed light on the complex reality of the city”, Tibor Mendöl wrote in 1939.4 Sociology uses only one possible approach, and it understands the concept within its own context when grasping at the definition of city, but other perspectives are present in other disciplines, and a definition is not exclusive to any point of view.5 However, I find that the geographic approach is currently dominant in the research in Hungary.6

My long-term goal is to present a complex picture of the city hierarchy in Hungary in the 1930s. More specifically, I offer a picture of potential city hierarchies. I plan to investigate a city hierarchy and to approach the issue from several perspectives. The explanation for this is that the different disciplines work with different definitions of the city, which are definitely represented in research papers on urban history in the recent years.7 Legal (administrative), statistical, economic, sociological, and geographic concepts of the city all create different understandings of it. Why should not we talk about the definition of the city in the context of these city concepts, that is, administrative, statistical, sociological, etc. urban hierarchies. This will give way for a number of new aspects for the analysis of the settlement structure and hierarchy.

The background to the methodology I use for my urban hierarchy study, which is based on the geographic city concept, has already been published in the Rural History Yearbook8. The present work is a preliminary study, and I examine only one important methodological question: the question of the periphery, which is methodologically prominent both in geographic, sociological, and statistical urban hierarchy studies. The subject has been discussed a great deal both in works on urban geography and settlement stock,9 but it is rarely the true focus, except in studies which were written in the interwar period. A researcher who examines the Horthy-era town-farm theme can easily feel as if time has come to a standstill and the “research” has taken no steps forward. One major reason for this is that nowadays there is very little interest in similar issues and studies among professionals and readers alike. There is no question, however, that very little is known about the subject in a contemporary setting. It is essential that we re-approach the question, as further study could result in a better understanding of the hierarchical network of cities between the two world wars.10

Based on the factors outlined above, I find it justified to incorporate new approaches and methods into the research of the town-city relationship system and the city hierarchy between the two world wars. This allows us to get closer to the actual state of things.

The questions remain open: where does the periphery belong? How did the periphery affect the hierarchical ranking of the settlements between the two world wars? My aim in this preliminary study is to answer these questions empirically.

Periphery or Boondocks

The centuries-old history of the evolution of the “scattered farm” of the plains, by the nature of its complexity, has yet to be clearly unraveled. In the interwar period, ethnographer István Györffy hypothesized that the appearance of these “scattered farms” could be connected with the nomadic lifestyle of Hungarian settlers during the so-called Conquest.11 On the basis of this hypothetical connection, he derived the distinctive type of Hungarian city known as the “Alföld country town.” His position was that these cities used to be “two internal plot” (“két beltelkes”) so-called hutch-garden (“ólas-kertes”) settlements, which he thought to be the predecessors of the later scattered farm cities. His perspective was widely accepted by historians, geographers, ethnographers, and sociologists, so this concept became widespread. The idea that Kecskemét might also have been “two internal plot” settlements once came up,12 although no evidence has emerged to this day in support of this theory. Furthermore, the earliest maps which allow for morphological comparison suggest that it is unpersuasive. Also, at the end of the eighteenth century, quite a few plains settlements had this two inlot system. One could hardly base the notion that this was a prevailing system solely on the other two of the three cities in question, Cegléd and Nagykőrös, which exhibit this form. In recent years, the formation of the farms has been seen in new light thanks to István Orosz’s research on the Modern period land use of these farms on the plains.13 It shows that at the start of the eighteenth century, at least 107 settlements were listed on the Great Hungarian Plains where “parlagoló”14 agriculture was present, and plough fields and grasslands alternate systematically. Typically, a third of the land was used in a “parlagoló” system because communities on plains which were used to support livestock found it easier to renew grasslands using this method. One precondition of this was to have extended borders (because without extended borders, the “migration” of plough fields and hayfields was impossible to execute) and also to keep the population low in relation to these borders. The latter was important, since a growing population caused the grasslands to shrink with the extension of plough fields. Therefore, with a growing population, “parlagoló” systems only remained feasible as long as the land could be extended beyond the borders by the inclusion of new fields (plains). As the population of the Great Plain grew steadily in the eighteenth century, there were two main options for the “parlagoló” settlements; either to rent or buy new plains like Kecskemét or, if this was not possible, to give up “parlagolás” (often due to outside pressure). Whichever option was chosen, due to the growing demand for grains, further fields had to be cultivated, facilitating and speeding up the spread of farms on the borders. Farms existed even before the eighteenth century, mostly as a consequence of the “parlagoló” system. The use of a “parlagoló” system meant that a farmer’s land remained a single unit (as opposed to pressure cultivation), and this was both an indispensable prerequisite of modern agriculture and also allowed for the development of scattered farm agriculture. It is hardly a coincidence, then, that the boundaries of nineteenth-century scattered farm agriculture coincided with the spread of the earlier “parlagoló” system on the plains.15

The economic function of agrarian gardens changed seasonally. From spring to late autumn, they were was used for plant production, but in winter they were used to keep animals, and the food accumulated during the year provided food for the animals in the cold months. The agrarian garden under cultivation is known as a hibernacle. Early in the spring, the animals were kept on the fresh lawn between the gardens until April, when farmers were obliged to take their livestock out to the common pastures (and they faced punishment if they failed to do so). It is therefore evident that these agrarian gardens were one part of the estate. They lay on the city’s borders, and they were privately owned. These properties were often called moneyed gardens in the common parlance, as they were freely given and sold. Most of them lay on the southern boundary, beyond the inner Pasture belt, on the urban land, but there were also agrarian gardens in the west, on the border of the village of Nyíri and in Talfáj, which is the northern area of the city of Kecskemét today. All of them used to be moneyed agrarian garden, or at least the sources indicate that buildings (agricultural) had been erected on them by the seventeenth century. The construction of these kinds of building on land used for this purpose, however, only became common practice at the beginning of the eighteenth century.16 Quite a few of these properties also had dug wells, which increased the value of the estates. The water from these wells was consumed by the workers on the scattered farm, but from November to April, the wells were used to provide water for the animals, though it may also have been used for irrigation in smaller quantities. By the eighteenth century, large livestock farms gave the city its main economic profile. The domestic animals (milking cows, work stock) were usually kept close to the city and placed on the inner pastures. The animals intended for sale for their meat were placed on distant and rented plains, and they were brought closer to the town just before sale. Large herds were needed to keep huge supplies of livestock. When a city rented out fields, the better-quality parts with softer soil were separated and were distributed between the cattle and horse owners. The so called “livestock owner” (marhásabb) farmers were given whole hibernacles, and the less wealthy were given smaller parts. These agrarian gardens on the plains were called “scattered farms donated by the town”.17 The enclosed parts were then cultivated, ploughed, sown, or mowed. Like the “moneyed agrarian gardens” (pénzes mezei kert) in the city borders, they were hibernacles and were considered prohibited lands. Since agrarian gardens built on rented plains were not the property of Kecskemét, in general no buildings were constructed on them, given the renting conditions.

Due to the different ownership situation, the two types of agrarian garden differed not only in appearance but also in function. Though both the “moneyed agrarian gardens” (pénzes mezei kert) and the “city’s donation gardens” could be embodied. (The latter only until the lease over the plains lasted.) The sources indicate that the agrarian gardens that were formed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and had different agricultural buildings erected and wells dug on them began to be called scattered farms to differentiate them from the town’s gift agrarian gardens, which had much simpler functions. In fact, in these “moneyed agrarian gardens” (pénzes mezei kert) it is possible to recognize the later (nineteenth and twentieth century) scattered farms, which were based on plant production. The spectacular rise in the number of gardens accelerated the transformation of gardens by the fact that, due to bad weather conditions in the area, it was necessary to produce the necessary wheat locally. Within the given geographic and economic context, the only viable route for this was to break up lands that were previously had not been tilled or cultivated. However, given the lower quality of the less-bound sandy soils of these lands, their capacity for production was exhausted after a few years of field cultivation, and most of them were not suitable for grazing for a long time. With the transformation of the methods of land use, the surrounding sand became mobile and began to move, a process which was significantly accelerated by climate change. The eighteenth century bore witness to warmer and drier weather in the area, as a result of which Lake Fertő was already low in the 1720s and even dried up twice, first in 1740 and then in 1773.18 The limited extent of arable land, the narrowing of the pastures, the inability to rent new plains which could be used for planning and grazing, and the warming of the climate after 1745 all contributed to a shift in the second half of the eighteenth century, as scattered farms became increasingly numerous on the borders. This process was captured as a snapshot of maps by the first military survey. With the transformation of “moneyed agrarian gardens” (pénzes mezei kertek), a new kind of farm management emerged based not on animal husbandry but plant production. This process was promoted by planting forests and orchards, viticulture, and last but not least, peaking grain prices from the middle of the nineteenth century. Additional momentum was brought by the appearance of the railroad.19

If we move to a specific conceptual background, it can be seen that all disciplines have put the scattered farm in different contexts, and everyone has approached the concept from a different perspective, just like the concept of the city, as mentioned in the introduction. Offering a definition, however, is always a perilous gesture, as any definition assigns significane to some aspects while apparently excluding others. Scattered farms have been examined from the perspectives of public administration (law), geography, sociology, economics, and ethnography.20 In this case, I present two types of definitions: geographic and sociological.

Geography has basically a landscape-oriented approach. Settlements are examined from the perspective of the relationship between man and landscape. In addition, the landscape itself offers opportunities for people in the given space, and geographers also consider how these opportunities are utilized by the people living there. The first researcher who looked at Nyíregyháza’s “bush formation farms” (bokortanyák) from the perspective of geography and gave a definition of them was Gyula Simkó. He was followed by a number of geographers, including Tibor Mendöl. Of the geographic approaches I am going to mention, the definition of certain communities as “scattered settlement” (szórványtelepülés) is one. In most cases, these farms were permanently inhabited by colonies, though administratively these colonies belonged to a particular settlement but formed a separate landscape.21 This interpretation of the scattered farm as a settlement within a settlement constituted a new approach.

The sociological approach, represented by Ferenc Erdei, contrasts with the notion of some cohesion between the scattered farm and the settlement (town/village) and suggests instead a geographic concept: the accessory settlement. This settlement is commonly referred to as an agricultural area within the living space of a given settlement. According to Erdei, the scattered farm was only of economic importance, and the place of residence was only secondary, because the actual homes of these lands as temporary domiciles were within the inner city. In addition, the established road network itself constituted another important argument for the relevance of the sociological approach. There was little to no connection between the farms, as in most cases the roads only led to the given settlement/town.22

To sum up, the two disciplines approached the economic and social factors of the farm and the city itself from different perspectives. The main starting point for the scattered farm is the extent to which it could be said to constitute a long-term form of settlement: periodically or permanently. Given these differences in perspective, it was only a matter of time before the representatives of the two disciplines arrived at varying interpretations of the scattered farm.

Given the uniqueness of the scattered farms (as settlement types), there is little mention of it in the international secondary literature, but the question of the Hungarian scattered farm and the outside area has attracted the attention of some foreign researchers, most notably, that of Berlin historian Konrad Schünemann (1901–1940). Professor A. N. J. Den Hollander has also written an accomplished book and some articles about the Hungarian Great Plain.23 This book is a rarity in this series of historical, sociological, and ethnographic works. In Hungary there is very rich secondary literature on the scattered farm.24 A smaller library could be filled with the scholarly works in Hungarian on this subject. A 1786 book by Samuel Tessedik comes to mind,25 and the works by the aforementioned Ferenc Erdei and Tibor Mendöl are also worth mentioning. Erdei and Mendöl both dealt with domestic farm research, and in some cases they differed significantly in their views. 26 In this paper, I focus more on empirical research.

The Methodology of the Research

My inquiry focuses on one specific moment in the history of Hungary: 1930, when a census was taken. By then, the situation of the country had stabilized after a period of relative economic prosperity (1925–29). These four years had been characterized by rapid growth.27 The world economic crisis (1929–1930) only caused stagnation at first, but a significant decline began in 1931.

One of the cornerstones of my preliminary study is that I separate the data concerning the inlot downtown and the data concerning the total area (the administrative town), so I set up two separate hierarchical ranges. Thus, the two territorial units are empirically comparable. This perspective is provided by the diverse development of the settlements in the country. I am referring to the differences between the settlements in the Great Plain and the settlements in Transdanubia and western parts of the country, but in a larger context I would also mention the differences between Eastern European and Western European urban development.28 Another important methodological background for this model is that the analysis of the population size and employment structure of settlements which contain outskirts between the two world wars does not necessarily reflect the real characteristics of the city network. Rather, it reflects the ideas of less well-informed researchers who leave out of consideration the critical analysis of historical statistical data.29

The point of view of the research topic is not completely unprecedented. However, the previous works,30 in contrast with my study, only accomplished the separation of the external and internal territory in a representative settlement layer, namely cities with legal implications.

In the course of my research, I used the “inventory” method31 to set up two hierarchies. I collected the data from the various censuses at the settlement level. Consequently, two complex databases containing quantified data have been constructed. It was important to create artificial variables which are available in central statistical records both for the inlot and for the whole area of the settlements

However, I must emphasize that for the year in question (1930), we do not have the same quantity and quality of settlement-level data sets as provided by the census in the beginning of the century. Therefore, given the current state of research, more complex internal indicators cannot be included.

The works of József Nemes Nagy32 and Pál Beluszky33 provided additional data which helped add to the mathematical and statistical basis of my inquiry. Furthermore, concerning the statistical sources, I should mention the central documents that were prepared for public access and are the basis of any research concerning twentieth-century Hungarian town networks or city hierarchies. These documents include the publications of the Hungarian Royal Hungarian Central Statistical Office, the gazetteer for the given years, and the various national economic and demographic data series, which are in many cases available in digital form34 today.

First, I grouped data from Hungary’s gazetteer of 1930, which recorded data for settlements with more than 1,000 residents. According to Beluszky’s research,35 we can talk about urban settlements in functional terms (“functional towns”) above 10,000 inhabitants in the Great Hungarian Plain and over 4,000 inhabitants over the Transdanubia in the 1910s. First, I focused on settlements with populations over 2,000, but later I thought it would be worth expanding the survey with data concerning settlements with smaller populations, considering that the modeling of small towns and near-urban processes can be particularly important in the study of peripheries. Accordingly, I lowered the population threshold so that my research would include more settlements and thus become broadly representative. With this shift, 1,634 settlements were recorded in the database, which was found to be a sufficient number compared to the total of 3,422 settlements36 (48 percent). Thus, the first step consisted of recording the names of the settlements and their populations.

For the next step, I used the 86th edition of the New Series of Hungarian Statistical Publications, which provided a large amount of data for my research. I recorded the number of inhabitants and the employment structure of the inlot of each settlement using the data from this volume. I also used this volume to record the abovementioned indicators at the administrative level. As I had used the data concerning the main employment groups, it was possible to determine the proportion of non-agricultural earners mathematically. This was important, because along with tertiarization, the proportion of the secondary sector37 was also an important factor in the evolution of a more urban existence. In addition, the use of the significance of surplus services formula has made it possible to establish the “rural part” of services. This method is one of the decisive methodological elements of Beluszky’s “inventory process,” which is based on the fact that the city is a rural provider. Consequently, the central role is based on the “surplus” service provided to the countryside. The aforementioned Walter Christaller also used this method in his research in southern Germany. The popularity of the theory notwithstanding, it is worth mentioning that the method itself may lead to distortions in certain cases, so we have to use it with caution. On the basis of the formula38 of the theory, we can conclude that the population belonging to the settlement is part of the agglomeration, like the area outside the administrative boundaries. Consequently, we must use this method together with methods which consider the population of the settlement or area. If this value is negative for a given settlement (see table), this means that the settlement cannot provide for its own population in the services sector. However, if it is positive, it will supply potential users beyond its own population. There was a plan to use a financial indicator, but the construction of the variable failed due to methodological problems. Between the two world wars, during the “fiókosítási program,”39 deposit data concerning “smaller sub-offices” (alfiókok) in certain settlements appeared in the central account censuses. This makes it practically impossible to record the settlements’ deposits.

In summary, the two databases contained six variables, three in the inlot and three in the total area database. The average of the variables gave the complex value which determined the hierarchy. Accordingly, the following variables are included in the two databases:

• Inlot population

• Total area population

• Inlot proportion of non-agricultural earners

• Total area proportion of non-agricultural earners

• Inlot significance of surplus services

• Total area significance of surplus services

Since there are different types of variables (population, ratio, etc.), I have unified the variables using a mathematical method. The method used was the formula for normalization,40 which prevented the creation of negative numbers and allowed the variables to be unified.

For this time-horizon, according to the present state of the research, we do not have the quantity and quality of inlot data sets to increase the complexity of this study. I could mention the financial indicator as an example. It is also important to note that the so-called total area database is made only for a representative purpose in order to examine the hierarchy of the two areas based on the same methodology and variables. However, this database is not properly complex, as the number of the indicators shows. Nevertheless, in this case, this function is not primary.

Finally, after the creation of the two databases and the two hierarchies, the positions were compared. Thus, I have constructed a brand new hierarchy for the inlot area at settlement-level, for which there was no example in Hungary in former researches. The two hierarchies make it possible to compare the differences and similarities between the inlot and the administrative positions in the period between the two world wars.

I would like to emphasize that I have created only one possible context in which to study the inlot area’s hierarchy with this methodological model. Understandably, there are as many methodological approaches as there are results.41

Placing Results in Context

More and more research has been done on this subject, and it has been necessary to isolate the external areas in the urban hierarchy. I am thinking of the work of Lajos Timár42 and Zsolt Szilágyi.43 However, the research that was done was only partial, as it only concerned settlements which were cities in legal terms.

In this inquiry, I open a new perspective on the issue, because I have completed the separation of inlot and outskirts on nearly 1,600 municipalities at the settlement level.

According to my a priori assumption, the separation of the external area adversely affects the position of these country towns of the Great Hungarian Plain. The results will be explained on two levels: on the one hand per se, and the on the other, the overall ranking of the inlot results. During the investigation, I omitted Budapest, since studies of Budapest in the year in question (1930) have already been done.

As can clearly be seen from the ranking table (Table 2), the internal hierarchy study confirmed the leading position of Debrecen after Budapest between the two world wars. I had arrived at this conclusion in the course of my previous examination as well. One of the concerns about this result was the role/prestige of the inhabitants of the city and the function of the city. The importance of the city grew in 1920, when the city of Oradea was made part of Romania in accordance with the Treaty of Trianon. The regional centers of Miskolc, Győr, Szeged, and Pécs were also included in my comparison.

Territorially, as can be seen on the map (Map 1), the leading settlements cover up the regions of Hungary, so we can say that the contrived hierarchy study in the field is more evenly distributed. The relativity is manifested as long as there is a regional center (Győr) and two county centers (Szombathely and Sopron) in the northwestern part of the country, with a distance of nearly 100 km separating them. But the area between the Danube River and the Tisza has no regional centers. This may be due to the development of a dynamic agglomeration zone to the west and northwest in response to economic and political developments. This area lies towards Vienna, and it reaches the border of the state. In addition, the city of Sopron got into the top ten settlements in this region (in my urban hierarchy).44 Furthermore, the advance of Budapest’s agglomeration is observable. In this case, the first twenty settlements included Újpest, Rákospalota, and Budafok. The positions of these cities are also well reflected in the aura of the capital and its outstanding role within the domestic settlement network (Map 1).

I have highlighted ten former country towns from the inlot ranking.45 Taking into account the positions of these cities, we can conclude that four of them rank among the first 15. In the case of these five settlements (Debrecen, Szeged, Kecskemét, Szolnok, Nyíregyháza), it is not clear that the unplugging of the external area would have affected them drastically. Using the same methodology, I also made an administrative (“total area”) ranking. This makes it possible to reconstruct the differences between the inlot and the total area hierarchies. It is important to mention that a significant position change was observable in the field of the vanguard (top10). Only in the case of two settlements, Debrecen and Szeged, remained the rankings the same (Table 1). Regarding the differences in the two urban hierarchies, the position of the inlot in the ten investigated cities was proven to be stronger, with the exception of Debrecen and Szeged. The conclusion is that in these predominantly agricultural-minded cities, the importance of the external area is insignificant in this time horizon. Moreover, the periphery is significantly weakened by the hierarchy position of former country towns. However, it is also noticeable that the scale of these derogations is highly variable. There are certain country towns with appreciable or moderate position changes (compare it to Kecskemét with 15, Gyula with 51 and Orosháza with 81 position changes etc.). Further anomalies can be observed in the table of rankings (Table 1). In particular, if one compares the first twenty settlements in the two lists of rankings, one observes that the significant increase, can only be detected in the agglomeration of the capital. Comparing the two rankings, I have found that the settlements in the vicinity of Budapest can be described by the increase in their overall area rankings. Yet at the beginning of the twentieth century, Hungarian industry, which was focused in Budapest, was characterized by a high degree of territorial concentration. At that time, Budapest had emerged as the country’s largest economic center, and the growth of the agglomeration was fast paced (Map 1).46

Finally, to offer answers to the questions raised in the introduction, it can be stated that the (hierarchic) ranking of an urban settlement is greatly influenced by the data of the peripheral areas (outskirts, farms), and not only in the settlements of the Great Plain. In this study, we can conclude that the periphery is not an integral (functional) part of the settlement. It was found that in all cases when this is possible, data on inlots should be calculated and used in hierarchic investigations in order to avoid distortions caused by different patterns of urban development.

Outlook

Overall, we can conclude that the city hierarchy of Hungary between the two world wars is an extremely complex field of research which creates an interdisciplinary space between historical science and geography. This complexity determines the methodology, though the result of this kind of research is also significantly influenced by the use or exclusion of certain methods. Furthermore, the domestic aspect of the subject itself is diverse and reflects on a number of areas that point in new directions which have not yet been pursued in the secondary literature. I am thinking, for instance, of research into quality of life, for which the necessary data are available, or studies on development, for which the HDI47 has to be adjusted. However, in my opinion, it would be more important to involve this indicator at the lower hierarchy levels, as the introduction of this new variable would not be sufficiently desirable for the higher-ranking settlements. The abovementioned methodological problem is difficult to comprehend in a domestic context between the two world wars, but research done according to this method would help further our understanding of a number of economic and social processes in villages.

With regard to the whole database, there are three important aspects missing from the related research. One would be a financial / economic dimension, which would place local interest rates in the center of the study at settlement level. This way, there should be two relevant financial indicators ready for the database. Also, while doing my research, I had the idea of adding data concerning literacy rates to the database, as this kind of data is often used in modernization studies (HDI, for example). However, in this case, it would make more sense to use this indicator at the lower hierarchy levels in my opinion, as the introduction of this new variable would not result in sufficient dispersion-deviation within settlements of higher rank. There is no doubt, however, that it provides a partial solution to the aforementioned methodological problem, and it would facilitate drawing distinctions at lower hierarchy levels.

I believe this study on modernization would be relevant to our understanding of small town and near-small settlements. Additionally, the so-called dispersion (Std. Deviation) value could turn out to be an important tool in determining the “scoring” variables of institutions, lawyers, and doctors.48 This would allow us to assign institutions hierarchy levels.

 

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Annex

Table 1

Hierarchical rank differences between the two territorial units surveyed in 1930

Ranking (inlot)

Name

1930

Name

Ranking (based on total area)

1

Debrecen

 

Debrecen

1

2

Szeged

Szeged

2

3

Miskolc

Újpest

3

4

Pécs

Pesterzsébet

4

5

Győr

Kispest

5

6

Nyíregyháza

Miskolc

6

7

Szombathely

Győr

7

8

Kecskemét

Pécs

8

9

Sopron

Rákospalota

9

10

Újpest

Szombathely

10

11

Szolnok

Pestszentlőrinc

11

12

Székesfehérvár

Csepel

12

13

Kaposvár

Budafok

13

14

Nagykanizsa

Sopron

14

15

Rákospalota

Székesfehérvár

15

16

Sátoraljaújhely

Szolnok

16

17

Békéscsaba

Kaposvár

17

18

Veszprém

Pestújhely

18

19

Baja

Sashalom

19

20

Budafok

Nyíregyháza

20

 

Table 2

The inlot urban hierarchy of Hungary in 1930

Rank

Name of settlement

v1

v2

v3

IUHI

Internal population (1930)

The proportion of non-agricultural earners in the area (1930) %

Significance of surplus services (person)

Inlot urban hierarchy complex indicator (based on normalized values)

I. REGIONAL CENTRES

1

Debrecen

66,834

78.85

52127.49

0.587

2

Szeged

89,621

77.13

40851.87

0.526

3

Miskolc

60,032

80.93

35836.29

0.490

4

Pécs

50,019

74.24

28861.28

0.439

5

Győr

49,886

86.83

25664.00

0.432

II. COUNTY CENTRES

6

Nyíregyháza

31,237

81.51

23837.13

0.410

7

Szombathely

34,945

83.27

23141.97

0.409

8

Kecskemét

34,788

69.43

18681.42

0.368

9

Sopron

32,441

72.39

17908.18

0.366

10

Újpest

66,541

91.96

11769.44

0.360

11

Szolnok

34,050

78.54

15583.35

0.359

12

Székesfehérvár

33,291

73.09

16419.22

0.358

13

Kaposvár

29,845

76.43

14669.71

0.350

III. MIDDLE CITIES

14

Nagykanizsa

30,389

69.66

12352.06

0.329

15

Rákospalota

42,278

83.56

8734.62

0.325

16

Sátoraljaújhely

17,585

78.89

9652.38

0.318

17

Békéscsaba

37,647

65.53

9696.77

0.312

18

Veszprém

17,792

78.34

8587.06

0.311

19

Baja

25,370

74.99

8569.74

0.310

20

Budafok

19,543

90.58

5341.70

0.305

21

Komárom

6,911

87.72

5968.79

0.301

22

Zalaegerszeg

12,157

76.66

6878.64

0.298

23

Vác

19,361

78.71

6007.52

0.297

24

Pápa

19,774

77.58

5667.48

0.294

25

Balassagyarmat

11,120

74.47

6440.84

0.292

26

Eger

30,196

57.55

7959.48

0.291

27

Gyula

17,030

68.06

6129.54

0.286

28

Szob

3,394

82.24

4449.25

0.286

29

Kisvárda

13,304

73.69

4457.07

0.281

30

Kiskunfélegyháza

20,271

64.20

5366.48

0.279

31

Orosháza

14,291

62.01

4987.72

0.278

32

Cegléd

25,521

55.45

5396.34

0.278

IV. SMALL TOWNS

33

Szentendre

5,418

74.17

3342.72

0.272

34

Keszthely

9,841

70.31

3635.68

0.271

35

Esztergom

15,549

59.12

5141.56

0.271

36

Celldömölk

5,961

74.50

2994.22

0.270

37

Gyöngyös

18,232

54.14

5587.58

0.269

38

Kőszeg

8,075

73.60

2850.33

0.269

39

Salgótarján

15,254

72.39

2621.44

0.269

40

Hatvan

14,333

64.64

3959.48

0.269

41

Kalocsa

11,323

64.71

4050.69

0.268

42

Mátészalka

9,125

70.80

3064.34

0.268

43

Szentes

21,540

60.08

4161.60

0.268

44

Szentgotthárd

3,152

83.23

1123.93

0.267

45

Magyaróvár

7,351

77.45

1819.62

0.267

46

Újdombóvár

2,125

82.50

1163.19

0.266

47

Tóváros

5,012

76.45

1930.32

0.265

48

Nagytétény

4,006

83.44

716.38

0.265

49

Hajmáskér

2,040

74.77

2265.81

0.265

50

Hódmezővásárhely

36,783

53.57

3621.20

0.263

 

 

 

Hungarian urban hierarchy in 1930

(Internal variables to a total area)

Rank

 

Name of settlement

v1

v2

v3

UHI

Population (1930)

The proportion of non-agricultural earners in the area (1930) %

Significance of surplus services (person)

Urban hierarchy complex indicator (based on normalized values)

1

Debrecen

117,275

67.84

43891.61

1.640

2

Szeged

135,071

54.15

22044.90

1.591

3

Újpest

67,400

91.84

11495.09

1.497

4

Pesterzsébet

67,907

91.02

12595.49

1.493

5

Kispest

64,512

88.64

17849.12

1.448

6

Miskolc

61,559

80.39

35525.01

1.356

7

Győr

50,881

86.54

25355.36

1.332

8

Pécs

61,663

74.77

28089.62

1.284

9

Rákospalota

42,949

83.39

8560.27

1.217

10

Szombathely

35,758

83.07

23040.50

1.178

11

Pestszentlőrinc

30,611

87.61

8861.56

1.173

12

Csepel

22,901

93.98

-3526.41

1.171

13

Budafok

19,691

90.54

5300.55

1.120

14

Sopron

35,895

73.45

18334.76

1.066

15

Székesfehérvár

40,714

70.33

15931.96

1.064

16

Szolnok

38,764

71.54

14156.68

1.060

17

Kaposvár

32,715

74.36

14169.78

1.047

18

Pestújhely

11,340

89.26

3819.58

1.042

19

Sashalom

11,792

88.09

2573.99

1.031

20

Nyíregyháza

51,308

58.03

17377.52

1.006

21

Albertfalva

3,331

91.12

1327.42

1.000

22

Rákosszentmihály

14,083

83.18

4375.46

0.995

23

Kecskemét

79,467

38.54

2680.42

0.979

24

Nagykanizsa

30,869

69.09

12192.30

0.972

25

Vác

20,960

75.68

5572.05

0.964

26

Veszprém

17,792

77.43

8389.54

0.963

27

Sátoraljaújhely

18,431

76.58

9437.81

0.960

28

Pápa

21,356

75.07

5092.84

0.959

29

Békásmegyer

8,447

83.72

464.11

0.954

30

Baja

27,935

69.89

7677.48

0.953

31

Komárom

7,562

83.54

5818.30

0.952

32

Nagytétény

7,160

82.07

62.33

0.926

33

Soroksár

14,387

77.32

-848.84

0.925

34

Békéscsaba

49,374

53.05

4798.41

0.920

35

Felsőgöd

3,024

83.87

1080.51

0.916

36

Diósgyőr

20,854

71.95

-1822.17

0.912

37

Rákoshegy

4,198

82.30

1552.36

0.908

38

Salgótarján

16,980

73.45

2353.60

0.905

39

Szob

3,486

81.75

4428.18

0.900

40

Szentgotthárd

3,258

82.13

1098.86

0.899

41

Magyaróvár

8,584

76.70

1514.63

0.878

42

Zalaegerszeg

13,072

72.48

6541.74

0.870

43

Pesthidegkút

6,030

77.70

1237.74

0.870

44

Piszke

1,436

80.82

-101.36

0.869

45

Kámon

2,143

80.00

891.59

0.866

45

Budakeszi

6,099

77.33

480.21

0.865

47

Ózd

7,322

76.24

9.18

0.861

48

Balassagyarmat

11,551

72.56

6291.08

0.860

49

Kisvárda

14,133

70.33

4217.64

0.851

50

Rákoscsaba

8,189

73.77

1629.64

0.842

1 Massey, Spatial Division of Labour.

2 Beluszky and Győri, “A város a láz a nyugtalanság.”

3 Tóth, “Tér- és időbeli sajátosságok a magyar városodásban,” 55.

4 Mendöl, “Az alföldi városokról,” 218.

5 Ibid., 218–19.

6 Bácskai and Nagy, Piackörzetek, piacközpontok; Timár, Vidéki városlakók; Beluszky and Győri, Magyar városhálózat.

7 Bácskai, “Vas megye várostörténeti munkáinak,” 137–52.

Gyáni, A város mint zárt és nyitott tér, 205–20.

8 Bán, Város, hierarchia, pozíció.

9 Timár, “Az alföldi és dunántúli városok,” 42–55; Beluszky and Győri, Magyar városhálózat; Beluszky, “Az ‘Alföld szindróma’;” Erdei, Magyar Tanya; Mendöl, “Az alföldi városokról,” 217–32.

10 Szilágyi, “Város és tanya kapcsolata.”

11 Györffy, Magyar tanya, 72–76.

12 Szilágyi, Kecskemét várostörténeti atlasz, 10–11.

13 Orosz “Parlagoló földművelés az Alföldön,” 2014. – We are saying thank you to Professor István Orosz for his manuscript.

14 Hungarian soil shifter agricultural system in which one part remains unsown.

15 Orosz, Parlagoló földművelés, 14–15.

16 Czettler, A tanyakérdés, 443–446.

17 Szilágyi, Kecskemét várostörténeti atlasz.

18 Rácz, “Magyarország környezettörténete,” 200.

19 Szabó, “A kecskeméti szőlő- és gyümölcstermesztés,” 6.

20 Erdei, Magyar tanya.

21 Erdei, Magyar tanya, 22–24.

22 Erdei, Magyar tanya.

23 Den Hollander, Az Alföld települései és lakói; Den Hollander, The Great Hungarian Plain: a European Frontier Area (I-II).

24 Szabó, A debreceni falurendszer; Erdei, Magyar Tanya; Györffy, Magyar falu, magyar ház; Szabó, A kecskeméti szőlő- és gyümölcstermesztés.

25 Thessedik, A paraszt ember Magyar Országban.

26 See the discussion: Mendöl, “Néhány szó az alföldi városokról,” 217–32; Mendöl, Egy könyv a magyar faluról, 204–8; Mendöl, Megjegyzések Erdei Ferenc, 113–15; Erdei, Magyar tanya; Erdei, Tanyás települések földrajzi szemlélete, 103–13; Publications about the discussion: Timár, “Sociology and Geography,” 86–92; Timár, “Vidéki városlakók,” 49–51; Timár et al., “Vita a magyar városokról,” 617–28; Szilágyi, “Város és tanya kapcsolata.”

27 Tomka, Gazdasági növekedés, fogyasztás.

28 Timár, Az alföldi és dunántúli városok, 42–55; Erdei, Magyar tanya; Gyáni, A város mint nyitott és zárt tér, 205–20.

29 Timár, “Az alföldi és dunántúli városok,” 42–55.

30 Erdei, Magyar Tanya; Mendöl, Az alföldi városokról, 217–32; Mendöl, Megjegyzések Erdei Ferenc, 113–15; Timár, Szociológia és geográfia.

31 conf. Beluszky and Győri, Magyar városhálózat, conf. Gál Zoltán, “A magyarországi városhálózat vizsgálata,” 50–65; conf. Major Jenő, “A magyar településhálózatról,” 32–65.

32 Nemes Nagy, Terek, helyek, régiók, 51–57.

33 Beluszky and Győri, Magyar városhálózat, 93–102.

34 https://library.hungaricana.hu/hu/collection/kozponti_statisztikai_hivatal_nepszamlalasi_digitalis_adattar/ Accessed on August 8, 2018.

35 Beluszky and Győri, Magyar városhálózat.

36 On the capital city, see Hajdú 2005, 150. Cf. Latest 1992, 187.

37 The particular branches included in the Statistical Bulletin have been classified into the basic economic sectors accepted by the reviewed geography following the methodology below. The primary sector contains the primary producers, who were mining and metallurgical workers, while the secondary sector was composed of the industry workers and day-labourers. The tertiary sector was the most extensive, including the workers involved in commerce and credit; transport; civil service and liberal professions; armed forces; house seekers, and, finally, the fourth, the so-called other group, the retired; other and unknown employees. Szilágyi 2012, 111.

38 Significance of surplus services formula (K): K=Fv–Lv∙Fm/Lm; Fv: the commercial turnover of the studied settlement; Fm: commercial turnover of the studied area; Lv: number of population in the studied settlement; Lm: number of population in the studied area.

39 Several smaller sub-offices which belonged to the central sub-office in the interwar period.

40 Normalization formula: ni=(xi – xmin ) – (xmax – xi) ; ni: normalized variable; xi: variable of the dataset; xmax: maximum of datas; xmin: minimum of datas.

41 Bán, “Magyarország városhierarchia-vizsgálatának módszertani kérdései,” 9.

42 Timár, Az alföldi és dunántúli városok, 45.

43 Szilágyi, Város tanya kapcsolata, 10.

44 Győri, “Bécs kapujában,” 231–51; Tóth, Tér- és időbeli sajátosságok.

45 Debrecen, Szeged, Kecskemét, Szolnok, Békéscsaba, Gyula, Hódmezővásárhely, Kiskunfélegyháza, Nyíregyháza, Cegléd.

46 Győri and Mikle, A fejlettség területi különbségeinek változása, 151.

47 Human Development Index, created by the UN.

48 Beluszky, “Adalékok a magyar településhierarchia változásaihoz,” 331.

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2018_3_Bothe

pdfVolume 7 Issue 3 CONTENTS

How to “Ravage” a Country: Destruction, Conservation, and Assessment of Natural Environments in Early Modern Military Thought

Jan Philipp Bothe

University of Göttingen

This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

This article examines the practice of “ravaging” the countryside as a part of Early Modern military thought. It analyses the arguments for destroying or conserving cultivated natural environments and how they were integrated into the emerging theoretical framework on war in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. I argue that depriving the enemy of local natural resources by consuming or destroying them was an extreme form of exercising control over an area which was used to exert control over both the supplies for an enemy army and the use of land by the local population. To legitimize this practice, specific arguments were used: destruction was meant to “shorten” a war, and gradually use of this tactic was confined to the home country and defense against enemy invasions. In addition, it was important which resources were targeted: while the destruction of forage and harvests was seen as a form of short-term damage, cutting down trees counted as a form of lasting damage that was undesirable. Some authors of works on military strategy started to argue that devastating the land in the enemy’s country was unpractical, and that (forced) contributions from locals were far more useful. Thus, while authors of works on military strategy did make arguments against “scorched earth” warfare and the “ravaging” of the countryside, they did so purely out of practical considerations which rested on notions of utility, rather than out of any humanitarian considerations.

Keywords: early modern period, environment, warfare, military thought, wartime destruction

During the winter months of 1688 and 1689, much of the land in the territory of the Electoral Palatinate was in flames. After the devastation of the Thirty Years’ War and the Dutch War earlier in the century, the border region along the Rhine again had become a major gateway for French troops traveling towards the German Empire at the outbreak of the Nine Years’ War. The roots of this conflict lay not only in the events leading to the Glorious Revolution in 1688, but also in King Louis XIV’s fear that a strong Habsburg Empire might be able to contest the territorial gains that he had achieved during the Reunions.1

As the bulk of the German armies was still fighting the Ottoman Empire in the Great Turkish War, Louis XIV’s forces met with little resistance when occupying a large part of the Palatinate. Important cities and fortresses of the area, like Heidelberg (the seat of the Elector of the Palatinate), Mannheim, Worms, Kaiserslautern, and Speyer, surrendered within weeks.2 But the French did not enjoy a quick and decisive victory. German princes continued to put up resistance. They soon opposed the French troops, together with the forces of the Habsburg Emperor Leopold I. After the Glorious Revolution, the Generalstaaten and England under William of Orange also joined the conflict. In the autumn of 1688, the Minister of War François Michel Le Tellier, Marquis de Louvois, and the king’s consultant Jules-Louis Bolé, Marquis de Chamlay suggested to put the Palatinate and other occupied areas to the torch after having collected large amounts of contributions. By demolishing major cities and strongholds in the region, Louvois hoped to slow down any progress of German forces against French borders.3 At its core, this was a defensive strategy. The act became known as the infamous “devastation of the Palatinate,” as it was characterized in various pamphlets which were intended to foment a sense of scandal. The destruction of the Palatinate became a media event.4

The French army was not the first and not the last to use this tactic.5 Nevertheless, the “burning of the Palatinate” was a prominent example of a tactic put to use in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that has been called “scorched earth warfare.”6 Both major cities but the surrounding countryside suffered as a consequence of efforts to transform the region into a “logistic obstacle.”7 In this article, my intention is to demonstrate that this devastation was not simply an act of desperation, but rather was a tactic which drew on an element of Early Modern military thought.

Most handbooks and memoirs concerning the art of war included examples of when and how to “ravage” a country. These reflections also underline that this type of “scorched earth warfare” not only targeted towns and villages by burning down buildings and driving off or killing their inhabitants, but also targeted the cultivated nature of the countryside. By consuming or destroying forage and crop yields, this tactic of attrition was used, as Lisa Brady has noted in the case of the American Civil War, to sever the connection between the rural civilian population, the enemy army and the land on which both depended for sustenance on the other.8 It was thought to be possible to starve out an enemy and to exercise control over the enemy’s use of land in a radical way: by destroying it.

Examining this aspect of Early Modern military tactics and its consequences for the natural environment as a part of military knowledge, I aim to contribute to fields of research for environmental historians and historians of warfare. As a synthesis, this environmental history of warfare focuses not only on the environmental impact of war, but also, as Richard Tucker has pointed out, on the ecological settings of war through history.9 As J. R. McNeill has observed in a study on the history of woods and warfare, scorched earth tactics like destroying natural resources are “as old as war itself,” and Emmanuel Kreike underlined the importance of environmental warfare as a colonial war practice in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.10 An examination of this form of warfare as a part of the emerging theoretical framework on war in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries furthers an understanding of environmental warfare as a special field of military knowledge.

The article consists of three sections. Initially, I sketch an episode of the devastation of the Palatinate with a focus on the local consequences of this type of warfare to highlight its impact on civilian use of land. The efforts of the French armies were intended to ensure not only the demolition of fortifications and towns, but also the consumption of as much forage as possible. This deprived enemy troops and the local population of a vital natural resource. I then analyze the idea of “ravaging” a region in Early Modern military thought as a legitimate modus operandi that was addressed in certain contexts. Finally, I briefly examine the idea of protecting the countryside during wartime, as violence against the rural population and their local resources was also connected to ideas of “just war” and legitimate versus illegitimate conduct of warfare. This protection, as I will argue, was meant to ensure the effectiveness of one’s own army and did not entail the idea of a humanization of warfare; rather, in the discourse of military thought and theory, utilitarian arguments prevailed.

The Hunger for Forage: The Case of Baden-Baden 1689

Fernand Braudel once called the times before the nineteenth century and the beginning of the consumption of large amounts of fossil fuels the “Old Biological Regime.”11 One key implication of this term is its focus on energy production: Before large amounts of energy began to be drawn from the use of fossil fuels (an “underground forest,” as Rolf-Peter Sieferle has put it),12 the “Old Biological Regime” was mainly bound to organic sources of energy. Wood for fires and food for both man and animals alike were subject to the biological laws of fertility and plant growth. John Landers has described this configuration as an “organic economy,” its limitations having a direct impact on the military logistics of pre-industrial Western societies. As Landers suggests, the dependence of this “organic economy” on large rural areas meant that military forces could only advance if armies and military administrations were able to make use of local agricultural resources. Depriving an enemy of this resource, thus, was often the only way to win a war.13

This perspective proves exceptionally interesting if one considers the ways in which Early Modern armies ensured their mobility. Often, it has been noted that winter campaigns were uncommon in Early Modern Europe and that warfare was typically bound to the seasons, just like agriculture. If military operations dragged on into the harsh winter months,14 this was considered especially problematic. One of the main reasons for this limitation was the dependency on forage. Grass growth determined the point of time armies could leave their winter quarters. Without this “fuel,” no army could be expected to move anywhere. The cavalry needed a daily portion of forage to feed their horses, as did all the other animals used in convoys for supplies or to transport baggage and heavy and expensive siege weapons, which were very important in an age of fortress warfare.15

As John Lynn has argued, drawing on the example of the French Army, a force of about 60,000 soldiers could easily muster about 40,000 horses, 20,000 for the cavalry and another 20,000 used for logistical tasks. As the amount of forage for troops in winter quarters was quantified in Réglements, it is possible to estimate at least the amounts of dry forage that a body of troops like this would consume on a daily basis. The Réglement of the French Army in November 1665, for example, prescribed a ration of 20 pounds of hay for each horse. For the cavalry alone this would have meant that about 200 tons of dry forage were needed to sustain about 20,000 horses, if these estimates are accurate.16 The problem with forage was that it effectively could not be procured from distant regions via carts, as this again would require the use of horses, which would also need to be fed. Dried forage was vital for troops in their winter quarters, but the same problems arose as in the case of fresh forage. Furthermore, it proved complicated to dry fresh forage in the field, as it rotted very quickly. Thus, the subsistance militaire was divided into food for soldiers and food for animals.

This tactic sheds some light on the core problem of logistics that was connected to military tactics in the Early Modern era. Military strategy and military organization changed between the Thirty Years’ War and the French Revolution. This can only be briefly covered here: out of the mercenary armies of the early seventeenth century emerged more or less permanent forces with an aristocratic officer class more closely bound to the military hierarchy and the authority of the sovereign; soldiers were gradually subjected to harsher forms of drills, as the ideal tactic of linear warfare of the early eighteenth century to maximize firepower demanded even greater discipline; the ever-present army “tails,” still known in the early seventeenth century, consisting of the women and children of mercenaries who occasionally even outnumbered the armed forces, declined in the late seventeenth century as the supply of soldiers increasingly became a matter of a military administration. At the same time, European armies experienced a dramatic growth, fostered by changes in recruiting and supply practices.17

The supply of troops underwent a major transformation since the end of the Thirty Years’ War.18 As for the French example, the growth of the army was to a large part only possible because of reforms under Le Tellier and his son Louvois. These reforms were reactions to the increasing problem of providing adequate supplies for a large force without actually having the funds to purchase food for the troops directly. By institutionalizing the establishment of magazines using private contractors, the French administration tried to improve army supply and reduce damage dealt to the home country. In theory, food could then be carted from the magazines towards the field of operations.19

In contrast to these obvious changes, however, there remained certain key problems of Early Modern warfare. Often, forage had to be obtained in the field as a local resource, either by requisition or by purchase.20 “Foraging” was the most basic daily routine for armies.21 However, concentrating large quantities of dried forage in magazines could also become a major advantage, as this would allow an army to take to the fields early. Under Le Tellier and his son Louvois, this became one of the key factors in the quick successes of the French army during the Dutch War, as the troops could draw on substantial stocks of hay and straw that had been established at major fortresses along the Rhine. The river was used to transport the enormous quantities of forage.22

This shows two main factors that also played a key role during the devastation of the Palatinate. First, forage was one of the main resources that an army needed to keep itself mobile, and it was also a resource of which one could deprive one’s enemy only by consuming or destroying it. As it was a local resource, the availability of which was bound to its own growth time, keeping an enemy away from forage could potentially slow down his operations. Also, a considerable advantage was to be obtained if one could concentrate large amounts of dried forage in magazines. This concentration of forage could be achieved by drawing on contributions from the enemy territory, which were to be paid both in money and “in natura.”23 It became common practice to obtain these “contributions” as a mixture of taxes and extortion not only for the French, but for all European armies after the Thirty Years’ War, and this remained common practice until the end of the eighteenth century. This method of sustaining an army in enemy territory was a vital part of financing warfare, and levying contributions was legitimate in terms of military law. The collection of this “war tax” was relatively orderly most of the time, as commanders even worked together with the civil administration of occupied regions to raise the required sums or the required amounts of foodstuffs and fodder. So-called contributions were often seen, in comparison to pillaging and looting, as a lesser evil. If a town or region failed to pay, however, armies could burn villages and towns as a form of rightful punishment.24

Yet, the burning of the Palatinate in the winter months of 1688 and 1689 was not done as punishment for failure to pay the increasing sums demanded by French intendants. Instead, this common practice provided the pretext for a plan that had been designed very early on.

The example of the fate of Baden-Baden, a small county south of the Electoral Palatinate which also was partly occupied by French forces and compelled to make contributions (as were most territories on the Upper Rhine), sheds light on what this practice meant for civilian populations.25 Demands were being made not only for considerable sums of money, but also for forage to supply French troops in their winter quarters. For the territory of Baden-Baden, these demands were sent by Jacques La Grange, who had been the intendant of Alsace since 1674 and had served in the Nine Years’ War as the intendant of Alsace, Brisgau, and the French army in Germany.26

In a letter to the Baden-Baden officials written on February 7, 1689, he elaborated on the consequences the county would face if his demands were not met. “I have heard that of the 20,000 rations of forage, which have been imposed on you for our part of the contribution, you have only paid 600 so far.”27 If this did not change quickly, he threatened to “burn without consideration.”28 Eleven days later, La Grange issued yet another official letter to levy new contributions, demanding 1,500 sacks of oats for the cavalry.29

While it was a common practice to draw upon enemy resources to sustain one’s own army, especially during winter, the motive in early 1689 was not only subsistence. As John Lynn has pointed out, there had been plans to demolish not only fortifications, but also towns on the Upper Rhine as early as the end of October 1688. In a letter to Louvois, Chamlay suggested completely destroying the town of Mannheim. In a letter from Louvois to the Lieutenant General Joseph de Montclar written on December 18, the Minister of War ordered Montclar to destroy all settlements along the Neckar completely so that German troops would find neither food nor forage.30 This included consuming or destroying forage before retreating to the left side of the Rhine, as Montclar wrote in an order concerning the French officer Peyssonel in 1688: his troops should consume all forage if possible and burn the rest.31 It is not unlikely that this is the context in which the repeated demands for new deliveries of substantial amounts of forage from the county of Baden-Baden to Strasbourg is to be seen: as an attempt to consume the fuel available and establish a logistical obstacle for the German forces.

This tactic seemed to work, as reports by Baden-Baden councilors to Count Hermann of Baden-Baden in Regensburg suggest.32 In a report dated to January 24, 1689, an official wrote about destruction around the town of Pforzheim, but also about raiding parties that took forage and grains. The “conservation of the country” was at risk, as many of the subjects had already fled the surrounding countryside.33 To ease the burden of contributions, especially that of providing forage, a letter directly addressed to La Grange himself34 tried to dissuade the French official from demanding copious amounts of hay and straw: “The supply of grains and forages is absolutely impossible, as it is completely consumed by the billeting and continued passages of the royal troops.”35 According to the letter, the financial and ecological limits of the small territory had been reached, and during winter it was simply not possible to grow more forage.

One could contend that these sources are not entirely reliable, since the councilors and officials may have exaggerated the situation in Baden-Baden to persuade the French to relieve the burdens of war or to persuade Hermann of Baden-Baden to force the Reichstag in Regensburg to respond to the French more quickly. However, another document supports the conclusion that the description of the situation given by the councilors in their reports was accurate. In a record dated March 24, 1689, several Baden-Baden officials discussed the next response to the growing French threat.36 Even though the governor of Strasbourg Count Chamily had given an order allowing the contribution in forage to be paid in money, the councilors found this obligation impossible to meet. In addition, the document illustrates the growing sufferings endured by the civilian population and the damage done to their methods of land use. Again, they wrote that “a large share of fruits and forage” had already been consumed “in natura,” and soon there would be nothing left. Many subjects, they contended, had fled the territory because of famine, and the lack of forage had led to the slaughter of a large part of the remaining cattle.37 As the subjects had neither grain nor forage left, they could hardly sell them to meet the demands in money.

While this kind of shortage was common if an enemy army was present in a territory, the authors linked it to the tactic of consuming everything so that German commanders would find nothing with which to feed their troops and mounts, even though this hardly made any sense to them. As they wrote, the French insisted on their demands “even though the German troops quartered in this county do not get their supplies from our land…”38 Thus, the shortage was to some degree artificial and intentional, a tool of war meant to constrain German forces.

This brief example shows the importance of a local resource like forage in keeping an army supplied, a resource that was “natural” because it followed its own biological mechanisms and rhythms.39 While military organization and tactics gradually changed during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, this factor remained a critical logistical problem that was examined writings on military theory. If all dried forage had been consumed in a region during winter, there was simply no other solution than to wait for fresh grass to grow again or to engage in large-scale logistics operation, procuring large quantities of hay and straw via rivers. Also, this understand of the importance of forage and the shortage of it in a given territory clarifies the meaning of the term “logistic obstacle.” By consuming (or destroying) this necessary fuel, the army directly impacted the use of local land, the inhabitants of which needed forage, for example, to keep cattle. This shortage, together with the burning of villages and all sorts of violence against the civilian population, drove the subjects from the territory. This in turn meant that in some areas, there was nobody left to cultivate the land so it would again yield grains or forage, thus making it difficult to supply an army in the region.40 This impact on land use by a large military force was not always accidental, nor was it always a result of faulty organization. Rather, sometimes it was used as a way of depriving an enemy of supplies. This warfare of attrition, which has been seen as characteristic of the wars under Louis XIV,41 was widely discussed in contemporary military thought, both before and after the reign of the sun king.

“Ravaging” a Country as a Part of Military Thought

The devastation of the Palatinate also became a topic in Early Modern military theory. One example is Hanns Friedrich von Flemings “Der vollkommene Teutsche Soldat,” an encyclopedic effort to summarize the state of the art of war in the early eighteenth century. The author placed particular emphasis on the wars of Louis XIV and the destruction wreaked in the course of these wars. This included burning down houses, poisoning wells, and desecrating graves, actions that were seen as a violation of the “divine law or the law of nations.”42 Flemings’ accusations repeat claims found in leaflets in which the French conduct of war was presented as scandalous. However, it is telling that he used this example in a chapter in which he discussed the theory of a “just war” and laws during wartime in general. In this context (of course from a German perspective), French actions served as an example of misconduct.

Flemings’ compilation also shows the specific nature of military discourse of the period. In the appendix, he included a list of examples of “soldiers who distinguished themselves both by sword and scholarship.”43 The list was meant to illustrate one of Flemings’ key points, which he made clear on various occasions in his work: officers should educate themselves to master the art of war.

This points towards an emerging new ideal of educated officers and the idea that war itself could be controlled and systematized by reducing it to certain basic principles. As Azar Gat and other scholars of the “military enlightenment” wrote, military thought did not remain untouched by processes and currents in the general spirit of the age, which has been dubbed (at least by its European heirs) the “Enlightenment” and the “Age of Reason.”44 The doctrine of natural law combined with a general search for rules and principles in the arts, together with the “gospel of Newtonian science,”45 created a particular intellectual atmosphere. However, many modern scholars of the Enlightenment argue that this cannot be summed up as a “revolution” or the personal project of few “enlightened” thinkers, but rather as a large-scale process of losing and questioning traditional orders and thus a resulting concentration of communication.46

The study of these general principles of warfare and sharing them with young officers and interested amateurs alike were key factors in the establishment of “military science” and a “military enlightenment.”47 Ever since Niccolò Machiavelli’s “Dell’Arte della Guerra” (1521), a new genre of printed texts emerged that focused on how to wage war, primarily drawing on examples borrowed from Ancient authors like Vegetius, Caesar, and Onasander.48 It has been argued that the influence of Antiquity on military treaties remained very high until the end of the eighteenth century, with most authors following technically outdated formations and ideals of warfare, with only few exceptions.49 While it is indeed true that Ancient authors, primarily Vegetius but also Caesar’s “De Bello Gallico,” were frequently referenced in nearly all works on the art of war of the period, it is also important to consider the changes to the discourse on military theory during the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Gradually, writings about European warfare came to adopt a more skeptical perspective that emphasized the experiences of the authors and made references to recent events, especially after the Seven Years’ War, while occasionally drawing on the authorities of Antiquity.50 As a genre, writings on the Art of War tried to give the reader examples of the best practices in nearly every field of military life, making the knowledge of the Ancients and the knowledge of great commanders available, but also commenting on it in an increasingly reflective manner.

Despite Flemings’ harsh judgment concerning the destruction wreaked by the French, there indeed was a place in this discourse for the planned devastation of a country by an army through the destruction of forage and harvests. Thus, the French officials drew on an idea that was already present in military thought and remained part of it even after the Nine Years’ War. A French example that was written before the outbreak of the Nine Years’ War and was broadly published and read illustrates this.

Henri II, the duke of Rohan, was one of the most reputable French authors on military theory of the seventeenth century. Born in 1579 to an old and powerful protestant family, de Rohan served in campaigns against Spanish forces in Flanders under King Henry IV. Due to his close relationship to the king, Rohan could hope to rise rapidly into the highest circles of power. However, the assassination of Henry IV in 1610 shattered his hopes, and soon he found himself the leader of protestant resistance in France and in opposition to the ruling Marie de’ Medici and Louis XIII. In the following uprising of the Huguenots, Henri de Rohan played a key role in repeatedly defeating larger royalist forces until the peace of Alès in 1629. He was then ordered by Louis XIII to become his ambassador in the Swiss Eidgenossenschaft. There, he fought a campaign in Valtellina in an offshoot of the Thirty Years’ War. He was mortally wounded at the siege of Rheinfelden in 1638, were he had fought in the army of Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar.51

In 1636, Henri de Rohan published a translated extract from Julius Caesar’s “De Bello Gallico,” “Le Parfaict Capitaine.” Combined with this however, Rohan published his own “Traité particulier de la Guerre” in which he sought to adjust the “good maxims” of the Ancients to the new art of war.52 In his treatise, he wrote that he wanted to show that “despite the difference in our arms to those of the Ancients, we should not ignore their orders.”53 The reference to Antiquity was his main source on which he drew for illustrations.

However, Henri de Rohan was also a practitioner of warfare in the early seventeenth century, which bore witness to the rising importance of siege warfare. In the chapter dedicated to defending a country against enemies, he addressed the question of the proportion of fortresses to an army in the field to defend a territory. At this point, he also wrote about the tactic of wearing out an enemy by entrenching large garrisons in strong fortresses. He warned that this would threaten the land itself, as it would be desolated by the besieging armies. Without a force to counter the besiegers, “you put the means to keep an army in the field at risk; and the damage to two or three harvests will put your neck in the noose.”54

Nonetheless, a few pages later, Henri de Rohan explicitly suggests laying waste to the lands. If a territory is attacked by a larger force, there is only one option: “consume the enemy [consommer l’enemy]”55 and cut off his food supply: “In this case, it is necessary to leave the country and burn all sustenance which you cannot contain in your fortresses, and also all towns and villages that you cannot defend: because it is better to defend oneself in a ruined land than to conserve it for the enemy.”56 According to his reasoning as a practitioner of warfare during the Thirty Years’ War, destroying forage and harvests and displacing the local population (even if it were one’s “own” population) were legitimate means of starving out an enemy, justified by the reference to the common good.

Henri de Rohan’s works were widely published and translated, and many authors of the later seventeenth and eighteenth century alluded to his “Le Parfaict Capitaine” as an influential treaty on warfare, mainly a work which offered a better understanding of warfare in Antiquity.57 This does not mean, however, that Rohan was the inventor of this tactic, nor was he the only author suggesting its use. In fact, other contemporary authors had similar views. Many quoted the famous Roman author Vegetius as the main Antique authority on warfare:58 in his general rules of war he wrote that “everything that is of use for you harms your enemy; everything that is of use for him is harmful to you.”59 According to this logic, it was “a great deed to fight your enemy with hunger rather than with the sword.”60 This, together with Henri de Rohan’s work, shows that laying waste to a region and destroying or consuming forage and food were well-established elements of military strategy before the Nine Years’ War.

Perhaps more surprising is the fact that many authors still supported this tactic after the Nine Years’ War, partly drawing on their experiences in that conflict. Even though the reputation of Louis XIV suffered because of the burning of the Palatinate, which also failed to bring the war to a quick end, the approach of devastating a region which should be defended remained part of various treatises.

One telling example is that of the French nobleman and officer Antoine de Pas, Marquis de Feuquières. Born in 1648, Feuquières served in nearly all the wars of Louis XIV. During the Nine Years’ War, he commanded a regiment and contributed to the French victory at Neerwinden in 1693.61 He was also one of the French officers who led raids deep into German territory, demanding large sums of contributions. After the Nine Years’ War, Feuquières fell from Louis’ grace, and the War of Spanish Succession was launched without him as a member of the king’s army.62 During this time, he wrote his memoirs, in which he commented (often in a harshly critical manner) on many operations that had been led by French and German officers.

His work was published in 1711, the year of his death, and it instantly became a popular lecture as the various reprints and translations into English and German suggest. Again, in his chapter dealing with defensive wars, Feuquières concerned himself with the possibilities of waging war against an enemy that had invaded a territory by surprise. It was “very difficult to prescribe, by general maxims, how to wage this war.”63 But as a general maxim, Feuquières again suggested that the countryside should not be spared: “The rural countryside should not be conserved. It is imperative that one take everything possible into the best fortresses and consume, even by fire, all grains and forage which one cannot take to a safe place, as to diminish the subsistence of the enemy army.”64 Local resources that were not controlled by one’s own troops were a threat to the region and to one’s own army. Thus, if necessary, they were to be destroyed. The phrase “even by fire” suggests that simply burning everything was a matter of last resort, however. Preferably, forage and grains were to be consumed.

Even after considerable time, this rationale of disrupting land use to deplete local natural resources was an element in the discourse of military theory. The time of the great encyclopedias, which were meant to gather and systematize all forms of knowledge for the use of mankind (most prominently, the “Encyclopédie” of Denis Diderot and Jean-Baptiste le Rond d’Alembert) also saw a fair share of efforts to put together encyclopedias and dictionaries specializing in military knowledge.65 One of the best-known examples is the “Dictionnaire Militaire” by German officer and engineer Jacob von Eggers. Eggers was born in 1708 and was active in the Swedish service, where he received an education in military engineering and the building of fortifications. In 1737, he joined the army of Saxony. During the War of the Austrian Succession, Eggers fought on the side of the Saxon army, securing river crossings by building field fortifications. After the war, Eggers was promoted to the serve as the head of the Saxon corps of engineers. He became the educator of the princes of Saxony and was admitted to the Swedish Academy of Sciences. In 1751, he published his “Dictionnaire Militaire.” Until his death in 1773, Eggers was mainly the commanding officer of the city of Gdańsk (Danzig), where he built up an impressive library specializing in military science.66

Eggers was the prototype of the “enlightened” officer: well-educated (partly due to his specialization in military engineering) but also with experience in the field. His efforts as a military writer and collector of books on military science make him one “of the educated officers of the eighteenth century who laid the foundation for the rationalization of warfare,” as Daniel Hohrath puts it.67 Still, in his dictionary there is an entry for “to ravage [ravagiren]”: “ravage, is the act of troops ravaging a province or region where they cannot hold out against an enemy by burning and pillaging and taking everything with them if possible.”68 In his entry concerning the “le plat pais” (the rural countryside), Eggers noted that it was common to lay waste to most of these kinds of lands due to problems with discipline or due to enemy raids.69 It is striking that for Eggers, the option of “ravaging” a country was not bound to war on friendly territory, but yet was a defensive measure that deserved to be mentioned in his dictionary, thus making this tactic a codified part of military knowledge. However, the idea of desolating an area to gain advantages remained an element of military knowledge that was repeatedly mentioned in writings on the subject until the end of the eighteenth century.70

The destruction of the countryside was justified as a defensive measure that was meant to ultimately protect the “common good,” even though nearly all of the authors in question mentioned this tactic in reference to friendly territory. If an enemy army would otherwise use a resource to its own benefit, it was better to destroy it and to deprive him of this opportunity. Thus, exercising control over the use of local resources was the main motive. What is important in the case of each of these examples is the way in which military land use and civilian land use were related to each other. To all military writers, the primary focus lay on the use of the rural countryside for the armies. Food and especially forage were broadly mentioned as targets along villages, resources that could be of direct use to anyone controlling a territory. By consuming or destroying as much as possible, one could at least keep the enemy at a safe distance while harming him indirectly due to the lack of supplies. Also, the use of fortresses as key factors of resource mobilization becomes clear. This tactic was related to the fact that campaigns were fought following the seasons. Depriving an enemy of sustenance was confined locally and possibly lasted until the following spring, but this meant that it lasted until the next campaign. Thus, it could be used to exert at least some degree of control over the movement of the enemy army and its use of local resources. If a region simply could not sustain an army any longer, it was unlikely that the region would be the next theatre of operations. The displacement of the local population could worsen the situation, as locals were needed to cultivate the land and to harvest grains and forage.71 However, there also were instances of authors arguing against the idea of devastating the land. Their arguments reveal the utilitarian point of view that was prevalent in military theory regarding the destruction of the rural countryside and natural resources.

Conserving Local Resources as Military Rationality

In fact, there was a prominent reference in one of the most important texts on international law to both the destruction and the conservation of local, natural resources. The Dutch jurist Hugo Grotius, who is often considered one of the founders of international law and the law of war, also dealt with the damage done to the countryside during conflicts. In his “De Iure Belli ac Pacis” from 1625, Grotius made a considerable contribution to the discussion of the theory of a “just war” and “just warfare,” drawing on scholastic and humanist traditions. Devised by St. Augustine of Hippo in the fifth century and St. Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century, the theory of “just” war played a vital role as a background for international laws of war for the whole Early Modern period. While the area of the jus ad bellum addressed the causes to declare war, the category of jus in bellum regulated the conduct of warfare. The theory of just causes for war, however, outlawed wars of aggression or out of motives like greed, expansion, and the like and emphasized that war was to be used as a means of reestablishing order against a perpetrator.

While this setting of laws and rules worked well as legitimization for campaigns against non-Christian enemies and “outlaws” (like bands of criminals or marauders),72 this focus on just causes was subjected to scrutiny by Gentili and Grotius. The question of what was, precisely, a “just” cause for war had become problematic. The notion of sovereignty proposed by Hobbes and Bodin meant that the emerging state was regarded as the only legitimate actor that could rightfully set rules and use force to establish them. Thus, conflict between two states posed a problem, as both parties claimed to have “just” causes for their military actions. In this problematic setting, Gentili and later Grotius emphasized the ius in bellum as regulation of the conduct of warfare; while war was accepted as a way of settling disputes between two sovereigns, the notion of ius in bellum at least offered some hope of mitigating its worst effects.73

In this context, Grotius addressed the question of damage done to cultivated natural resources.74 In the twelfth chapter of the third book in “De Iure Belli ac Pacis,” he explicitly wrote about the importance of moderation when it came to efforts to “desolate or ravage the enemy country.”75 Firstly, Grotius noted that the destruction of the “fruits of the land” was not necessarily an illegitimate tactic. As he explained, destroying land and the goods of an enemy was not unjust if the destruction was necessary. Alluding to Ancient authorities like Polybius and Onasander, he stated: “A general will remember to desolate an enemy’s land and to burn it to devastate it; because if the enemy is lacking the fruits of the land and money, the war will be halted […] So desolation is permitted if it can force the enemy to make peace quickly.”76 But as he mentioned, this kind of desolation happened “commonly out of wrath and resentment or out of the desire for bounty”77 rather than for strategic reasons.

However, Grotius also explicitly stated that there were indeed limits on the justifications for attacking natural resources. Referring again to writers of Antiquity like Plato, he illustrated that devastating a country was not necessary in most cases. If an army had already occupied an enemy territory so that the enemy “cannot use the fruits of it,”78 this was a reason for sparing the countryside. Furthermore, Grotius mentioned “divine law,” which compelled armies attacking cities to use only the “wild trees” for earthworks and to spare the “fertile trees,” because “the trees cannot rise up against us and give battle.”79 Quoting the Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria, Grotius wanted to spare “fertile fields” for the same reasons: “Why do you want to vent your anger on inanimate things, which are themselves gentle by nature, and bear fruits?”80

The example of Grotius shows two important arguments that provide some theoretical context for the deliberate destruction of the countryside as part of military campaigns and strategy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. On the one hand, Grotius argued that special necessities could arise in warfare that made destroying forage or harvests a viable tactical option. On the other, however, this argument of necessity meant that any act of destruction that was “unnecessary and useless” was illegitimate. If the enemy could not reasonably be expected to gain any use from the resources because he had no control over them, then there was no legitimate reason to destroy them. Interesting is the specific mention of fruit-bearing trees, which are used as an example. With this reference to Ancient authors, Grotius condemned the useless destruction of resources that needed a lot of time to regrow, meaning that destroying them was not simply a matter of gaining an advantage during a war, but was also a means of inflicting damage that was out of proportion.

Several military writers brought up this argument of utility, especially since the beginning of the eighteenth century. One example is the well-known French military writer Jean Charles, Chevalier de Folard. Born in 1669 to a clerical noble family in Avignon, Folard received his education at a Jesuit college. His first experience of the military was under the command of Duras in the fall campaign of 1688, precisely in the context of the Nine Years’ War and the destruction of the Palatinate. Later, he fought under the Swedish king Charles XII, where he started to develop his own system of military thought during his time at Stockholm. As an expert on classical Roman and Greek warfare, Folard tried to draw on Antiquity while at the same time presenting a new system of military theory derived from Classical sources. In his “Nouvelles Découvertes sur la guerre, dans une dissertation sur Polybe” and his “Histoire de Polybe,” he made contributions to many spheres of Early Modern military thought, one of the most controversial being the idea of using the formation of columns as a form of attack.81

Despite his sometimes seemingly eccentric ideas, he was not an “armchair general.” He had served in the French and Swedish armies and had participated in several campaigns. In his “Histoire de Polybe,” Folard commented on contemporary examples of warfare. In fact, other authors repeatedly quote him not for his disputed ideas concerning column tactics but for his original thoughts on war in mountains, the “coup d’oeil” in warfare, and for his critical approach, which emphasized the search for general principals in war.82 He also wrote on the question of destroying forage and harvests.

While he at one point explicitly quoted Vegetius with reference to his maxim of starving an enemy by burning forage as “admirable,”83 he later criticized this practice. While devastating one’s own territory seemed like a necessary evil, Folard deemed destroying enemy territory as unnecessary and ineffective. Here, he quoted Raimondo Montecuccoli, one of the most important Habsburg generals of the seventeenth century:84 “The raids of armies or a large part of troops into enemy territory do not yield any advantage if they are not part of a considerable operation: because nothing is better suited to ruin an army. This kind of enterprise, which consists solely in ravaging and doing damage far away from a border, is hardly useful […] If we have no other intent than to destroy a certain portion of land, one deprives oneself of contributions one could collect. […] These kinds of invasions are not useful except for during the time of the harvest, and this is precisely the time which should be chosen […].”85

These remarks show that the decision to burn forage and harvests or at least to consume them to gain an advantage implicitly included civil land use, as his suggestion concerning the proper season for an attack suggests. However, two factors made this tactic unfavorable. First, the advantage gained by destroying forage only lasted for a short while, and it furthermore only worked at the expense of the rural population. It was not necessarily compassion for the fate of displaced and impoverished peasants that made Folard disdain this tactic; rather, he argued from an utilitarian perspective. Exploiting the population by demanding contributions (which, as pointed out before, were also paid in natura) promised far greater incomes in the end. Remarks that went into detail concerning compassion for the local population or, simply, addressed humanitarian concerns were not decisive. Rather, this emphasis on the importance of conserving natural resources and sparing the local population originated in a military rationality that emphasized the role of the enemy countryside as an economic factor.

This economic argument, which rested on the idea of necessity and the proportionality of force, was raised in works by other authors.86 The idea that enemy territory should be conserved not only as a possible territorial gain after the war but also as a possible theatre of operations for future campaigns is echoed in several writings, but it was always part of the effort to ensure military effectiveness. As such, it can be seen as analogous to the shift from irregular looting to the rather orderly process of collecting contributions and the efforts to outlaw looting in general in order to avoid driving off the local population, which proved vital as a workforce for any army in a region.

However, it is important to note that the authors of works on military theory saw looting and ravaging the lands as concepts that were related but not essentially the same. Ravaging the land meant targeting the enemy’s rural infrastructure and local resources in a planned and orderly fashion, while looting was the outright loss of all discipline. In practice, of course, the two could not be so clearly or easily separated. As John Lynn has put it, it was scarcely possible to order a soldier to burn down a farm and at the same time prevent him from simply taking everything that was inside or abusing the inhabitants.87 The option of destroying a region that could not be protected against an enemy remained a discussed and viable option until the end of the eighteenth century,88 but it slowly came under scrutiny after the Seven Years’ War, as two final examples illustrate.

When the English officer and engineer Henry Lloyd issued his “Military Memoirs” in 1781, he also touched on the subject of conserving enemy territory. Lloyd, who has come to be known as one of the most important military theorists of the second half of the eighteenth century alongside the French officer Guibert, had a long history of military service. Born presumably in 1720, Lloyd got his education at the Oxford Jesus College, where he acquired a high degree of skill in geometry and cartography.89 Having left England in 1741, Lloyd served with the French during the War of the Austrian Succession. After having caught the attention of Maurice de Saxe during the battle of Fontenoy (1745), Lloyd was recommended to different generals as a skilled engineer and officer, and he served in Prussian, French, Austrian, and Russian armies before returning to England.

His “The History of the Late War in Germany,” in which he described his experiences and the general setting of the Seven Years’ War, became widely known and read. In his “Military Memoirs,” this experienced and educated soldier also wrote about the habit of detaching forces from the main army to raid a country: “To force the enemy to battle, or to the clearing of the land, one naturally has to put the whole force to use together, and one may not occupy oneself with detachments, raids, or similar: because this weakens the army; the detachments risk being cut off, and they devastate the country that one has to preserve if one wants to stay there.”90 In this rather general remark, which made no direct mention of the old practice of burning forage, Lloyd emphasized the later use of a region by one’s own army as an argument against devastating an area by detaching too many troops. However, his formulation “if you want to stay there” suggests that this was generally bound to strategic plans rather than to moral imperatives. Few authors identified the “ravaging” of a countryside as something that was generally unwanted and morally deplorable.

One of the authors who commented on this practice in a critical manner was the French lieutenant-colonel Paul-Gédéon Joly de Maizeroy. He was a recognized student of warfare in Antiquity and due to this was admitted to the French Royal Academy of belles-lettres. But he also became known as a military writer himself, having published his “Cours de tactique” in 1766, which was reprinted twice and translated into German in 1767. In 1777, he completed his work on tactics with his “Théorie de la Guerre.”91 In this, he scorned the light cavalry and troops of the “small war,” such as Hussars, Croats, and Pandures, who were employed excessively during the Seven Years’ War by both the Austrian and the Prussian armies. His disdain for these kinds of troops was prompted in part by the fact that the “small war” waged by raiding parties of light troops basically consisted of forays in the course of which these troops “ravaged” the areas.92 For Paul-Gédéon Joly de Maizeroy, though, this constituted a considerable disadvantage for both armies and was a feature of a “barbaric” way of war: “and this apparent advantage can even turn against him, if one abandons the devastated land. In general, this barbaric manner of waging war is detrimental to both parties.”93 He had moral disdain for the practice of “ravaging” a country as barbaric, and this sentiment explains in part his criticism of the widespread use of light troops.

The practice of laying waste to the countryside was often summed up with the term “ravaging” or “ravager,” but the explicit mentioning of burning forage or harvests gradually declined in the writings by military theorists until the end of the eighteenth century, which could be interpreted as a form of marginalization in the discourse. Still, even if the tactic of destroying villages and local resources and the pillaging and displacement of the population gradually became something the authors were more inclined to discourage, the reasons for this were almost always utilitarian. In their writings, they rarely expressed pity for suffering peasants. Rather, it was important to point out that one’s own army might suffer dire consequences if lands were made “sterile” and “unfertile” by war.

Conclusion

The tactic of depriving an enemy of local natural resources by consuming or destroying them was part of Early Modern military thought. This tactic was intended not simply to reduce or eliminate supplies for the enemy army. Rather, it also targeted local populations and their use of land as a way of creating artificial shortages of food and forage. When and how to “ravage” a country was discussed in various texts that dealt with the theory of how to wage war in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In this discourse, four factors stand out as main motives and categories of thought.

First, in order for efforts to destroy forage and harvests and “ruin” a country to be seen as legitimate, they had to be presented as necessary. This notion of necessity was often based on Ancient axioms of warfare or arguments in favor of “shortening” a war. Second, however, it seems to have been extremely important where this tactic was used. Military thinkers explicitly wrote about this tactic of “scorched earth warfare” in the context of enemy invasions that were unforeseen or simply overwhelming. In these cases, desolating one’s own country was discussed as a defensive method to starve out an enemy. Paradoxically, these same thinkers tended to suggest that enemy territory should be treated carefully, as it was more practical to extort contributions, a perspective that somewhat economized military land use. Third, to some degree the authors explicitly assessed which resources should be targeted and why. “Devastating” the countryside meant that not only villages were burned, but also forage and harvests, which were seen as directly useful for the enemy troops. However, as Grotius suggested, there were limits to this logic. Trees, for example, were never mentioned in the context of “ravaging” a country and starving out an enemy. Forage could be grown again for subsequent campaigns, but cutting down useful trees was seen as a form of lasting damage.94 Fourth, the factors of duration and effectiveness played a role in the reflections of the authors. Some of them considered the usefulness of “devastation” by raiding parties as minimal and something that did not last long enough to be worthwhile. In addition, again the practice of extorting contributions promised a more effective source of income in the end. These arguments of utility were used to criticize the tactic of “scorched earth warfare” and the “ravaging” of the countryside, while the authors on military theory seldom touched on humanitarian concerns.

While I have focused in this article on ideas and categories prevalent in military thought, it is also important to consider that the practical side of warfare often followed its own rationalities. Often, the devastation of the countryside was not the effect of a conscious decision by generals or officers, but a consequence of mismanagement and logistical shortages. Even in the middle of the eighteenth century, these kinds of problems could lead to armies doing substantial damage to the countryside, as the aftermath of the Battle of Warburg on July 31, 1760 illustrates. There, the British army remained in the area for nearly three months, and it used anything and everything that could be burnt as fuel, including fruit-bearing trees, hedges, and even wooden statues of saints.95 In order to explore further the effects of Early Modern armies on the natural environment in wartime, case studies for regions that frequently became the theatre of war could prove exceptionally fruitful.

In the end, this poses the critical question of the place of military theory in relation to military practice and, on a larger scale, in relation to warfare and the environment as a whole. While military theory certainly provided a framework for discussion of scorched earth tactics, an explicit reference to theoretical texts is hard to grasp in military practice itself: French officials did not quote de Rohan every time they ordered the destruction of villages and forage. However, even if works on military theory presented idealized versions of how their authors thought war should be waged, they often included examples of contemporary warfare. While military theory certainly does not reflect military practice itself, it forms a special discourse in which these practices are described and situated in an argumentative context. Thus, the treatises make it possible to analyze the special discourse on war and the systems and categories in which military knowledge was conceived and presented. As far as the relationship between warfare and the environment is concerned, this means that violence against the natural environment was a defining part of Early Modern military knowledge, and even at the end of the eighteenth century it had not vanished from the discussions. Rather, it remained embedded in contemporary conceptions of “just” war and the “right” and “rational” conduct of operations.

When Carl von Clausewitz, sometimes regarded as the “prophet“ of modern warfare, worked on his influential opus magnum “On War,” he drew on a vast body of works by military theorists like Feuquières, authors whose writings were available to him in the Prussian royal library.96 It would certainly be an exaggeration to draw a clear line from Clausewitz to Agent Orange. But the Early Modern military theory on which Clausewitz at least partially relied reminds us just how deeply embedded environmental warfare was in military thought well before the of armies of the post-industrial age developed their now infamous capabilities of mass destruction.

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Hohrath, Daniel. “Die Beherrschung des Krieges in der Ordnung des Wissens: Zur Konstruktion und Systematik der militairischen Wissenschaften im Zeichen der Aufklärung.” In Wissenssicherung, Wissensordnung und Wissensverarbeitung: Das europäische Modell der Enzyklopädien, edited by Theo Stammen, and Wolfgang E. J. Weber, 371–86. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2004.

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Schröder, Peter. “Natural Law, Sovereignty and International Law: A comparative Perspective.” In Natural Law and Civil Sovereignty: Moral right and state authority in early modern political thought, edited by Ian Hunter and David Saunders, 204–18. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002.

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1 Lynn, Wars of Louis XIV, 191–193; Wilson, German armies, 88–89.

2 Lynn, Wars of Louis XIV, 193–194; Dotzauer, Rheinland-Pfalz, 164–66.

3 Lynn, Wars of Louis XIV, 194–95; Dotzauer, Rheinland-Pfalz, 167–68; Lynn, “A Brutal Necessity,” 79–83.

4 On this see Dosquet, “Die Verwüstung der Pfalz,” 333–69; Wrede, Reich und seine Feinde, 400–3; Bothe, “Von Mordbrennern,” 11–47.

5 In addition to the references to warfare in Antiquity used by Early Modern authors (for instance the scorched earth warfare that Caesar attributes to Vercingetorix in his “Commentarii de bello Gallico”), there are numerous mentions of other instances of such conduct. Frank Tallett, for example, listed the deliberate destruction wrought by Maurice of Nassau or the Elizabethan generals in Ireland in the 1590s as scorched earth warfare and a practice of warfare that targeted the economic resources of an enemy. Tallett, War and Society, 58–59.

6 As described by Lynn, Wars of Louis XIV, 195.

7 Ibid.

8 Brady, “The Wilderness of War,” 172–79; Brady, “Devouring the Land,” 49–52.

9 Tucker, “The Impact of Warfare,” 15–16; Tucker, “War and the Environment,” 319–20.

10 McNeill, “Woods and Warfare,” 401. In an extreme form, Emmanuel Kreike called this environmental warfare a form of “ecocide,” citing the example of Dutch colonial warfare in the nineteenth century. However, while Early Modern environmental warfare targeted civilians, it was never comparable to an effort systematically to eradicate an entire population or people. See Kreike, “Genocide,” 297–300.

11 Braudel, Civilization and Capitalism, 70–72. On the use of this concept, see Marks, “The (Modern) World since 1500,” 58.

12 Sieferle, Der unterirdische Wald.

13 Landers, The Field and the Forge, 70–71; 202–3; 225–26.

14 It should be noted that Early Modern Warfare took place in a special phase of climate history, the Little Ice Age. Especially low temperatures and wet and unstable summers further contributed to the famines during wartime. As John Lynn has noted, during the Nine Years’ War, France suffered one of the worst agricultural disasters on record in 1694 and 1695, and this dramatically slowed the French war efforts, see Lynn, Wars of Louis XIV, 241–53. For a concise summary of the concept of the Little Ice Age and the research of leading climate historians Christian Pfister, Hubert Horace Lamb and Rüdiger Glaser, see Behringer, Kulturgeschichte des Klimas, 119–22.

15 Tallett, War and Society, 32–33 and 54.

16 See Lynn, Giant, 127–28. Lynn also estimates a total sum of 400 tons of dry forage for 40,000 horses or even 1,000 tons of green forage, see Lynn, “Food, Funds, and Fortresses,” 141. However, it is important to note that not all animals used for supply runs belonged to the armies. Rather, animals for carting food and other supplies were often requisitioned from the local rural population.

17 For a concise overview of military tactics from the seventeenth to the eighteenth centuries see, for instance, Lynn, Women, Armies, and Warfare, 2–14; Tallett, War and Society; Wilson, “Warfare in the Old Regime;” Duffy, Military Experience.

18 On the French case see Lynn, Giant, 108–14. On the connection between warfare and the emerging state during the Early Modern period, see for example Tilly, “War Making and State Making,” 181–86; for a critical view of the notion of a dominant “fiscal military state,” see Parrott, The Business of War, 310–27. Parrott emphasizes the role of private contractors as suppliers of European armies.

19 See Parrott, Business, 310; Creveld, Supplying War, 17–22. However, Crefeld is very critical concerning the actual use of magazines, arguing that most of the time they actually were used to supply troops in garrison, not operating armies. John Lynn argues against this thesis, and he points out that supply for soldiers indeed was normally procured via the magazine system, whereas fodder was mostly requisitioned locally. Lynn, “Logistics,” 15–21.

20 On this difference, see Lynn, “Logistics,” 19–20.

21 On the importance and complexities of foraging, see Lund, War for the Every Day, 65–69.

22 Lynn, “Food, Funds, and Fortresses,” 148.

23 Lynn, “Logistics,” 143–46.

24 Redlich, De Praeda Militari, 44–46 and 66–71. Redlich, however, draws a sharp line between the seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries, describing the former as a century of pillaging and the latter as the century of a rather orderly system of contributions. On the cooperation of local elites with enemy forces in collecting contributions to mitigate possible negative consequences for the territory, see Carl, “Restricted Violence,” 122–25.

25 Wunder, “Zerstörungswut oder militärische Logik,” 25–26.

26 See Vetter, “Anhang,” in Das Schloß gesprengt, die Stadt verbrannt,” 158.

27 Generallandesarchiv Karlsruhe (GLAK), 48/3384, letter from La Grange to the Baden-Baden councilors, February 7, 1689.

28 Ibid.

29 GLAK 48/3384, letter from La Grange to all officials of the county of Baden-Baden, February 18, 1689.

30 Lynn, Wars of Louis XIV, 196.

31 Lynn, Giant, 129.

32 Hermann of Baden-Baden was the Uncle of the well-known General and ruling Count of Baden-Baden Ludwig Wilhelm of Baden-Baden. Hermann of Baden-Baden was Principalcommissarius at the Reichstag in Regensburg as of 1688. In this position, he seems to have been interested in the development of the new war against Louis XIV, and he received continuous reports about the developments in the county. See Kleinschmidt, “Hermann, Markgraf von Baden,” 120–22.

33 GLAK 48/3384, report of officials of the County Baden-Baden to Count Hermann of Baden-Baden, January 24, 1689.

34 This letter is only preserved as a copy without signature; in his answers, La Grange addressed a “madame.”

35 GLAK 48/3384, copy of a letter to La Grange.

36 GLAK 48/3384, concept of several officials and councilors of the County of Baden-Baden, March 24, 1689.

37 Ibid.

38 Ibid.

39 For a theoretical approach on defining nature as a problematic notion in historical research see Schatzki, “Nature and Technology in History,” 85–86.

40 The idea of the population as a work force that ensured the “fertility” of the land and thus provided the essentials for supplying an army was common in Early Modern military theory. See for example Santa Cruz de Marcenado, Reflexions, vol. 12, 7.

41 Lynn, “Food, Funds, and Fortresses,” 137–38.

42 Fleming, Teutsche Soldat, 95.

43 Ibid., 698.

44 In general, see Cassirer, Die Philosophie der Aufklärung; Hazard, Die Herrschaft der Vernunft; Koselleck, Kritik und Krise; Gay, The Enlightenment.

45 Gat, Origins, 26.

46 Fulda, “Gab es ‘die Aufklärung,’” 22–25; Bödecker, “Aufklärung als Kommunikationsprozess,” 91–92; Füssel, “Aufklärung,” 280; Pečar and Tricoire, Falsche Freunde, 11–27.

47 Gat, Origins, 25–27; Hohrath, “Spätbarocke Kriegspraxis,” 28–29; Hohrath, “Die Beherrschung des Krieges,” 373–79.

48 Gat, Origins, 1–9.

49 Beatrice Heuser, Den Krieg denken, 99–107; Creveld, The Art of War, 73.

50 Neill, “Ancestral Voices,” 516–20.

51 See Hubler, “Rohan, Henri de.”

52 This part was also copied and translated into German. See Rohan, Erfahrner Capitain.

53 Rohan, Parfaict Capitaine, preface.

54 Ibid., 357.

55 Ibid., 360.

56 Ibid., 361.

57 Even in 1773, the German officer and influential military writer Ferdinand Friedrich von Nicolai mentioned de Rohan’s work and recommended it because it offered a more nuanced understanding of Caesar’s approach to warfare. Nicolai, Grundriss, 263.

58 Heuser, Krieg denken, 98–107. Heuser, however, sees the references to Ancient authors like Vegetius as nearly absolute until the end of the eighteenth century. For a critical perspective, see Neill, “Ancestral Voices,” 516–20.

59 Vegetius, Abriß des Militärwesens, 175.

60 Ibid., 179.

61 “Feuquières, Antoine de Pas, marquis de,” 662.

62 Ibid.

63 Feuquières, Memoires, 2.

64 Ibid., 3.

65 Hohrath, “Die Beherrschung des Krieges,” 373; on encyclopedias in general, see Schneider and Zedelmaier, “Wissensapparate,” 349–50.

66 Hohrath, “Jacob von Eggers,” 99–101.

67 Ibid.

68 von Eggers, Ritter-Lexicon, vol. 2, 559.

69 Ibid, 23.

70 See for instance Bessel, Entwurf, 9.

71 On this contemporary emphasis on the local population as an important element in the provision of resources for armies operating in an area, see for instance Santa Cruz, Reflexions, vol. 12, 7.

72 Bennett, “Legality and legitimacy,” 265–70; Tuck, The Rights of War and Peace, 78–79.

73 Schröder, “Sine fide nulla pax,” 37–38; Schröder, “Natural Law,” 204–18; Pröve, “Vom ius ad bellum zum ius in bello,” 264–68.

74 See also the remarks of Stone, “The Environment in Wartime,” 16–18.

75 Grotius, Drey Bücher von Kriegs= und Friedens=Rechten, 168.

76 Ibid., 169–70.

77 Ibid., 170.

78 Ibid.

79 Ibid.

80 Ibid., 171.

81 Gat, Origins, 28; Chagniot, Chevalier de Folard, 13–29.

82 See for example Töllner, Bildung, 118; Zanthier, Versuch über die Märsche, 110; Pirscher, Coup d’oeil, 18. Frederic the Great and Maurice de Saxe both took interest in Folards writings as well, see Starkey, War, 36–37.

83 Folard, Histoire, vol. 4, 148.

84 Montecuccoli, Kriegs-Nachrichten, 214. Montecuccoli played a major role in the Imperial army of the seventeenth century and fought in the Thirty Years’ War, the Nordic War, and the Dutch War; also, he was one of the most important generals to fight in the wars against the Ottoman Empire. His treatise on warfare became a reference work in the eighteenth century. On Montecuccoli, see Gat, Origins, 13–24.

85 Folard, Histoire, vol. 5, 237.

86 For instance, see Santa Cruz, Reflexions, vol. 4, 164 and 173, and vol. 12, 7.

87 As noted by Lynn, Wars of Louis XIV, 198.

88 For instance, see Bessel, Entwurf, 9 or Burtenbach, Betrachtungen, 14, although von Burtenbach is critical of the burning of the Palatinate.

89 Speelman, Henry Lloyd, 5–7; Starkey, War, 56–63.

90 Henry Lloyd, Abhandlung über die allgemeinen Grundsätze, 120.

91 Gat, Origins, 39.

92 Carl, “Restricted Violence,” 125–28; Martin Rink, “Die noch ungezähmte Bellona,” 168–87.

93 Maizeroy, Théorie, 291.

94 It is important to note, however, that this sentiment explicitly was bound to the notion of “fertile” and “useful” trees. If trees and forests could constitute a tactical disadvantage, many authors did not hesitate to recommend that they be destroyed. For example, see Folard, Histoire, vol. 3, 287.

95 Petersen, “Feuer und Eis,” 72–74.

96 Heuser, Strategy before Clausewitz, 186–87.

2018_3_Rus

pdfVolume 7 Issue 3 CONTENTS

Peacetime Changes to the Landscape in Eighteenth-Century Transylvania: Attempts to Regulate the Mureş River and to Eliminate Its Meanders in the Josephine Period

Dorin-Ioan Rus

University of Graz

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The article focuses on the attempts of Habsburg authorities in eighteenth-century Transylvania to regulate the Mureş River and eliminate its meanders in order to improve salt and timber transport to Hungary and the Banat region. These attempts ultimately led to changes in the landscape of the province by reshaping riverbanks and removing their vegetation. These changes were prompted by the need to change the type of transport vessel as a result of the timber crisis. To this end, specialists from Upper Austria were brought to build the new softwood vessels that were cheaper and corresponded with the characteristics of the Mureş River. The engineer Mathias Fischer was appointed project leader. He also initiated and planned cleaning operations on the river. The article also presents the work methods and machines employed during these operations and discusses the failed operation to eliminate the meander at Ciugud. In addition, the efforts of the Transylvanian Gubernium and Salt Office led to the accelerated development of towns such as Alba Iulia and Topliţa.

Keywords: environmental history, river regulation, landscape changes, early modern era, timber trade, salt trade

In the eighteenth-century, many West European states initiated canal building and river regulation projects. They were promoted and carried out in order to increase agricultural output as well as to protect agricultural land and human settlements from floods. In addition, they played a significant role in preventing and reducing the spread of epidemic diseases among humans and animals alike.1

Navigable rivers played an important role in transportation. The expansion of internal waterways was an essential requirement for the economic development of pre-industrial societies. Before the planned expansion of the road network and the emergence of railways, rivers and canals had been the main transportation routes for natural products and resources. Transportation costs over water were cheaper than over land, especially given that the poor state of roads was a serious hindrance to traffic.

River regulation and river bank stabilization greatly contributed to the expansion of internal waterways. Thus, many river sections were straightened by eliminating meanders and deepened by removing sediment through dredging, and river banks were stabilized, which not only made the passage of ships smoother, faster, and safer, but also reduced the risk of floods.

The main focus of this study is how the landscape of the Mureş River changed in the context of the eighteenth-century timber crisis and the efforts made by the Habsburg state—central and local authorities alike—to achieve this change, and how it impacted economic growth and human settlements.

In the second half of the eighteenth century, Transylvania went through a timber crisis. Due to the reduction of wood resources and an increase in their price, the Transylvanian Gubernium decreed that, instead of hardwood, softwood should be used in shipbuilding. The new task of shipbuilding was given to Upper Austrian masters.2 One of the most critical measures that the Gubernium took was to regulate the Mureş River based on the model of the Traun River in Upper Austria. Austrian specialists viewed this river as a model for Transylvania because its course and discharge were similar to those of the Mureş River.3 Their aim was to accommodate the new salt ships made of softwood timber. As a result, significant material efforts were made to eliminate all potential obstacles and meanders on the river, which could damage the salt ships and implicitly their precious cargo, as well as hinder the transportation of other resources from Transylvania to Hungary, such as timber and military matériel.

The first part of the article deals with the technologies used in the cleaning of the Mureş River in 1779, discussing the issues that emerged during this operation and its environmental impact. In parallel with this dredging operation, they also attempted to improve the waterway by stabilizing the riverbanks and removing obstacles, such as rocks, trees, mills, and bridge ruins. The navigable section of the Mureş River extended from Mirislău (Miriszló in Hungarian) to Zam (Sameschdorf in German, Zám in Hungarian) where it left Transylvania, flowing into the region of Banat. This operation involved the local town halls from the provinces adjoining the Mureş River, such as Transylvania, the Banat, and Hungary, as well as engineers, a local workforce, and representatives from Vienna.

The final part discusses the operation to eliminate meanders, which mainly targeted the area around Ciugud (Schenkendorf in German, Csügöd in Hungarian), close to the Alba Iulia fortress, in 1786. The so-called “Limba” (Tongue) meander was the first to be eliminated. However, because there was no hydrotechnician to run the operation, it was carried out inexpertly and in an improvised manner, which ultimately made it unsuccessful. In the end they were forced to move the village instead. These operations, apart from their primary target of eliminating meanders, also focused on the removal of vegetation from the river banks, more precisely brush and smaller wooded areas that could potentially hinder work and transportation.

State of the Art

This topic on the changes to the landscape that occurred following attempts to regulate the Mureş River has not yet been tackled either by Romanian historiography or Hungarian historiography. Works dealing with transportation on the Mureş River tend to focus on the history of salt mining. Given the interdisciplinary character of this topic, which brings together knowledge and perspectives from the fields of history and geography, one should take a brief look at the scholarly works that have touched upon it.

The subject was briefly approached in a recently published monograph on forests in eighteenth-century Transylvania, more precisely in the chapter dealing with knowledge transfer from Austria to Transylvania and the search for solutions to the timber crisis that affected inland navigation in this province.4 Given that a detailed approach to the issue of forestry would go beyond the limits this paper, only one of its aspects will be analyzed in this article.

in the eighteenth century, Transylvania and Europe witnessed an acute timber crisis, principally caused by overharvesting. At the time, wood was the main energy source in industry. The increase in the price of timber strongly impacted each economic sector. As for the military, the oak timber crisis affected the construction of fortifications, transport vessels, and bridges. As a result, Transylvanian town halls regulated the access of individuals as well as goats and cattle to forests and the harvesting of certain tree species, restricted construction, replaced timber with brick, stone, and roof tiles as primary building materials, and introduced fast-growing tree species.

Konrad Müller5 was the first to approach the subject from the perspective of the history of transportation in his work on the Habsburg economic policy before and during the reign of empress Maria Theresa. Müller discusses, among others, the efforts of the Salt Office, Treasury and Gubernium to modernize transportation by land and by water alike. His work, largely based on documents from the State Archives in Vienna, provides an overview of the aforementioned modernization efforts. Mercantilist policies in Transylvania were principally focused on the exploitation of natural resources. Maria Theresa’s reforms offered the province the much-needed opportunity to develop its economy. However, their implementation was hindered both by underpopulation and resistance from the aristocracy and landed nobility.

In the category of works on the history of transportation one should also mention the authors who approach the history of salt mining and timber rafting. Thus, authors such as Beniamin Bossa,6 Ioan Dordea,7 Volker Wollmann,8 Harald Heppner,9 Viorica Suciu and Gheorghe Anghel,10 Dorin-Ioan Rus,11 and Dorel Marc12 discuss ethnographic and historical aspects of transport by water without approaching the issue of the regulation of the Mureş River.

One should also mention the most recent approaches concerning the regulation of the Tisa (Tisza) River and the Danube. For the first case, Linda Szücs’s study13 focusing on the impact that the regulation of the Tisa River had on the agriculture in the surrounding areas is notable. Edit Király’s work,14 despite mainly focusing on the regulation of the Danube and its perception in the nineteenth century, provides many pieces of relevant information on the eighteenth century as well.

Transylvania’s Rivers and Their Role in Salt Transportation

Transylvania’s navigable waterways (Mieresch/Maros/Mureş, Samosch/Samos/Someş, Alt/Olt, partially Arieş/Aranyos and Körös/Criş) had been used for salt transportation since the Roman period. The earliest plans to render navigation easier, which were included into larger projects for the reorganization of salt mines, can be dated back to the time when the province was an autonomous Principality (1541–1688).15

River projects in Transylvania trace their origin to the issue of efficient salt transport. In 1699, shortly after Transylvania came under Habsburg rule, the Aulic Chamber reorganized the salt monopoly as well as the main warehouse located at Partoş (Alba Iulia) where a dockyard for the building of ships, ferries, rafts, and other types of vessels needed for the transportation of salt and other goods on the Mureş River operated in the eighteenth century. The main task of the Salt Office, whose headquarters were located in Alba Iulia, was to organize the transportation of salt and other goods on the Mureş River, which required the hiring of an ever-growing number of rafters and crews for ships.16 Ordinarily, the Office carried out the transport of salt, but it also often carried out the transport of various other goods, such as grain, foods, wine, iron, lead, copper, lumber, boards, and building stones, to the western areas of Transylvania, the Banat, and Hungary. In 1788, following the outbreak of the Austro-Russo-Turkish War (1787–91), the Office became involved in the transport of war matériel too. On 28 January 1788, the Transylvania Gubernium requested the Salt Office to put at the Army’s disposal 25–30 pontoons needed by troops to build bridges for crossing rivers and streams.17

In 1786, the Austrian hydrologist François Joseph Maire describes in his work the empire’s great waterways and the economic advantages that their navigability could bring. Regarding raw materials and goods that could be more cheaply transported by water from Transylvania, Maire mentions salt, antimony, grain, tobacco, hemp, wine, horses, sheep, leather, wax, and honey. Salt played a crucial role within trade. Hungary, Slavonia, and Croatia were supplied with Transylvanian salt, the quantity delivered annually reaching 600,000 quintals. As for goods that could be transported to Transylvania by water, he mentions manufactured products, sugar, coffee, and luxury items.18

In 1772, the Office at Partoş owned 262 vessels, but the transport to Szeged (Seghedin) of the necessary 600,000 quintals of salt (30,000 tons) required at least 400 vessels. In 1778, 92 vessels were brought back from Arad to Partoş for reuse, while in 1780 the number of vessels included in the Office’s inventory reached 300.19

Measures for the Navigability of Transylvanian Rivers
in the Eighteenth Century

After Habsburg authorities took control of Transylvania, they started to draft plans to render the rivers navigable again, given that they had been used for salt transport in Roman times (106–275 AD). In 1700, Count Johann Friedrich von Seeau submitted such a plan for the Someş and Olt rivers,20 but it failed for same reason as later plans, because of a lack of qualified personnel and technology. For example, a 1771 project aimed to bring ship crews from the German states and regulate the Mureş and Arieş rivers with the help of modern machinery brought from the German states. Although the plan was approved, it was ultimately abandoned21 likely because of the devastation caused by floods that year,22 which prompted the Financial Directorate to reallocate the funds to flood relief efforts.

Throughout Maria Theresa’s reign, new river regulation projects were submitted in order to improve navigation on the Monarchy’s main rivers.23 One of them was Maire’s ambitious project to create a waterway connecting Sibiu and Trieste. The first step was to link up the Olt and Mureş rivers at Sibiu, thus creating easier access to the Danube. Then, this waterway was to be unified with another one that linked Szeged to Pest, thus allowing Austria access to West European markets by water. In Maire’s vision, a logical consequence was to link up the Mureş and Someş rivers as well, which would hasten Transylvania’s economic progress.24 Colonel Jean-Baptiste Brequin de Demenge’s 1766 plan,25 which aimed at linking the provinces of Croatia, Transylvania, Hungary, and the Banat to the Drava River in order to facilitate trade by water, was ultimately abandoned.26

According to a mercantilist-inspired transport system in Europe, navigation on internal waterways was seen as the best quality means of transportation. Certainly, transport by land was not neglected either. The developmental potential of navigation on internal waterways was especially significant in this time period. Wherever opportunities for economic development arose, the use of waterways was always taken into account. However, this development was somewhat slowed down due to the limited territory of many states, and their separation by trade barriers and customs.27

Under the influence of mercantilist theories, absolutist rulers improved transport conditions by promoting navigation on internal waterways in order to increase the economic power of their states, and started the systematic reorganization by connecting the various fluvial transport systems. Thus, in Western Europe numerous plans to regulate rivers and to build canals between the main navigable rivers were drawn up. In 1770, the Austrian government issued a navigation ordinance for the Danube (Donau-Schifffahrtsordnung) and initiated the systematic regulation of navigable rivers.28 Although certain mercantilist states also expanded their road infrastructure, in most states transport was moved on internal waterways. For instance, during the Russo-Austro-Turkish conflict, war matériel was mostly transported by water. The era of mercantilism witnessed a wave of canal building in Central Europe too. Absolute monarchs perceived transport policies, which included the planning and construction of canal networks, as a means to further unify their state. Canals were also supposed to stimulate trade and bring together economic zones. Canal building also contributed to the transformation of the landscape with the aim of achieving economic unity.29

In 1773 Count Auersperg, who was at the time Governor of Transylvania, claimed that the regulation of the three rivers would be very costly, which is why the Diet ultimately rejected the project.30 Navigation on the Mureş River was hindered by numerous obstacles that caused material and human losses. For example, in 1771 several vessels sank, and total material losses were estimated at 1,165 florins. In 1774, a tower located in the village of Folt collapsed into the river and prevented navigation. Vessel owners and inhabitants of surrounding villages were ordered to clear the riverbed of stones and fallen trees, and remove sunken vessels and rafts.31

The value of canals was recognized from the early eighteenth century when numerous plans were drawn up. Their implementation, however, generally failed due to financial constraints. In Transylvania, several military and civil engineers, such as Fischer, Croner, Mraz, and other scientists participated in the mapping of the province initiated during the reign of Joseph II. Their river measuring and mapping endeavors laid the foundations for the 1779 Mureş River regulation project.

Canal building targeted the removal of all obstacles and the creation of a safe environment for the transport of timber and salt with the new types of vessels on the Mureş River. The documents sent by Viennese Court to the Treasury and the War Council in June 1781 reveal a plan for the comprehensive regulation of the Mureş River.32 According to a 1775 report and its annexed map, which has since been lost, there were 96 meanders along this river, 87 of them quite large, which had to be partially straightened. In addition, all the points of entry and exit from the old riverbed had to be sealed off. Given that the total length of the meanders measured 3,532 lines,33 the Financial Directorate in Vienna proposed shortening it to 1,620 lines (calculated in Viennese feet34), which would cut the distance by 1,912 lines. Thus, many dangerous obstacles would be eliminated and the duration of the trip would be reduced by half. By increasing transport speed, they would be able to reduce the size of the vessels and consequently keep the amount of “material losses to a minimum, which would increase the yearly revenues of the Imperial Treasury” (“auch das Schwenden selbst des Materials auf geringerer Prozent heruntersetzt, damit dem königlichen Ärarium jährlich großen Nutzen zuwenden würde”).35

In 1786, the engineers Fischer, Mraz, and Croner were entrusted with planning the regulation of the Mureş, Someş, and Olt rivers, respectively. The greatest technical challenge that the engineers faced during the regulation of these rivers was the elimination of the numerous rocks and meanders that required many machines and specialists.36 They had to report on the obstacles that hindered navigation on the aforementioned rivers, on how they could be eliminated, and on the number of specialists that would be required to carry out the task.37

The 1779 Regulation Plan

The 1779 plan drawn up by the Salt Office envisaged the regulation of the Mureş River and the introduction of new types of softwood vessels. It was arguably one of the most ambitious landscape transformation projects in eighteenth-century Transylvania. It required the dredging and cleaning of the Mureş River, and its regulation through the elimination of its meanders, with the aim of making navigation easier. Carrying out this project would require the transfer of experts and technology and the professional training of local specialists, which counted as something new for Transylvania. The greatest hurdle, however, was technical. The main reason for commencing this project was the rising price of oak timber needed in shipbuilding due to the aforementioned over-harvesting crisis starting in the mid-eighteenth century.38 The previous source for hardwood timber had been the Hungarian state forests in the area of Arad, more precisely in Vărădia de Mureş (Waradia or Totvărădia / Tótvárad), (Fig. 1) from where it was brought to Partoş.39 The price of softwood for vessels was considerably less, and varied according to dimensions and furnishing. A softwood vessel without a roof cost 83 florins and 13½ kreutzer, while the price of one with a roof could reach 101 florins and 16¾ kreutzer. The cost price of an oak ship reached 125–140 florins.40

In December 1778, the navigation engineer Fischer, head of the Mureş River project, sent the Treasury a proposal for the building of softwood vessels. According to Fisher, the length, width, and depth of these ships would make them more efficient. They could also sail on rivers with lower water levels. The test ship measured 10 klafter in length,41 15–16 Austrian ft. in width, 2 ½ Austrian ft. in height. Soon after it was built, the Treasury approved a pilot trip on the Mureş River between Maros-Portu and Szeged.42 The minutes of the discussions following the test reveal that the engineers Fischer and Hubert were satisfied with the outcome. They argued that the vessel’s slight bent forward was no reason for concern, but still recommended that the vessels be covered with canvas instead of wood.43

Figure 1. Salt mines and waterways in Transylvania (made by Bianca Tămăşan)

 

Because the new vessels built from softwood were less resistant to accidents than those built from hardwood oak, the Treasury ordered at its meeting held in Lugoj on 13 February 1778 a new cleaning operation of the Mureş River, the demolition of floating mills, and the removal of logs, broken bridge pillars, and other elements that could potentially jeopardize navigation. At the same meeting, the Treasury also decided on what type of machinery was necessary and set the summer of 1778 as starting date of the operation so that the new ships would be serviceable by the spring of 1780.44 The engineers Samuel Nazdroviczky and Fischer, upon testing each machine, comparing prices, and evaluating maintenance costs, gave a professional opinion in favor of the windlass (Erdwinde in German) for the Transylvanian sectors of the river. According to the two engineers, this machine was used the following way: (1) if placed on a ship, it could easily be attached to any part of a log; (2) in order to better attach the logs to the machine, Wallachian workers would be hired due to their ability to stay longer underwater; (3) once the log was taken to the riverbank and attached to it, it could be conveniently redirected and easier unattached; (4) the machine’s force could be increased with the help of a tackle; (5) if the riverbank was uneven, the logs could be removed with various lifting machines, which, required more work; and (6) experience showed that with the help of the windlass even larger tree trunks with branches could be removed. Both Commissions representing the regions of the Banat and Hungary, respectively, agreed with the two engineers’ technical proposal. The wooden debris removal operation started on 11 August and ended on 1 October 1778 with the removal of 117 logs and tree branches of various sizes.45

On 27 February 1779,46 the Financial Committee in Vienna (Wiener Finanzkommission) approved the plan drawn up in Sibiu (Nagyszeben/Hermannstadt) and tasked the engineer Hubert with building the new ships projected to be 100 feet long, 15–16 feet wide, and with a total depth of 2½ feet (= 28.35/4.5–5/0.75 m.). As for the width of the Mureş River, it reached 150 paces at Alba Iulia (Gyulafehérvár), 200 paces at Deva (Déva), Şoimuş (Marossolymos), and Ilia (Marosillye), while in the flatland, as it slowed down, it reached up to 300 paces. As for its average depth in the navigable sector that started at Alba Iulia, it reached at least 1 fathom or even more.47

On 27 March 1779, the Viennese Financial Directorate set the production cost for each new ship at 83 florins and 13½ kreutzer. The timber would be brought from the Giurgeu Mountains in the Eastern Carpathians.48 The engineer Karl Loidl was tasked with building a sawmill in the mountains to mill planks and beams for shipbuilding.49 As for the building technique, the Viennese Aulic Chamber proposed the use of the same methods as navigators in Upper Austria because the Traun River had a similar course and flow speed to the Mureşin Transylvania. In addition, they recommended the adoption of Austrian shipbuilding methods and ordered the relocation of several masters from Upper Austria to Alba Iulia in order to create a shipyard.50 Finally, the Commission sanctioned the building of a road that ran parallel to the Mureş River in order to facilitate the traction of ships with the help of oxen and horses. The road was to be built with the help of peasants from villages along the river.51 With the new ships, the Transylvanian Treasury was aiming for higher revenues, given that they were more spacious, required only a small crew, and their maintenance costs were low in comparison to the older hardwood ships.

The navigation engineer Fischer was tasked with organizing the transport of logs in the river, beginning in December 1778, for the building of the new vessels. Upon conducting field research, Fischer reported first in February and then in May to the Financial Directorate that it was necessary to build a canal at the confluence between the Topliţa stream and the Mureş River. In his opinion, it would be an easy task because it merely required the removal of a few rocks that hindered transport. In addition, he also considered that in order to facilitate transport up to the sawmill at Ditrău (Ditró/Dittersdorf) (Fig. 1), it would be necessary to build a road that would cost an estimated 100 florins.52 On 23 May 1781, the Transylvanian Treasury submitted to Vienna a protocol on the cost of building the waterway on the Topliţa stream, which amounted to 633 florins. According to the same document, the logs moved on this waterway would be used to mill planks.53

This politically directed transformation of salt transport by changing the type of ships required not only the regulation of rivers, but also the dredging of riverbeds. Thus, in December 1779,54 the General Staff in Sibiu considered the possibility that the 2nd Wallachian Border Guard Regiment could take over this task on the Someş and Tisa rivers where the new ships would operate. The experience of the cleaning operation on the Mureş River from the summer and autumn of 1778,55 when an insufficient workforce was recruited from among local peasants, provided the Financial Directorate with the opportunity to make the above decision. In February 1780, they informed Colonel Enzenberg, commander of this regiment in Năsăud, that border guards could now use larger ships for salt transport on the Someş River.56

On 5 August 1780, the Financial Commission in Vienna sent their approval to the Gubernium in Sibiu of the sum of 8,760 florins for the shipyard at Maros-Portu, of which 4,261 florins were allocated for the building of 31 ships (each cost 137 florins and 47½ kreutzer). The remaining sum was allotted to auxiliary buildings.57 In addition, on 2 December 1780, the Commission allotted an extra 1,873 florins and 20 kreutzer for the construction of 10 wintering places for ships.58 According to Fischer’s plan, these places were to be built beyond the river, in an area protected from floods (Fig. 2).59

The plan followed the design of wintering places for salt transport vessels at Salzkammergut (on the Traun River, especially at Wels) conceived by the imperial and royal cameral engineer Hubert in 1776.60 Hubert had already provided technical instructions regarding these places as well as other similar designs for the region of Banat.61

The aim of this measure was to reduce travel time to Szeged by a third, which meant that each round-trip salt transport, which had required five weeks until then, would now require about three weeks without pause. This also meant that several shipments of salt could be moved by the newly-built ships over a short period of time. As a result, lower quantities of timber would be used, which would bring more revenues to the Imperial Treasury; however, the quantity of timber to be used depended on the ship’s size and furnishing. In order to build the a along the river, arable lands had to be reduced, brush and forest surplus on riverbanks had to be cut. In addition, the construction work required timber, stone, as well as skilled and manual laborers, carts, and various tools. In order to carry out the first set of requirements, the engineer Fischer made the following proposal:62 (1) landowners had to build levees and embankments wherever banks were sunken or uneven in order to protect villages and lands from floods; (2) cavities located next to riverbanks had to be filled up or crossed by a bridge; (3) brush and trees along riverbanks had to be cut; (4) garden fences along riverbanks had to be torn down so that ships could be hauled upstream; (5) mill owners had to erect tall and strong protection bars around mills, which were obstacles to navigation of rivers. In 1771, the Mureş River alone numbered 186 mills that had to be bypassed. The projected demolition of these mills caused an uproar among owners.63

Unfortunately, Fischer’s plan to render the Mureş River navigable with softwood vessels, which can be considered very ambitious for the prevailing technical conditions in Transylvania, was ultimately abandoned for lack of qualified personnel.

According to the 1779 plan to regulate the Mureş River, wherever the river had two branches, one of them had to be closed off. For this they adopted a holistic approach, meaning that every angle and aspect was taken into account, from the width, length, and depth of the waterway to safety measures for ships as well as the adjoining roads, agricultural lands, and human settlements.

While choosing the trajectory and outlining the scope of the regulation work, Fischer started from certain principles that reflected the necessity to maintain a stable riverbed: (1) respect for the natural evolution tendency of the riverbed and creation of favorable water-flow conditions; (2) preservation of floodwater flow direction and water transport capacity by avoiding flow blockages; and (3) regulation works carried out in stages by following the evolution in time and space of morphological phenomena and by avoiding unwanted effects.

As we indicated above, the works to protect the banks of the Mureş River had to be conducted according to the particularities of its flow, the necessity of these works being closely connected to the regulation solutions. Because riverbank protection works were costly as they absorbed a significant amount of building materials, the Viennese Financial Directorate wanted them reduced to the required minimum. In any case, cutting through the meander neck required at least two consolidation points (upstream and downstream). However, there was the risk that calibration works could destroy natural consolidations (Fig. 3). It was also stipulated that levees should be built in certain sections near the riverbanks for their protection.

This planned transformation of the landscape could also appear as an attempt by the Financial Directorate to improve transportation by water and riverside living conditions alike.64 In this time period, the custom of regulating internal waterways within ample projects in order to facilitate transport, to ensure protection against floods, and to prevent the outbreak of epidemic diseases was always linked to centralizing interests of state power.65 This implies the existence of a political-economic will, as well as a group of advisers and specialists that perceived the transformation of the landscape as an impetus for agriculture and for economic progress in general.

The new transformation of the landscape was based on the use of techniques and work methods theretofore unknown in Transylvania. They represented the best premise for carrying out projects on river regulations, canal building, and draining operations. The great technical projects were not carried out simply by bringing or importing know-how, but also by connecting them with institutions, scientific ideas, and technical procedures.66 A novel element of this project was that it placed the landscape within the general context of its use, thus serving economic interests, such as the promotion of transport. Secondly, it relied on extensive mapping and surveys, which helped engineers eliminate risk factors. The technical plan was accompanied by mission statements, financial proposals, as well as revenue and expenditure estimates.

Impact on Human Settlements

By building new transport routes in the era of mercantilism, the transport reorganization plan created the premise for the economic development of regions rich in raw materials or located in the proximity of waterways, also giving an impetus for the structural transformation of human settlements and landscapes alike. The fact that transportation by water played a substantial role is also demonstrated by the presence of human settlements along the rivers. Among them, those situated at each end of a route or at the intersection of major waterways and roads acquired greater significance. Because waterways were used only for a short period in a year, travelers and traders had to stop over in these settlements for a longer time and then continue their journey by land. This had a positive impact on the local economic and cultural life.

This is also how the settlement of Partoş developed. The local Naval Office contracted annually administrative personnel and ship crews, who lived in the neighborhood close to the port. Moreover, this area of town hosted many shipbuilders. There three plans for the fortress and town of Alba Iulia from this time period that describe the main salt warehouse and the shipyard, both located on the right bank of the Mureş River between the bridge over the river and the mouth of the Mureş Canal, known as the “sanitary canal” in the nineteenth century. The plans were drawn up by the Fortress’s Corps of Engineers.

Figure 4. Maros-Portu in the year 1740
(Suciu and Anghel, “Mărturii,” 367–87.)

 

The first plan was drawn up in 1740 and entitled “Situation Plan for the Alba Iulia Fortress in Transylvania” (“Situations Plan der Festung Carlsburg in Siebenbürgen”). On the south side, one can distinguish the course of the Mureş River, the bridge with the customs office, and the road that links Alba Iulia to Sibiu via Sebeş. On the same bank is also located the mouth of the Mureş Canal and the salt warehouse (Salzniederlag). The latter, comprising a total of nine buildings, stretched along the right bank of the Mureş River for around 300 meters. The buildings of the salt warehouse were placed on the western side of a rectangle (Fig. 4).

Figure 5 Maros-Portu in the year 1771
(
Muzeul Naţional al Unirii Alba Iulia, fond “Colecţia de documente,” no. 7409.)

 

The second plan was drawn up in 1771 and illustrates only the town’s main elements: streets, canals, churches, as well as the salt warehouse at Partoş. They also marked the locality Maros-Portu on the right bank of the Mureş River. Apart from the 20 houses, one can also notice that the location of the buildings of the salt warehouse is identical to that from the previous plan (Fig. 5).67

The Mureş River project was also the source of demographic growth in Topliţa. In 1750 it counted 50 households,68 and by 1785 their number reached 227, with a population of 1,470 inhabitants.69 Work at the Austrian sawmill and in timber rafting increased the town’s population as more individuals found employment there (Figs. 6 and 7).70

The River Regulation Attempt at Limba

The 1786 operation to eliminate meanders on the Mureş River started with the so-called “Limba” (The Tongue) meander, close to Alba Iulia. This operation included technical measures that Transylvanian Treasury were ultimately unable to implement properly due to lack of experience and inadequate equipment. The flawed intervention combined with eroding riverbanks resulted in the flooding of Ciugud. As a result, its population had to be evacuated and moved elsewhere.

The navigation engineer Fischer submitted to the Magistrat in Alba Iulia a formal request for the relocation of the inhabitants of Ciugud and for 300 laborers needed for the hydro-technical works.71 On June 14, 1786, during the preparation stage for this operation, Fischer was asked the following questions: “where and how was the sector of the Mureş River, that was assigned to him, navigable, if meanders prevented safe navigation, […] and whether circumstances required the employment of personnel.”72

Fischer explained that the Mureş River was navigable from Mirislău, a locality upstream from Aiud (Enyed/Strassburg am Mieresch), where navigation was surely possible in springtime, even with a 5–600 quintal cargo on a type of vessel built straight and wide in order to be useful on lower-depth waterways. On deeper waterways, such as the Danube, larger and heavier cargo ships could navigate, which was important to the economy of the province as local produce could be moved easier, safer, and in larger quantities. On the lower course of the Mureş River up to Arad or to the Tisa River, navigation was possible until June.

In relation to the numerous meanders, small islands, and other obstacles hindering easier and safer navigation, Fisher maintained that the greatest issue was the dispersal of the current. This dispersal meant that the river, at higher current velocity, rather eroded the riverbank, which consisted mostly of soft earth, than deepened the rocky riverbed. He then proposed several measures to improve the course of the Mureş River, such as the improvement of the riverbed, the building of roads with effective drainage along the riverbanks, the protection of side valleys from floods, the regulation of mills and weirs, the construction of bridges over dangerous places, and the installation of water conveyance systems or similar objects that could be useful for the local population.

For the elimination of the meander he proposed: (1) building adequate machinery for the river; (2) the prior cleaning of the riverbanks and of the river sector; (3) cutting through the neck of the meander; (4) securing the lower part of the riverbanks; (5) sealing off the free branch; and (6) eliminating the possibility of floods.

They intended to cut through the neck of the meander at the point opposite Ciugud, namely, at the village of Drâmbar (Drombár), which meant building a canal between the two points. Then, Fischer argued, the population of Ciugud had to be relocated (Fig. 8).73

In a report dated 5 April 1786, Fischer asked the Transylvanian Treasury when it could finance the improvement of navigation and hydraulic issues. He explained that, similarly to Hungary, each county should employ an engineer specialized in hydraulic issues so that several works could be executed at the same time. In addition to this, he suggested that it would be very useful if they also conducted research and drew up future improvement plans with the help of a hydro-technician who was able to implement them and who was familiar the country’s particularities as well as its problems.74 Following this request, Transylvania’s Gubernium approved on 2 July 1787 the payment of 1,397 florins and 20½ kreutzer to the Transportation Office at Partos for the execution of hydro-technical works at Ciugud.75

The resolution of these issues required the employment of experienced personnel, especially laborers who had previously worked on similar building projects, such as the improvement of road infrastructure, the renovation of public buildings, etc. These projects were ultimately abandoned, either for technical or financial reasons. The year 1786 was especially difficult for Transylvania due to a devastating earthquake,76 numerous floods, and an epizootic outbreak,77 which compelled the Gubernium in Sibiu to redirect financing towards the affected areas and to postpone the planned regulation of the Mureş River.

Three-quarters of a century later, on 6 May 1850, another project for the regulation of the Mureş River was submitted by the deputy Military Commissar of the Alba District, Dimitrie Moldovan, to the General Staff in Sibiu. The plan targeted rendering this river navigable for steamboats, but it was ultimately rejected.78 The idea of regulating the Mureş River would be reexamined almost a century later, during the communist period.

The following question arises: How did the regulatory works influence the lowland downstream settlements? As we have seen, the policies to improve transportation on the Mureş River, which included its regulation, led to the further development of the town of Alba Iulia, the prime example of this study. Similar developments can be noticed in other towns, such as Deva and Arad, while the operation near the village of Ciugud, which ended in failure, caused the relocation of its entire population. It is certain, however, that river regulation operations reduced the risk of flooding generally. Another example is the successful operation on the Târnava Mare River at Dumbrăveni (Ebesfalva in Hungarian/Elisabethstadt in German), which took place in 1771.79

Conclusions

The plans to regulate navigable rivers can be considered a novel element within the evolution of navigation on internal waterways in the early stages of Transylvania’s industrialization in late eighteenth century. Industrial growth was a decisive factor in waterway regulation and the reorganization of timber and salt transport. This induced numerous changes in the natural environment and prompted the development of human settlements.

The Mureş River plan consisted of: (1) rethinking the timber and salt transport system on the internal waterways, which was determined by the acute shortage of oak timber needed in shipbuilding; (2) building softwood vessels according to the design of those used in Upper Austria; (3) regulating the channel of the Mureş River by straightening and reinforcing its banks as well as by eliminating menders; and (4) building canals for moving timber to the specially constructed sawmills.

The following changes were made to the landscape: (1) reinforcement of riverbanks; (2) building of a road which ran parallel with the Mureş River for the traction of vessels upstream; (3) building of the sawmill at Ditrău; (4) construction of the canal at Topliţa; (5) rearrangement of the shipyard at Partoş; and (6) growth of towns and villages in the proximity of logging sites (for example Topliţa) and of the sailors’ neighborhood in Alba Iulia.

These projects aimed at reshaping the landscape and subordinating it to the economic imperatives of the Viennese Court. The centrally planned regulation of the Mureş River in Transylvania was meant to make the downstream transportation of goods (primarily salt) easier and more cost-efficient. In addition, this project was beneficial not only for the local labor market, given that the dredging, cleaning, and building works required a considerable number of skilled workers and manual laborers, but also for local industry and commerce as more goods could be moved.

Moreover, these operations had an environmental impact as they reduced ground water levels and the average discharge of the Mureş River. One should also add, however, that constant and long-lasting tree harvesting in the area and climate change, as well as increasing demand for water in the fast-growing towns and in agriculture, may have very well contributed to this.

The poor state of roads meant that the expansion of internal waterways (regulation of rivers and construction of canals) became a necessity. In comparison to roads, which became unusable in bad weather, waterways were much more reliable and cost-efficient. The latter were better suited for moving heavier cargo, especially salt. Around ports located alongside waterways, several towns grew and thrived as a result of commercial and shipping activities.

Novel for Transylvania was the dissemination of technical innovations as well as the rethinking of the shipbuilding system that was achieved by bringing specialists from Austria. There were, however, several obstacles that had to be overcome, such as cost, safety issues, and lower water depths. Revolutionary for the province was also the progress of institutional structures and infrastructure. Further improvements to infrastructure involved the facilitation of water transport through the building of a new type of vessel, adopting a new navigation system, and expanding the Maros-Portu port.

The geographic distribution of salt and timber resources required the design and promotion of new cargo vessels. Topographic difficulties and landscape particularities propelled the improvement of these means of transportation and of the infrastructure. The development of the “salt industry” led, on the other hand, to the creation of new economic centers in areas where timber was used in construction.

Towards the mid-eighteenth century, transport over waterways had become a major revenue source for the state. During this century, states were willing to invest heavily in the expansion of internal waterways and to encourage the creation of transregional waterway networks in order to move larger quantities of goods and to increase their revenues. As for Transylvania, the measures that central authorities took were revolutionary for the time since they transformed the landscape by expanding and improving transport routes and by rethinking transport over water and ways to conserve timber. According to a 1791 report, approximately 500,000 quintals of salt produced from the mines at Turda, Cojocna, and Ocna Sibiului were transported on the Mureş River annually.80

Bibliography

Archival sources

Magyar Nemzeti Levéltár Országos Levéltára [Hungarian National Archives, State Archive], Erdélyi Országos Kormányhatósági Levéltárak, Gubernium Transylvanicum levéltára, Gubernium Transylvanicum in politicis, Ügyiratok F 46 [MNL OL]

Österreichisches Staatsarchiv, Neue Hofkammer, Siebenbürgische Kammerale, Salzwesen, 198, Jahr 1779. [ÖStA, NH, SK]

Österreichisches Staatsarchiv, Neue Hofkammer, Siebenbürgische Kammerale, Salzwesen, 199, Jahr 1780.

Österreichisches Staatsarchiv, Neue Hofkammer, Siebenbürgische Kammerale, Salzwesen, 200, Jahr 1781.

Arhivele Naţionale ale României [National Archive of Romania], Cluj, Tezaurariatul Minier [ANR]

 

Printed sources and secondary literature

Armbruster, Adolf. Dacoromana-Saxonica. Bucharest: Ştiinţifică şi enciclopedică, 1980.

Bossa, Beniamin. “Transportul sării pe Mureş în sec. XVIII” [Salt transportation on the Mureş River in the eighteenth century]. Sargeţia 7 (1970): 141–49.

Dordea, Ioan. “Un proiect din anul 1790 privind reorganizarea economiei sării din Transilvania (I)” [A project from 1790 on the reorganization of the salt economy in Transylvania]. Anuarul Institutului de Istorie şi Arheologie Cluj 23 (1980): 441–57.

Dordea, Ioan. “Aspecte ale transportului sării pe Mureş în veacul al XVIII-lea” [Aspects of salt transport on the Mureş River], Sargetia 15, Deva (1981): 165–93.

Heppner, Harald. “Die Wasserstraßen und ihre Bedeutung.” In Der Weg führt über Österreich: Zur Geschichte des Verkehrs- und Nachrichtenwesens von und nach Südosteuropa (18. Jahrhundert bis zur Gegenwart), edited by Harald Heppner, 91–106. Vienna: Böhlau, 1996.

Hietzinger, Carl Bernhard Edlen von. Statistik der Militärgränze des österreichischen Kaisertums, vol. 2. Vienna: Carl Gerold, 1820.

Hoff, Karl Ernst Adolf von. Chronik der Erdbeben und Vulkan-Ausbrüche, vol. 2, 1760 bis 1805 und 1821 bis 1832. Gotha: Justus Perthes, 1841.

Király, Edit. “Die Donau ist die Form:” Strom-Diskurse in Texten und Bildern des 19. Jahrhunderts. Vienna: Böhlau, 2017.

Maire, Francois Joseph. Bemerkungen über den innern Kreislauf der Handlung in den oesterreichischen Erbstaaten. T. 1–2. Zur nöthigen Erläuterung der hydrographischen General- und Partikulärkarten von diesen Ländern oder Hauptentwurf der zu eröffnenden schiffbaren Wasserstraßen von allen Meeren Europens bis nach Wien. Straßburg, Leipzig, 1786.

Marc, Dorel. “Sisteme de transport şi de comercializare tradiţională a sării” [Traditional Salt Transportation and Marketing Systems]. In Sarea, timpul şi omul, edited by Valerii Cavruc, and Andreea Chiricescu, 152–57. Sf. Gheorghe: Muzeul Carpaţilor Răsăriteni, 2006.

Marc, Dorel. Evoluţia habitatului tradiţional în zona Topliţei Mureşului Superior (sec. XVII-XX) [Evolution of the Traditional Habitat in the Area of Topliţa on the Upper Mureş]. Tg. Mureş: Ardealul, 2009.

Marc, Dorel. “Izvoare etnografice surprinse în Conscripţia urbarială din 1785 : Ocupaţiile şi veniturile (Beneficia) satelor de pe Mureşul Superior şi Valea Gurghiului, comitatul Turda” [Ethnographic Sources Found in the 1785 Urbarial Census: Professions and Income of Villages on the Upper Mureş and in the Gurghiu Valley]. Angustia, 14, Sfântu Gheorghe (2010): 471–82.

Müller, Konrad. Siebenbürgische Wirtschaftspolitik unter Maria Theresia. Munich: R. Oldenbourg, 1961.

Prodan, David. Din istoria Transilvaniei: Studii şi evocări [From the History of Transylvania: Studies and Accounts]. Bucharest: Enciclopedică, 1991.

Rus, Dorin-Ioan. “Din istoricul societăţii de plutărit din Reghinul-Săsesc (1852–1908)” [Aspects from the History of Timber Rafting in Reghinul-Săsesc (1852–1908)]. Revista Bistriţei, 14, Bistriţa (2000): 91–95.

Rus, Dorin-Ioan Wald- und Ressourcenpolitik im Siebenbürgen des 18. Jahrhunderts. Frankfurt am Main: Peter-Lang Verlag, 2017.

Rus, Dorin-Ioan. “Böhmische und slowakische Berichte über die Waldnutzung im siebenbürgischen Bergbau (16–18. Jahrhundert).” Die Montangeschichte: Jahrbuch für die Geschichte des Berg- und Hüttenwesens, 2015–2016. (2017): 90–103.

Rus, Dorin-Ioan. “Die Überschwemmungen des Jahres 1771 in Siebenbürgen: Die Rolle des Zentrums und der Peripherie bei der Bewältigung der Krise.” Transylvanian Review 26, no. 4 (2017): 43–62.

Scholl, Lars Ulrich. Ingenieure in der Frühindustrialisierung: staatliche und private Techniker im Königreich Hannover und an der Ruhr (1815–1873). Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1978.

Schönburg-Hartenstein, Johanna and Renate, Zedinger. Jean-Baptiste Brequin (1712–1785): Ein Wissenschaftler aus Lothringen im Dienst des Wiener Hofes. Forschungen und Beiträge zur Wiener Stadtgeschichte, 42. Vienna, 2004, 69–71.

Suciu, Viorica and Anghel, Gheorghe. “Mărturii ale practicării plutăritului în Transilvania din antichitate, evul mediu şi perioada modernă: Rolul oraşului Alba Iulia în istoria plutăritului” [Evidence Regarding the Practice of Timber Rafting in Transylvania in the Antiquity, Middle Ages and the Modern Era: The Role of the City of Alba Iulia in the History of Timber Rafting]. Apulum 41, Alba Iulia (2004): 367–87.

Strider, Johann. “Ein Bericht des Fuggerschen Faktors Hans Dernschwam über den Siebenbürgischen Salzbergbau um 1528.” Ungarische Jahrbücher, 13 (1923): 260–61.

Szücs, Linda. “Auenbewirtschaftungsformen an der Theiß.” In Schauplätze und Themen der Umweltgeschichte umweltgeschichtliche: Miszellen aus dem Graduiertenkolleg, Werkstatt-bericht, edited by Bernd Hermann, and Ulrike Kruse, 237–50. Göttingen, 2010.

Trapp, Wolfgang: Kleines Handbuch der Maße, Zahlen, Gewichte und der Zeitrechnung. Stuttgart: Reclam, 1998.

Voigt, Fritz. Verkehr, vol. 2, pt. 1. Die Entwicklung des Verkehrsystems. Berlin: Fritz Voigt, 1965.

Wollmann, Volker, and Dordea, Ioan. “Transportul şi comercializarea sării din Transilvania şi Maramureş în veacul al XVIII-lea” [The Transportation and Marketing of Salt in Eighteenth-Century Transylvania and Maramureş]. Anuarul Institutului de Istorie şi Arheologie Cluj, 21 (1978): 135–71.

Wollmann, Volker. “Der siebenbürgische Bergbau im 18. Jahrhundert.” In Silber und Salz in Siebenbürgen. Bd. 1, edited by Rainer Slotta, Volker Wollmann, and Ioan Dordea, 41–59. Bochum: Deutsches Bergbaumuseum, 1999.

1 Szücs, “Auenbewirtschaftungsformen an der Theiß,” 243; Scholl, Ingenieure in der Frühindustrialisierung, 118.

2 Österreichisches Staatsarchiv, Neue Hofkammer, Siebenbürgische Kammerale, Salzwesen, 198, Year 1779: 531.

3 Ibid., 172.

4 Rus, Wald- und Ressourcenpolitik, 218–23.

5 Müller, Siebenbürgische Wirtschaftspolitik.

6 Bossa, “Transportul sării pe Mureş,” 141–49.

7 Dordea, “Un proiect din anul 1790 privind reorganizarea economiei sării,” 441–57; Dordea, “Aspecte ale transportului sării pe Mureş,” 165–93.

8 Wollmann and Dordea, “Transportul şi comercializarea sării,” 135–71.

9 Heppner, “Die Wasserstraßen und ihre Bedeutung,” 91–106.

10 Suciu and Anghel, “Mărturii ale practicării plutăritului,” 376–87.

11 Rus, “Din istoricul societăţii de plutărit din Reghinul-Săsesc (1852–1908),” 91–95.

12 Marc, “Sisteme de transport şi de comercializare tradiţională a sării,” 152–57.

13 Szücs, “Auenbewirtschaftungsformen,” 237–50.

14 Király, “Die Donau ist die Form.”

15 Strider, “Ein Bericht,” 260–61; Rus, “Böhmische und slowakische Berichte,” 93.

16 Suciu and Anghel, “Mărturii,” 373.

17 Suciu and Anghel, “Mărturii,” 374.

18 Maire, Bemerkungen, 147.

19 Suciu and Anghel, “Mărturii,” 373.

20 Wollmann, “Der siebenbürgische Bergbau,” 42.

21 Müller, Wirtschaftspolitik, 57.

22 Rus, “Die Überschwemmungen,” 43–62.

23 von Hietzinger, Statistik der Militärgränze, 82–102.

24 Maire, Bemerkungen, 80–81.

25 Schönburg-Hartenstein and Zedinger, “Jean-Baptiste Brequin,” 69–71.

26 Maire, Bemerkungen, 21.

27 Voigt, Verkehr, 240.

28 Ibid., 238.

29 Ibid., 312.

30 Müller, Wirtschaftspolitik, 57.

31 Bossa, “Transportul,” 143–44.

32 Österreichisches Staatsarchiv, Neue Hofkammer, Siebenbürgische Kammerale, Salzwesen, No. 200, Year 1781: 281.

33 The Line is a unit of length equal to 1/10 or 1/12 of an Inch.

34 In the eighteenth century, a “Viennese foot” was equal to 32,032 cm (Trapp, 1998: 229).

35 ÖStA, NH, SK, Salzwesen, 200, 1781: 289–90.

36 Müller, Wirtschaftspolitik, 57.

37 Magyar Nemzeti Levéltár Országos Levéltára, Erdélyi Országos Kormányhatósági Levéltárak, Gubernium transylvanicum levéltára, Gubernium transylvanicum in politicis, Ügyiratok F 46, 1786, No. 3997: 1–8.

38 Österreichisches Staatsarchiv, Neue Hofkammer, Siebenbürgische Kammerale, Salzwesen, 198, Jahr 1779: 169–217.

39 ÖStA, NH, SK, Salzwesen, 198, 1779: 172.

40 Ibid., 211.

41 As a unit of length, 1 klafter is equal to about 1.80 m.

42 Ibid., 24–27.

43 Ibid., 59.

44 Ibid., 28–56.

45 Ibid., 58–69.

46 ÖStA, NH, SK, Salzwesen, 198, 1779: 47.

47 Militärische Beschreibung von Hungarn / Anhang zu der Kriegs-Charte des Gross Fürstenthums Siebenbürgen. 

48 ÖStA, NH, SK, Salzwesen, 198, 1779: 169; 211.

49 Ibid., 171.

50 Ibid., 174.

51 Ibid., 194–211.

52 Ibid., 321–22.

53 ÖStA, NH, SK, Salzwesen, 200, 1781: 63–68.

54 ÖStA, NH, SK, Salzwesen, 198, 1779: 758–63.

55 Ibid., 28–56.

56 ÖStA, NH, SK, Salzwesen, 199, 1780: 42–51.

57 Ibid., 442–553.

58 Ibid., 1094–98.

59 Ibid., 1097.

60 Ibid., 1095.

61 Ibid., 1095–96.

62 ÖStA, NH, SK, Salzwesen, 200, 1781: 281–318.

63 Müller, Wirtschaftspolitik, 57.

64 Király, “Die Donau,” 30.

65 Király, “Die Donau,” 41.

66 Ibid., 43.

67 Suciu and Anghel, “Mărturii,” 375–76.

68 Marc, Evoluţia habitatului, 55.

69 Prodan, Din istoria Transilvaniei, 288.

70 Marc, “Izvoare etnografice surprinse, ” 479.

71 MNL OL F 46, 1786, No. 4544: 1–2.

72 MNL OL F 46, 1786, No. 5443: 3.

73 MNL OL F 46, 1786, No. 4544:1.

74 MNL OL F 46, 1786, No. 5443: 4–7.

75 MNL OL F 46, 1787, No. 6149: 1–7.

76 von Hoff, Chronik der Erdbeben, 74.

77 Armbruster, Dacoromana-Saxonica, 401.

78 Suciu and Anghel, “Mărturii,” 380.

79 Rus, “Die Überschwemmungen,” 43–63.

80 ANR-Cluj, collection: Tezaurariatul Minier, No. 49/1791, 23.

Fig.%201.%20Salt%20mines%20and%20waterways%20in%20Transylvania.jpg
Fig%202%20The%20meanders%20of%20River%20Mures.jpg

Figure 2. The meanders on the Mureş River

(ÖStA, NH, SK, Salzwesen, 199, no. 8, 2 December 1780.)

Fig%203%20Wintering%20places%20for%20ships.JPG

Figure 3. Wintering places for ships

(ÖStA, NH, SK, Salzwesen, 199, no. 8, 2 December 1780)

Fig%204%20Maros%20Portu%201740.jpg
Fig%205%20Maros%20Portu%201771.jpg
Fig%206%20Toplita%20during%20the%20Josephinie%20land%20survey.jpg

Figure 6. Topliţa during the Josephine land survey

(Dorel Marc, Evoluţia habitatului tradiţional în zona Topliţei Mureşului Superior (sec. XVII–XX). Tg. Mureş: Ardealul, 2009.)

Fig%207%20Toplita%20during%20the%20franciscan-josephine%20land%20survey.jpg

Figure 7. Topliţa during the Franciscan-Josephine land survey

(Personal collection)

Figure 8. “Limba” and Ciugud in the year 1741. Military map of Alba Iulia, 1741.

(Plan der Hauptvestung Carlsburg in Furstenthum Siebenburgen, I. M. Eisele, Catalogue of Count Ferenc Széchényi´s Maps and Atlases, no. 89.)

Fig%208%20Limba%20and%20Ciugud.jpg

2018_3_Segesser

pdfVolume 7 Issue 3 CONTENTS

“Fighting Where Nature Joins Forces with the Enemy:” Nature, Living Conditions, and their Representation in the War in the Alps 1915–19181

Daniel Marc Segesser

University of Bern

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First World War propaganda, but also popular movies like Luis Trenker’s Berge in Flammen, for a long time presented the image of the war in alpine territory as a place, where solitary heroes fought a war in a magnificent natural scenery that was so different from the carnage of the western front. Based on recent research that has shown that the latter was not true, the following contribution focuses on the perception and representation of nature and natural phenomena in contemporary publications, diaries, and letters from Austria, Italy, and Switzerland. It analyzes the relationship between soldiers from many countries on the one hand, and nature as well as natural phenomena such as avalanches, fog, or rain on the other. The contribution discusses the reactions of officers and soldiers to nature and the respective natural phenomena and offers new insights on everyday living conditions of officers and soldiers in a landscape with harsh conditions that had never before been a battlefield for such a prolonged period of time.

Keywords: First World War, environmental history, nature, weather conditions, Alpine territory

Slightly above the Passo dello Stelvio, close to Rifugio Garibaldi and Piz Trais Linguas, the following inscription in German as well as Hungarian can be found:

Faithful unto death to its Emperor and Apostolic King, fatherland, and home […] the IV Reserve Battalion of the 29th Hungarian Infantry Regiment under the command of Captain Kalal and Lt.-Col. Edler von Kunze gloriously and without giving way even one step defended […] the Stilfserjoch [Passo dello Stelvio] as well as the snow-covered, barren, and icy heights between the Piz Trais Linguas, the Scorluzzo, the Naglerspitze, and the Krystallkamm in the war years 1915, 1916, 1917, and 1918.2

Still today, many people passing the Passo dello Stelvio come up to this commemorative plaque, which has been moved a few meters onto Swiss territory, and lay down wreaths to honor the memory of those for whom it was erected in 1918 by the commanding officer Freiherr Moritz von Lempruch.3

Photo 1: Commemorative plaque for officers and soldiers of the IV Reserve Battalion of the 29th Hungarian Infantry Regiment on Piz Trais Linguas

(Photograph by the author, August 2017.)

Dangerous, Barren, Awesome, and Beautiful: An Introduction to Nature’s Role and Natural Phenomena in the War in the Alps 1915–18

All of this is part of an ongoing fascination amongst a large numbers of visitors to the former war zone between the Umbrail pass in the west and Mt. Krn in the east with a war that for a long time has been portrayed as an unconventional battlefield, so different from the many other fronts of the war.4 Although historians like Isabelle Brandauer, Christa Hämmerle, Marco Mondini, or Markus Wurzer have shown that life and fighting on the alpine front was not so much different from the brutal reality of other fronts,5 the majority of the literature dealing with this part of the war—published mainly by non-professional historians6—offers interpretations that stress either the heroic character of the men involved, the sacrifice they made, or the perseverance they showed. In similar ways efforts of today’s regional tourist offices present the former battlefield in several outdoor museums as an awesome experience of nature, but in which the reality of war is no longer present.7

In this context nature is usually presented simultaneously as dangerous and barren as well as awesome and beautiful, not least because it was the essential prerequisite for the existence of the mountaineer warrior, who fought out this war individually rather than as part of an indiscernible mass. The impressive natural scenery formed the aesthetic aura for a war fought out personally, with death coming suddenly and in the sight of one’s homeland’s highest summits rather than in the mud of the frontline in the west or the east. And yet, the mountainous landscape was represented as even more dangerous than the enemy. Officers and soldiers not only had to fight the enemy’s armed forces, but also the forces of nature which were even viewed as the ultimate conquest to be made in some sort of sportsmanlike alpine competition.8 In a manner similar to the description of the mountaineer warrior, who is at the same time archaic and modern, nature too is likewise described as active as well as indulgent, as both destructive and majestic and as a force, which “joins forces with the enemy.”9

This was also the way that nature was presented in wartime propaganda as well as in interwar era movies, novels, and publications. In contrast to many places on the eastern and western front as well as in the Balkans, many of the alpine areas were rather well known to the general public as a consequence of pre- and postwar tourism promotion. In contrast to other places where winter battles took place, such as the Carpathians or the Caucasus,10 it was fairly easy to get stories about this part of the war out to the public early on, a fact that has shaped the memory of the war in alpine territory up to the present. In their publications, people like Walter Schmidkunz and Luis Trenker,11 Fritz Weber,12 Gunter Langes,13 and Heinz von Lichem,14 following views common among the Deutscher und Österreichischer Alpenverein, presented a picture of the war in which the enemy on the one hand was a traitor, while on the other his mountaineering achievements had to be acknowledged.15 It is probably in this context that Lichem also claimed that according to the testimony of the surviving commanding officers, as well as of accounts of soldiers from all sides, about two-thirds of the 150,000 to 180,000 war victims of the alpine front died because of the rigors of the high altitude (including disease), with 60,000 deaths on the alpine front being attributable to avalanches alone.16 Looking at figures given by Heinrich Menger in 1919, who speaks of 2,840 dead officers and soldiers for the winter of 1916/17 for the Tyrolean and Carnic front,17 and at the official data in the official history of the Austro-Hungarian army, stating 880 dead for November and December 1916,18 this figure seems to be too high19 and may probably be attributed to the fact that—apart from statistical problems20—the impact of the environment was amplified to fit with the argument that men on the frontline were not just fighting the enemy, but an enemy far bigger, that is, nature.

It is in light of this latter question of perceptions that this contribution explores what officers and soldiers of the time wrote about nature as well as natural phenomena, such as avalanches, fog, or rain, and how they coped with weather and climate in locations where no one before had ever tried to stay for the entire year. It will not be possible to present the entirety of perceptions of nature and natural phenomena, but in exploring rarely used and partially only recently published diaries as well as letters and contemporary publications from Austria, Italy, and Switzerland that disclose natural phenomena in wartime, this contribution will attempt to give a transnational picture—and thereby try to overcome the criticism of Hans Heiss that Austria and Italy have remained in a state of friendly ignorance of each other, working back to back.21 In diaries officers and soldiers recorded their own impressions of nature over time and in real time. Either as manuscripts or in some cases as published versions diaries survived, but many were also lost.22 What is clear is that not all officers or soldiers kept diaries. Therefore only a specific extract of experiences is left to us, which often stems from people who had an affinity for writing. This latter aspect is also true in regard to the second type of source, letters written to relatives at home; although, as Mondini has shown for the Italian side, many illiterate soldiers turned to writing during the war with the help of their literate comrades.23 Contemporary publications, often written by people closely attached to official bodies such as the Austro-Hungarian Kriegspressequartier, can therefore be considered to represent the official or semi-official discourse on nature in alpine territory. In some cases—mainly in publications in newspapers—they were, however, also written to keep the home front informed and reassured. The first part of this contribution will give a quick overview on the war in alpine territory in the years 1915 to 1918 before looking at the three types of sources, in order to map out the existing presuppositions and stereotypes. A short conclusion will complete this article.

The War in the Alps, its Historiography, and its Development

So far Marco Armerio, Tait Keller, Selena Daly, Diego Leoni, and Mario Podzorski have been among the few professional historians who specifically discussed the perception of nature in their studies. Armiero and Keller claimed that as a consequence of the Great War, the “Alps were celebrated as the natural bastion of the nation, the ultimate borders of the Italian community,”24 or “a bastion for Germany and Austria […,] a national sanctuary and a ‘Volkssanatorium’ […,] where martial and mountaineering ethos [fused].”25 While Armiero mainly concentrated on the memory of the war and only included a few testimonies mainly of veterans,26 Keller’s studies contain an analysis of several contemporary sources from the war years. However, he mingles information from such sources with accounts of the interwar period, which weakens his conclusion that “soldiers on the Alpine Front felt their spirits rise when they saw the mountains” and that those “on the home front believed that the mountains aided the war effort [… giving] strength and courage.”27 In her article Daly looks at the experiences of mountain combat by Futurist Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, thereby concentrating on one specific experience.28 Leoni gives an impressive account of the daily lives of soldiers in the war in alpine territory. He makes great use of diaries and letters, but when relating to nature his focus is more on its impact than on perception.29 Podzorski analyses daily lives of Swiss soldiers in Val Müstair and on the border triangle between Austria-Hungary, Italy, and Switzerland in the region between the Punta di Rims and Piz Cotschen. He gives an impressive overview about the daily routine, sentry and patrols, construction work, cutting wood, repairing roads, accommodation, food and drink, leisure time, health issues and hygiene, contacts with soldiers from the belligerents, and last but not least, nature (as weather and landscape). His study is, however, limited to Switzerland, which was neutral and whose military therefore only had a limited experience of the war itself in the form of border violations and the watching of operations of the belligerents.30

The war in the Alps formally began on May 23, 1915 with Italy’s declaration of war against Austria-Hungary. The largest part of the frontline between the Passo dello Stelvio in the West and Tolmin in the East consisted of mountainous terrain with heights mainly between 1,000 and 2,000 meters above sea level, but sometimes reaching almost 4,000 meters in the Ortles region and 3,000 meters in the Dolomites.31 Operations along the alpine border did not, however, begin immediately, although some of the troops had been deployed to their positions before the war began.32 The Italian High Command had decided to proceed cautiously on this part of the front and rather concentrate on offensives in the lower Isonzo/Soça region, where it believed the chances for a breakthrough were best.33 For sure, this was largely due to the fact that up to the 1880s the military high command had not considered alpine territory a possible battleground, and consequently fighting in high altitude was to a large extent a novelty to modern warfare.34 Already long before the war the Austrian military high command had decided to build fortresses at strategic positions blocking the entry into the main valleys of Trentino, Tyrol, and Carinthia, even if this meant giving up some parts of its territory, such as Cortina d’Ampezzo.35 Although two major offensives—the so-called Austro-Hungarian “Strafexpedition” in 191636 and the battle of the Ortigara in 191737—were mounted, for two years in its eastern part and three years in its western part the frontline did not change much until the end of the war. Soldiers were compelled to fight and survive year-round in an environment in which human beings usually only lived and came into contact for a very short part of the year.38 At the beginning of the war the terrain was mostly unknown to the soldiers deployed into these areas and there had been almost no military training for fighting and surviving in high altitude before 1914. On either side, the number of troops who even to a small extent had been trained for mountain warfare was small. Troops therefore at first had to adapt to this new way of warfare, a fact that offered opportunities for the mythologizing of figures like mountain guide Sepp Innerkofler. Over time, however, technology took over also in high altitude and officers as well as soldiers adapted to a way of warfare previously unknown, but no less brutal than on the western front.39

Making Sense of the War and its Natural Environment in Official and Semi-official Publications

Not least in view of the growing number of victims caused by the war, but mainly because by the end of 1914 it became clear that this global war was not going to be short, governments of all the major belligerents actively began to make sense of the war. In the case of Italy the Habsburg authorities used the image of the traitor, who had to be fought on the heights of one’s native mountains, while for Italy the war against the Danube monarchy was presented as one of freeing Trento and Trieste from the yoke of the tyrant in Vienna.40 This propagandistic effort did not remain without effect on the officers and soldiers in the frontline, although not all of them were responsive in the same manner. Amongst those using demeaning terms for the enemy was Karl Ausserhofer, who spoke of “Bölz” or “Katzelmacher” in his diary when referring to Italians.41 Even more explicit was Franz Josef Krug, who specifically called the Italians “traitors” and “greedy for booty.” They would, however, never be able to tear down this mountain rampart that was well defended against the “archenemy.”42 Karl Hane,43 Walter Schmidkunz,44 Emilio Campi,45 and Nicola Ragucci46 on the other hand avoided demeaning terms and only spoke of the enemy, the “Italians” or the “Austrians,” respectively. Ragucci went a little further, eulogizing his own soldiers as “soldiers that the world ignores […]! Unknown heroes! Worthy descendants of ancient Rome!”47

In contrast to many others, writers and artists were often able to avoid being recruited as frontline troops. Instead they served as official and semi-official war correspondents, photographers, and painters and became part of the propaganda effort of the belligerents.48 In this function they published realistic, fictitious, or semi-fictitious reports about the war, mainly with the aim to reassure the population at home that all was well and that, if men fell, they had given their lives for a good cause. Of course the primarily male reporters were not entirely free in what they were writing, but in regard to their representations of nature there was some leeway as the following analysis will show. The authors chosen all grew up in middle-class families and were officials, professional officers, teachers, or journalists. As such they were most certainly influenced by the positive and often nation-centric view of alpine nature that was dominant among the bourgeoisie of many European countries.49

It comes as no surprise that the mountaineer Walter Schmidkunz, who was an active member of the Deutsch-Österreichischer Alpenverein as well as the Wandervogel-Bewegung,50 was amongst those whose description of nature and natural phenomena was most pronounced. Being a war correspondent of the Kriegspressequartier between August 1917 and October 1918, his book Der Kampf über den Gletschern was published in three editions between 1917 and 1918. He opened with romantic language, speaking of the “deserted wilderness made up of snow and granite,” of the “icy heart of the Adamello,” of a spuming stream, where bear and fox say goodnight to each other, or of the eternal mountains,51 only to continue with the weeks of wet and cold, the night of a stormy foehn, fog, avalanches, hunger not quenched by a hunted chamois buck, or the difficulties of discerning an enemy attack from noises of natural phenomena, such as the falling of a rock, or the light of a star from that of an enemy lantern.52 Schmidkunzen’s presentation of living and fighting in high altitude was ambivalent, showing both nature’s splendors as well as its dangers, but of course his chapters, which he wrote as if he had been present himself in the actions he described, always ended on a positive note such as a sunrise, which brought back warmth to freezing soldiers, whose cry of joy told nature as well as the enemy that they were still in control.53

In a similar manner popular writer Franz Karl Ginzkey54 spoke of the “romantic surging of valleys and heights, half flogged by rain, half kissed by the sun,”55 the “brilliance of […] the hilly high plateau of Folgaria,”56 or the beauty of mountains like the Rosengarten and the Latemar,57 only to describe a “witches’ cauldron full of uncertainty and lurking death”58 as well as emplacements reclaimed by hard labor out of solid rock. In this latter case man and nature are combined by Ginzkey to create a bulwark that men never could have built themselves.59 The bulwark or mountain rampart was also an important symbol that Franz Joseph Krug used. He was a former editor of the Grazer Tagblatt and an officer from the frontline in Carinthia. Supported by the command of the 10th Army and the Karnisch-Julische Kriegszeitung, he was very eager to tell the people at home about the so-called silent front in the Carnic Alps, where heroic soldiers stopped the enemy from entering the homeland, while at the same time fighting the forces of nature. In this “unique double war” against the enemy as well as against the “adverse forces of nature in high-altitude mountains,” a large number of “maximum performances” were necessary not only to “wage war against the archenemy, but also against the tremendous forces of nature in winter.”60 Krug, however, not only pointed to the heroic deeds of soldiers and officers in difficult circumstances, but also mentioned the fact that every benefit had been drawn from engineering, in order to enable officers and soldiers to wage war.61 Visiting Swiss Colonel Karl Müller,62 the German director of the Alpine Museum in Munich Carl Müller, and Filippo Tommaso Marinetti were even more fascinated by the way modern (and urban) technology worked in the mountains and how infrastructure originally built for tourists could now be used for wartime purposes.63 For Carl Müller the war and its technology was able to overcome problems that had seemed insurmountable in peacetime:

 

The war in alpine territory has become lord over [all the problems]; there are no constraints and there is no resistance. Using the most refined resources of technology, but also the help of the simple power of untiring human hands supported by ordinary tools, but animated by formidable energy [the war in alpine territory] has subdued steep pinnacles as well as rugged glaciers and made them subservient to man, without taking account of the casualties it takes and despite the fact that subjugated nature does not want to acquiesce to the yoke and again and again revolts against its conquerors, destroys their works often enough, and tries to take revenge on body and life of those who try to enslave it.64

To some extent Müller’s words resembled those of Marinetti, who in a much more ideologically oriented language, also tried to “enslave the mountains to Futurist ideals [and] visions of industrialised modernity.”65

Marinetti also tried to exploit the positive associations that were attributed to the Italian alpine soldiers, the so-called Alpini, equalizing the efforts of the Volunteer Cyclists, to whom he belonged, with those of the venerated Alpini, who were the protagonists of “a warrior myth” because they were “descendant[s] of mountain stock, which allows only the strongest, the most able and most determined to survive.”66 Amongst those praising the Alpini to the utmost was Cesare Battisti, a former deputy of the Cisleithanian Reichsrat, who fought on the Italian side, before being caught and executed in Trento in July 1916 for high treason. For him

 

mountaineers and mountains form just one thing. The terrain merges with the people. You will find thousands of men from the plains, who have never paid any attention to the form of the terrain, who do not know six inches of earth without pavement; but the mountaineer has a feeling for the mountain, he has a geographic sense of the area he lives in. […] An Alpino from Valtellina, who explained to his comrades the reasons for war, said: “Let us go to liberate our waters.” Do we really have to tolerate that the sources of our rivers are in the hands of the enemy?67

 

Battisti’s aim was to show that these soldiers, growing out of a different community, loved their country and their people, but nevertheless remained a harmonic family, in which the person was more important than his military function. It was the alpine environment that generated such a quality within the men of the Alpini battalions.68 Battisti was not alone in this assessment. Between 1915 and 1917 the Italian high command almost tripled the number of Alpini battalions and also created a substantial number of new mountain artillery batteries to support them. Nevertheless it proved unable to use these valued special forces in a manner adapted to warfare in the mountains. Except for their success in taking Mt. Krn (Monte Nero) in June 1915, the Alpini failed as much as the infantry along the Isonzo/Soça Valley.69 The myth nevertheless remained intact. Not least therefore the Futurist Marinetti stressed the fact that his unit survived the same conditions with less supplies than the Alpini, implying that he and his unit were able to overcome even greater hardships. Marinetti’s major aim in this context was to escape from the perception of futurism as a preserve of the urban middle class and to align himself with the simplicity of the common soldier, with whom a majority of Italians seemed to sympathize. At the same time he tried to prove that “industrialised modernity” was still superior to nature.70

While Schmidkunz, Ginzkey, and both Müllers had been part of an orchestrated propaganda effort of the belligerents and Marinetti as well as Battisti tried to prove their irredentist credentials, Jakob Heer’s texts were published out of a different motivation. He was a teacher and part of the Infantry Battalion 85 from Glarus, which was stationed in different parts of Switzerland to guard its mountainous border.71 The publication of his texts in the local newspaper Glarner Nachrichten aimed to inform and put at ease relatives back home as to the fate of their loved ones, who had to serve in an unfamiliar environment.72 Heer generally presented an ideal picture of nature, pointing to the echo of cowbells, the romantic mountain landscape, the picturesque and monumental setting, magnificent air, skiing competitions, or even the great number of very old Swiss stone pines, left in place to protect the valley from falling rocks and avalanches.73 Sometimes, however, Heer also considered real war, like when throwing stones down a slope, even though there were no enemy troops there;74 when he grumbled about the weather, referred to historical figures like Jürg Jenatsch and writers like Conrad Ferdinand Meyer, or criticized the fact that the local population had used up natural resources such as wood to an extent that was detrimental to society.75 When called upon not to write about positive aspects only, Heer stressed that Swiss soldiers had no reason to complain. They should not forget their privileged situation, living in peace in the midst of a terrible war.76 In September 1916 Heer came close to the battlefield at the Passo dello Stelvio and was rather depressed when he pondered the fate and living conditions of Austrian and Italian soldiers. He therefore showed great sympathy for refugees and deserters, offering them bread and cheese.77

Joining Forces with the Enemy? Nature and Natural Phenomena in Wartime Diaries from Austria and Italy

In contrast to contemporary publications—whether government-inspired or otherwise—war diaries do not contain that many reflected accounts, but can be considered self-testimonies written shortly after events, forming a sequence of notes, thoughts, and moments summing up what happened. As a consequence mental leaps and gaps are often present in diaries, unless their authors edited or changed them after the war.78 Five diaries, by Karl Ausserhofer, Emilio Campi, Karl Hane, Joseph Mörwald and Nicola Ragucci, were chosen for this study.79 Each has been edited by a professional historian and contains at least a short introduction about the authors as well as on the state of the diaries. This helps to understand the context in which the diaries came into existence and gives an idea about the way the authors approached nature and what interpretative patterns influenced them.

Three of the diaries are from Austria and two from Italy. Ausserhofer was a farmer from South Tyrol born in 1880. Due to his age and his being a Landsturmmann, he was not sent to the eastern front in 1914, but remained on duty close to his hometown, before being assigned to the Dolomite front (Fanes Valley, Son Pouses, Lagazuoi, Asiago) for the remainder of the war (1915–18).80 Campi was a military chaplain with the battalion Pieve di Cadore, a local unit from the alpine zone in Italy, which formed part of the 7th Alpini Regiment. Campi had been born in 1888, consecrated as a priest in 1911 and sent from his parish in the region of Verona to his new position in the Cadore, where he often stayed with his troops close to the frontline.81 Hane was a teacher from Vorarlberg, born in 1892, who served as a cadet and non-commissioned officer in the area between Rovereto and Lavarone.82 Mörwald was a gardener from Upper Austria born in 1894, recruited into the artillery and on his way to the eastern front, when his unit was redeployed to the region around the Plöckenpass in the Carnic Alps, where he served until the armies of the central powers broke through at Caporetto/Kobarid in October/November 1917.83 Ragucci was a medical doctor and pharmacist from Naples. He was the oldest of the diarists, born in 1863. In 1915 he was called up again and served as a major in the Italian medical corps, first in Aversa and Naples, before being sent to the Field Hospital 040 in Cortina d’Ampezzo in August 1916. While neither Ausserhofer nor Mörwald had any intellectual background,84 Ragucci was friends with some writers and painters like Edmondo de Amicis and Luigi de Luca, a fact that very probably influenced the writing of his diary, which is more deliberative than those of Ausserhofer and Mörwald.85 As a priest and a teacher respectively, Campi and Hane had some intellectual background, which may explain their reflection, though neither of them at the time had connections beyond local intellectuals.86

In contrast to wartime publications, diaries were much less coherent and there was a considerable fluctuation in length as well as in the numbers of entries. Using the example of Karl Ausserhofer’s diary, Sigrid Wisthaler has shown that the fluctuation in entries on the one hand depended on the conditions at the front. In October and November 1916, Ausserhofer was confronted with an extremely cold autumn and early winter, a fact that explains why his entries for that period were very short. Similarly and probably because of lack of supplies in April and May 1918, Ausserhofer stopped making daily notes and often summarized events for several days in one entry.87 Wisthaler also tried to assign Ausserhofer’s entries to different categories such as weather, military service, food and leisure time, perception of the enemy, self-perception, clothing, hygiene and accommodation, emotions, sickness and death, family and civilian population, depiction of landscape, hope for the future, comrades, and religion. According to her calculation, the first two ranked highest for the period that Ausserhofer spent in the frontline, while food and leisure time, emotions, sickness and death, family and civilian population, and hope for the future were aspects that Ausserhofer mainly discussed in his diary when away from the front in military hospitals, during rehabilitation, or while on leave. For Wisthaler, it is clear that the particular context was an essential prerequisite to explain the topics that Ausserhofer wrote about. Weather phenomena were essential, while he was in the frontline, as they were a precondition for surviving in high altitude.88

With the exception of the case of Karl Hane, where some information is available,89 no such detailed analysis exists for the other diaries, but the tendency is the same. Fog, rain, hail, and (for those who were in the mountains during winter) snow were among the natural phenomena that Hane most often mentioned, not least because several times he had to sleep in wet clothes or could not sleep at all.90 Campi and Mörwald also complained about bad and especially cold weather when it kept on going like this for over a month up in the mountains.91 Hane, Mörwald, and Campi were therefore very glad when “eventually good weather”92 eased the situation and hoped it would stay that way for at least some time.93 In such situations they also spoke of (a most) splendid weather.94 Because of his serving in a field hospital, Ragucci’s notes tend to be a little more deliberative. Nevertheless, apart from talking about the wounded—sometimes at length, especially when he felt very much with a specific person95—the weather also took up a large share of his entries. As he was serving through the harsh winter of 1916–17,96 Ragucci’s emphasis was most often on the massive snowfall in and around Cortina d’Ampezzo. This was especially the case in November and December 1916, when Ragucci was not only preoccupied with the communications of Cortina, but when he also wondered about the height of snow that had amassed on the barracks of the Alpini close to the peaks of the Tofane.97 While in such contexts Mörwald mainly referred to the shoveling of the snow,98 Ragucci found time to reflect on it, calling it “awesome and impressive,” when he found that 1.25 meters of snow had accumulated on his terrace overnight.99 He also spoke of the silver slopes of the valley and the sea of snow that covered the area around his hospital.100

In such circumstances of heavy snowfall, numerous avalanches came crashing down. Such was the case in February and March as well as November and December 1916. Mörwald called this a “terrible snow weather,” or the “terror of winter,” and described the “thundering and rolling” of avalanches.101 Ausserhofer, whose diary for February–March 1916 is lost and who was on leave from 12 November 1916 onwards,102 nevertheless already spoke of the “lasting bad weather” and “a terrible mass of snow,” with avalanches that killed 6 people of his company and many more in other places during that early period.103 Campi also commented on snowfall, specifically in September, October, and December 1915 as well as February and March 1916, which caused frostbite and made paths difficult,104 but also offered a lovely panorama.105 Although he was hampered by heavy winds, dense snowfall, and barren paths, Campi decided to spend Christmas 1915 amongst his troops and in the proximity of the Zygismondi cabin. He recorded that in spite of the difficult conditions, he was glad to have shared this moment with men on the frontline rather than staying in his comfortable hotel room.106 In February and March 1916 Campi’s desire to be close to his soldiers made life very difficult. At first he had to bury a number of soldiers that had been killed by the avalanches that had overwhelmed a number of barracks and emplacements.107 Finally he contracted a cough, a headache, and high fever in the same area where he had spent Christmas.108 He could not be evacuated, as neither the paths were open nor was the cable car operating: “we are blocked by snow, without food, without wood, the mail has neither reached us nor departed. […] Our situation becomes more critical and more dangerous as time goes by.”109 Only on 16 March could he finally leave the mountains.110

Campi was not the only one affected so closely by avalanches. Mörwald had similar experiences in February–March as well as December 1916, suffering from frostbite that could not be treated, as snowfall and avalanches blocked his unit for almost 10 days.111 In December 1916 Mörwald just returned from his leave when he was again caught in heavy snowfall, avalanches having destroyed some barracks and the unit’s two kitchens.112 The next day Mörwald and his comrades unsuccessfully tried to dig out their gun that had been buried in snow. The day after an avalanche hit part of their camp, and Mörwald and his comrades succeeded in saving 24 soldiers and their NCOs. They could not, however, save another man who was stuck on a slope on the other part of the valley. It was extremely difficult for Mörwald and his comrades to hear the cries for help and not be able to do anything for that man, who finally died during the following night.113 Avalanches did of course not come down as far as Cortina, but nevertheless Ragucci was also affected by their outcome, as many of the wounded were transported to his hospital. Without knowing what had already happened, on 13 December 1916 Ragucci commented in his diary on the “great proof of courage and readiness to make sacrifices that the marvelous young men have to submit to in this horrible period. Today it is not the ordinary enemy that you are fighting, but today you are fighting the snow; you don’t seize the gun, but the best weapon currently is the shovel.”114 Late that night Ragucci was informed by the divisional command that a high number of wounded would be transported to his hospital, the first reaching it the following day with ventral bruises and bone fractures. Transport proved difficult, however, especially as the snowfall continued. Ragucci was therefore very pleased that the snowfall stopped during the evening of 15 December, and for the following day he spoke of “splendid weather,” which was a great respite for him.115

Snowfall and rain, however, were not the only weather that distressed officers and soldiers. They also had to be on their guard against fog, or more specifically what the fog could hide. In Ausserhofer’s dairy we read of the opportunities afforded to the enemy to approach the emplacements without being seen.116 For Mörwald, bad weather such as fog could, however, also be a protection in a difficult situation such as after the fall of the summit of the Cellon just above his emplacement at the end of June 1916.117 Ragucci’s description of nature—such as in the case of the defiant and solemn peaks of the Cinque Torri118—was closer to that of the published sources discussed above. On the other hand he was much closer to death in his hospital and his descriptions of dying soldiers are much longer than those of either Ausserhofer, Hane, or Mörwald.119 As a priest Campi also had to cope with dead officers and soldiers fairly often, but he usually referred to them in a religious manner, because this was as much his job as his vocation.120

There were, however, experiences of nature that were also quite exceptional. Amongst them there is Campi’s climbing of the Cima Undici on 13 May 1916 and his celebrating mass on the Terza Tofana on 17 September of the same year.121 Hane’s exceptional experience with nature was quite unique, and none of the others analyzed here seem to have experienced anything like it. He was struck by a lightning and gave a very detailed description of what happened. Although Hane’s record of the event was written down in hindsight, when he was in hospital, his account is very detailed, which is rather unusual for his entries. As a rule Ausserhofer, Campi, and Mörwald only gave short accounts of storms or heavy rain, mentioning at most the severity of the storm or the fact that they got wet.122 The same was true of Hane, at least up to 11 July 1916.123 That day was very hot and for Hane very dull, that is, until he saw a storm coming from Monte Zugna. He tried to turn his tent canvas into a raincoat. While calling on his officer cadet to turn off the telephone, he was struck by lightning, which he experienced as:

 

a loud noise, a strong shock onto my knee, and a feeling as if someone had been cruising on the skin of my feet with a red-hot iron. From the pain I cried out loudly. The foot was lame, but soon recovered some strength. The grass around us was on fire. The officer cadet dead. […]. Horrible! I am saved! What fortune! But pain! […]. The officer cadet held the shell of the telephone in his hand when the lightning went through his head. He cried: “Extinguish the fire, I am burning!” Then he turned pale and was dead! I remained conscious. The lightning went through my loaded gun, but it did not go off, as Dobmayer [a good friend of Hane] later found out, looking at the surface quality you could just see where the lighting had gone down, and then passed onto my knee. […] My coat and jacket have a small hole, just as big as a Heller coin. Trousers, underpants, shirt, and leggings were in tatters, charred and burnt from knee to hip.124

Hane was finally evacuated to hospital, where he had to undergo a long treatment, because large parts of his skin had been burnt. He therefore never returned to the front line, and like Ausserhofer did not talk about the natural conditions or natural phenomena while in hospital or in rehabilitation.125

The Dwindling of the Image of the Magnificent Alps: Wartime Natural Phenomena in Exemplary Letters from the Frontline

Like diaries, letters are also a form of self-testimony, but in contrast to the former they have a specific addressee, are not for the writer alone, and usually reflect on what he (or she) can tell the recipient.126 As letters were less often preserved than diaries,127 this contribution will only focus on a few of them written by German artillery captain Carl Franz Rose to his wife and children.128 Rose was sent in 1915 to the Italian front as part of the German Alpenkorps to support the weak Austro-Hungarian artillery units, first on the plateau of Lavarone, then in Sesto, and finally until January 1916 in Corvara. Like Schmidkunz, Rose was also a mountaineer and therefore showed a strong love of nature.129 This became very clear already in his first letter of 2 June 1915, where he commented on the “magnificent alps [… with] fine cows […] luscious meadows [and a] splendor of flowers.”130 Nature was glorious, all the rest—especially food and the Austrian comrades—lukewarm.131 In letters to his wife and his son Heinz, he spoke of the “superb Dolomites” that the two would have to come to see after the war. Rose, however, also mentioned how dangerous as well as difficult fighting in high altitude was, and how well the horses and mules served the troops.132 Nevertheless the constant climbing was tiring and Rose especially disliked the cold nights and bad weather. He was therefore glad that as an officer he did not have to stay outside most nights,133 and not very happy when he learnt that he would have to stay in the mountains in winter. Rose’s conviction that the war was a good thing waned more and more: “[It is] dreadful being so alone, almost impossible to bear. And now it looks as if this is going to continue for a long time! It seems that things do not go according to the will of the High Council [the German government], as I was told in Berlin back then. This is a misery and I will not take part in this for much longer.”134

He nevertheless accepted it and asked his wife to send him the necessary clothing.135 With some irony he commented that “men from the flat country became alpine mountaineers, learning to ski,” only to complain about the large quantities of snow as well as the problems with heating the provisional dwellings that had been set up.136

Conclusion

In conclusion, you can state that the experience of nature and everyday life in the war in alpine territory was very complex and diverse, but also to a considerable extent influenced by presuppositions and stereotypes. Publicly—and this later became the master narrative—many stressed the splendor of the mountains and the way in which mountains, though dangerous, became symbols of national defense that could in some cases even tangibly support those fighting in high altitude. Carl Franz Rose is a good example of a man who came to the mountains with a romantic view and told his family about the monumentality of the alpine scenery. In his case it took some time to realize and describe also the negative aspects of a life at high altitude, in the cold, with fog, rain, and snow. Ragucci’s testimony was quite similar, and as he was always able to return to his hospital, a former grand hotel, his experience of nature and weather conditions was less negative over the long term than that of Rose. Men like Ausserhofer, Hane, and Mörwald were less deliberative. They almost never talked about the splendor of the mountains. Their eyes were fixed on everyday fighting and the weather—good weather giving respite, bad weather making life even more miserable. There are several essential factors that explain their ambivalent representations of nature: class, intellectual connections, upbringing, education, and personal attitudes; the daily changing conditions; and the various contexts behind why all these men wrote. Further research is necessary to verify the findings of this exemplary study. By analyzing a more important number of contemporary documents and linking them more closely to the existing master narrative in the current historiography, it will then be possible to gain a more sophisticated understanding of a theatre of war that was as much different as it was similar to the other fronts in this global war. In this context it is important to be more aware of the diverse perceptions and understandings of nature in a war where nature itself seemed to have joined forces with the enemy.

 

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1 I thank Oswald Überegger and the two anonymous reviewers for their comments on an earlier draft of this article. They have helped me to improve this contribution.

2 Cf. Image 1: All translations from German and Italian are by the author.

3 Accola, Der militärhistorische Wanderweg Stelvio-Umbrail, 57–58.

4 Überegger, Erinnerungskriege, 235. Cf. recently Reis Schweizer, “Ein Krieg in Eis und Schnee,” 6–7.

5 Brandauer, “Kriegserfahrungen: Soldaten im Gebirgskrieg,” 385–400; Hämmerle, “Opferhelden? Zur Geschichte der k.u.k. Soldaten an der Südwestfront,” 155–80; Mondini, “Kriegführung,” 367–84; Wurzer, “Der Dolomitenkämpfer Sepp Innerkofler,” 371–85.

6 On the co-operation of historians on all levels cf. Segesser, “Wellen der Erinnerung und der Analyse,” 46.

7 Überegger, Erinnerungskriege, 235–36; Rapp, “The Last Frontiers,” 231–47.

8 Überegger, Erinnerungskriege, 248–49; Günther, Alpine Quergänge, 258–62.

9 “Italy’s Heroic Campaign: Fighting where nature joins forces with the enemy,” The New York Herald (European Edition), March 12, 1916, 3.

10 Cf. Tunstall, Blood on the Snow and Ford, Eden to Armageddon, 121–37.

11 Trenker, Kampf in den Bergen. As he made it clear in his preface Trenker published the book in collaboration with Walter Schmidkunz, whose wartime publications will be discussed below. This work formed the basis of Trenker’s movie, which bears the same title. Cf. Alexander, “Der Dolomitenkrieg im ‘Tiroler’ Film,” 228–37.

12 Weber, Feuer auf den Gipfeln.

13 Langes, Die Front in Fels und Eis. The first edition was published in 1932.

14 His major work is Lichem, Krieg in den Alpen 1915–1918.

15 Rotte, “Politische Ideologie und alpinistische Ideale,” 130–40.

16 Lichem, Krieg in den Alpen 1915–1918, vol. 2, 142 and vol. 3, 109–10. For figures on victims on the alpine front in general cf. Rotte, “Politische Ideologie und alpinistische Ideale,” 138.

17 Menger, “Alpenverein und Weltkrieg,” 185.

18 Glaise-Horstenau, Das Kriegsjahr 1916: Zweiter Teil, 700.

19 Cf. Brugnara et al., December 1916, 1–2.

20 Mortara, La Salute Pubblica in Italia, 20–26; Isnenghi and Rochat, La Grande Guerra, 165–71; Leoni, La guerra verticale, 468 (footnote 22).

21 Heiss, “Rücken an Rücken,” 101. Kos, Review of Krieg in den Alpen, 261–62 also wonders to what extent the contributors from Austria and Italy really took notice of each other’s research.

22 Such was the case of Moritz Freiherr von Lempruch, whose diaries, as probably many others, were lost in the last and chaotic days of the war. Lempruch, Der König der Deutschen Alpen, 2. In other and probably the majority of cases the reason, why the diaries were lost is unknown. Some are also still privately held and therefore not easily accessible. Cf. Wisthaler, Karl Ausserhofer, 8 and Grote, “‘Mir geht es gut und ich hoffe dasselbe von dir sagen zu können’,” 20.

23 Mondini, “Papierhelden,” 186–88. Letters were, however, less often preserved than diaries. Cf. Wisthaler, Karl Ausserhofer, 16.

24 Armiero, A Rugged Nation, 87

25 Keller, “The Mountains Roar,” 268. and 270.

26 One exception was a quote from Cesare Battisti that will be discussed below. Cf. Armiero, A Rugged Nation, 98.

27 Keller, “The Mountains Roar,” 268; Keller, Apostles of the Alps, 89–118.

28 Selena Daly, “’The Futurist mountains’,” 323–38.

29 Leoni, La Guerra Verticale, 126–211.

30 Podzorski, “Kriegsalltag und Kriegserfahrungen von Schweizer Soldaten,” 87–124.

31 Jordan, Krieg um die Alpen, 87–98.

32 Schmidkunz, Der Kampf über den Gletschern, 7–10.

33 Isnenghi and Rochat, La Grande Guerra, 147–57.

34 Isnenghi and Rochat, La Grande Guerra, 159–60; Leoni, La Guerra Verticale, 39–51.

35 Jordan, Krieg um die Alpen, 130–41; Schmidl, “Kriegführung,” 357.

36 Artl, Die “Strafexpedition.”

37 Pieropan, Ortigara 1917.

38 The extended period of time spent in these harsh conditions made the experience on the Alpine front different from that of other mountainous theatres of war mentioned above in Tunstall, Blood on the Snow or Ford, Eden to Armageddon, 121–37.

39 Hämmerle, “‘Es ist immer der Mann, der den Kampf entscheidet und nicht die Waffe …’,” 42–43; Leoni, La Guerra Verticale, 131–44; Menger, “Alpenverein und Weltkrieg,” 171–72; Überegger, Erinnerungskriege, 243–45; Wurzer, “Dolomitenkämpfer,” 371–85.

40 Procacci, “L’Italia nella Grande Guerra,” 8; Überegger, Erinnerungskriege, 237–38.

41 Ausserhofer Diary, e.g. June 23, 29 and 30, July, 6 to 9, August 16, or September 3, 1915 for “Bölz” and July 10, 19 and 20, August 5, or September 4, 1915 for “Katzelmacher;” Wisthaler, Karl Ausserhofer, 112–41. Cf. ibid., 45 for an explanation of the two terms.

42 Krug, Alpenkrieg, 5, 14, 15, 17–18, 21 and 28.

43 Hane Diary, e.g. May 1, 15, 16, 22, 23, 26 and 28, June 1, 4, 7, 10, 13, 15, 25, 28 and 29, July 3, 5 and 9, 1916. On May 24 and 30 as well as on June 8 and 9, Hane used the term “Welsche,” which for some was demeaning, but probably not to Hane. Only Battisti is called a traitor on July 9, 1916. Tschaikner, “Kriegstagebuch,” 51–52 and 63–78.

44 In Schmidkunz, Der Kampf über den Gletschern the enemy is almost absent except for a mention on 14.

45 Campi Diary, e.g. June 7, 9 and 16, July 7, 11 and 22, and August 4, 6, 18, 22, 26, 27 and 31, 1915. Magrin and Fiorin, Il cappellano del Cadore, 93–113.

46 Ragucci Diary, e.g. August 29, September 12, 19, 24 and 25, and November 2, 1916. Ragucci, Ospedale, 16–44. It is not surprising that Ragucci mentions the enemy the least, because as a medical doctor in a military hospital he was not close to the frontline.

47 Ragucci Diary, October 20, 1916. Ragucci, Ospedale, 30.

48 For Austria cf. Reichel, “Pressearbeit ist Propagandaarbeit,” 67–74.

49 Cf. Mathieu, Die Alpen, 138–65.

50 Grimm, “Schmidkunz, Walter.”

51 Schmidkunz, Der Kampf über den Gletschern, 8, 20.

52 Ibid., 9–10, 14, 17

53 Ibid., 20–22.

54 Cf. Atze, “Franz Carl Ginzkey reitet für Österreich,” 194–207.

55 Ginzkey, Die Front in Tirol, 30.

56 Ibid., 37.

57 Ibid., 64.

58 Ibid., 62.

59 Ibid., 30–31.

60 Krug, Alpenkrieg, 5, 20–21.

61 Ibid., 19.

62 Cf. “Totenschau Schweizer Historiker,” 209.

63 Müller, An der Kampffront in Südtirol, 21–22, 27 and 78–80; Müller, “Von den Wundern der Südfront,” 150–56; Daly, “The Futurist mountains,” 327–31.

64 Müller, “Von den Wundern der Südfront,” 150.

65 Daly, “The Futurist mountains,” 328.

66 Daly, “The Futurist mountains,” 332. quoting Mondini, Alpini, viii.

67 Battisti, Gli Alpini, 30–31. The translation of the author differs slightly from the translation made by Armiero, A Rugged Nation, 98 for some parts of the quotation.

68 Battisti, Gli Alpini, 24–25.

69 Isnenghi and Rochat, La Grande Guerra, 160–61; Mondini, “Kriegführung,” 369–70.

70 Daly, “The Futurist mountains,” 333–34.

71 The battalion was stationed on the south-eastern border of Switzerland in the Engadin, the Splügen-San Bernhardino region and last but not least on the Umbrail close to the frontline at the Passo dello Stelvio.

72 Heer, Das ist Deine Schweiz, 3–4. The author died on 2 November from the Spanish Flu and his brother decided to put together all the texts that his brother had published during the war in the local newspaper Glarner Nachrichten. Cf. [Jakob Heer], “Die 85er.” Glarner Nachrichten September, 25, 1915; Heer, Das ist Deine Schweiz, 67.

73 [Heer], “Die 85er.” Glarner Nachrichten July 3, 8 and 17, September 8 and November 27, 1915 as well as February 8, 1916; Heer, Das ist Deine Schweiz, 15, 21, 23, 40, 44 and 59–61.

74 In this context [Heer], “Die 85er.” Glarner Nachrichten July 24, 1915 or Heer, Das ist Deine Schweiz, 25, refers to the Old Confederation’s battle of Morgarten. Müller, An der Kampffront in Südtirol, 20 also refers to the use of stones to stop an enemy attack, but, although also Swiss, he does not refer to Morgarten, probably because his account was mainly written for a German audience.

75 [Heer], “Die 85er.” Glarner Nachrichten July 24, August 7, September 8 and November 27, 1915; Heer, Das ist Deine Schweiz, 26, 28, 41–42. and 45.

76 [Heer], “Die 85er.” Glarner Nachrichten December 18, 1915 and September 9, 1916; Heer, Das ist Deine Schweiz, 50–51 and 63 was glad that he had so far not had to kill an enemy and thereby make a wife a widow and child an orphan.

77 [Heer], “Die 85er.” Glarner Nachrichten September 9 and 25, 1916; Heer, Das ist Deine Schweiz, 65–67.

78 Wisthaler, Karl Ausserhofer, 5–6, who calls those who were edited or changed “forged diaries” (“unechte Tagebücher”). Cf. Frommelt. “Vorarlberger Kriegstagebücher,” who points out that it is not always easy to make out the difference between “true” and “forged” diaries.

79 The author is aware that there are many more diaries, as e.g. Leoni, La Guerra Verticale shows. As this study focuses on the perception it seems, however, better, to concentrate on less examples, about whose authors more is known.

80 Wisthaler, Karl Ausserhofer, 32–38.

81 Fiorin, “Il diario di don Emilio Campi,” 24 and 31–52.

82 Tschaikner, “Kriegstagebuch,” 50–51.

83 Schubert, “Das Kriegstagebuch des Josef Mörwald,” 9–26.

84 Schubert, “Das Kriegstagebuch des Josef Mörwald,” 9–11; Wisthaler, Karl Ausserhofer, 21–37.

85 Ragucci, Ospedale, 9–12.

86 Magrin and Forin, Il cappellano del Cadore, 24–29; Tschaikner, “Kriegstagebuch,” 47.

87 Wisthaler, Karl Ausserhofer, 11–12. and 167.

88 Wisthaler, Karl Ausserhofer, 12–15.

89 Frommelt. “Vorarlberger Kriegstagebücher,” 127–44 and 150–51.

90 Hane Diary, May 26 and 29, as well as June 4, 1916; Tschaikner, “Kriegstagebuch,” 68–69. and 70.

91 Campi Diary, June 22 and 23, 1915 looking back at the weather between May 27 and June 23, 1915. Magrin and Forin, Il cappellano del Cadore, 95; Mörwald Diary October 15–17, 19, 23 and 25–27, and November 13, 1915 as well as February 2 and 11, 1916; Mörwald, Feuerbereit, 56–57, 59 and 72–73.

92 Hane Diary, June 5, 1916; Tschaikner, “Kriegstagebuch,” 70.

93 Mörwald Diary, 8 November 1915; Mörwald, Feuerbereit, 58.

94 Campi Diary, July 4 and 6, 1915 and February 6,1916; Magrin and Forin, Il cappellano del Cadore, 99–100 and 125; Mörwald Diary, February 5 and 6, as well as March 14, 1916; Mörwald, Feuerbereit, 72 and 83.

95 This was the case especially in the two cases of lieutenant Zoli and second lieutenant Abate, whose agony as well as ups and downs Ragguci describes at great length. Ragucci Diary, January 19–27, and March 17–28, 1917; Ragucci, Ospedale, 70–74 and 80–86.

96 Brugnara et al., December 1916, 1–3 and 6–7.

97 Ragucci Diary, November 9, 1916; Ragucci, Ospedale, 34–35.

98 Mörwald Diary, e.g. February 9, 16 and 17, 1916; Mörwald, Feuerbereit, 72–75.

99 Ragucci Diary, December 11, 1916; Ragucci, Ospedale, 50.

100 Ragucci Diary, November 10–11, and December 2, 1916; Ragucci, Ospedale, 35–36 and 45.

101 Mörwald Diary, February 14, and December 11 to 13, 1916; Mörwald, Feuerbereit, 76 and 155–57.

102 Wisthaler, Karl Ausserhofer, 8 and 167.

103 Ausserhofer Diary, November 5 to 9, 1916; Wisthaler, Karl Ausserhofer, 167.

104 Campi Diary, September 2, 13–27, October 1 and 23, 1915 as well as December 24–25, 1915; Magrin and Forin, Il cappellano del Cadore, 113–15, 118 and 122–23.

105 Campi Diary, October 18, 1915; Magrin and Forin, Il cappellano del Cadore, 116.

106 Campi Diary, December 24–25, 1915; Magrin and Forin, Il cappellano del Cadore, 122–23.

107 Campi Diary, February 24–28, 1916; Magrin and Forin, Il cappellano del Cadore, 125–30.

108 Campi Diary, February 28 – March 5, 1916; Magrin and Forin, Il cappellano del Cadore, 130–31.

109 Campi Diary, March 6, 1916; Magrin and Forin, Il cappellano del Cadore, 131.

110 Campi Diary, March 16, 1916; Magrin and Forin, Il cappellano del Cadore, 133.

111 Mörwald Diary February 17–27, 1916; Mörwald, Feuerbereit, 74–78.

112 Mörwald Diary December 10–11, 1916; Mörwald, Feuerbereit, 155–56.

113 Mörwald Diary December 12–15, 1916; Mörwald, Feuerbereit, 157–59.

114 Ragucci Diary, December 13, 1916; Ragucci, Ospedale, 51–52.

115 Ragucci Diary, December 13–16, 1916; Ragucci, Ospedale, 52–53.

116 Ausserhofer Diary, July 5–9, 1916; Wisthaler, Karl Ausserhofer, 157.

117 Mörwald Diary, June 27 to 30, 1916; Mörwald, Feuerbereit, 114–17.

118 Ragucci Diary, October 13, 1916; Ragucci, Ospedale, 28.

119 Ragucci Diary, October 12, 20 and 25 to 28, 1916; Ragucci, Ospedale, 26–27 and 30–31. Most of the time Mörwald just spoke of dead soldiers – Mörwald Diary, June 23, 27, July 15, August 5–6 or December 15, 1916 – avoiding to mention names such as on May 23, 1917; Mörwald, Feuerbereit, 112, 115, 121, 130, 159 and 187–88. Similarly Ausserhofer Diary July 6 and 9, September 25 or November 9, 1916; Wisthaler, Karl Ausserhofer, 157 and 166–67.

120 Campi Diary, e.g. August 5, 8 and 19, 1915; Magrin and Forin, Il cappellano del Cadore, 108–09 and 111.

121 Campi Diary, May 13, and September 17, 1916; Magrin and Forin, Il cappellano del Cadore, 135 and 147.

122 Ausserhofer Diary, July 8, 9 and 14, 1915, June 21, July 27, and September 21, 1916; Wisthaler, Karl Ausserhofer, 115–16, 118–125, 154–160 and 166; Campi Diary, July 7, 1915; Magrin and Forin, Il cappellano del Cadore, 101; Mörwald Diary, July 14, and August 13,1915, June 4, July 1 snd 15, 1916; Mörwald, Feuerbereit, 42, 46, 109, 117 and 121.

123 Hane Diary June 10, 11 and July 5, 1916; Tschaikner, “Kriegstagebuch,” 71–72 and 77.

124 Hane Diary July 11,1916; Tschaikner, “Kriegstagebuch,” 78.

125 Hane Diary July 13, 1916 to May 3, 1917; Tschaikner, “Kriegstagebuch,” 80–85. Cf. Ausserhofer Diary, July 12 to September 13, 1916; Wisthaler, Karl Ausserhofer, 158–66.

126 Wisthaler, Karl Ausserhofer, 6.

127 Wisthaler, Karl Ausserhofer, 16.

128 Rose, In Schussweite.

129 Rose, Schussweite, 13–24.

130 Letter of Franz Carl Rose to his wife Claire June 2, 1916; Rose, In Schussweite, 39. In a similar manner Ragucci wrote to his wife in the only surviving letter of August 20, 1916, shortly after his arrival in Cortina. Ragucci, Ospedale, 11.

131 Letter of Franz Carl Rose to his wife Claire June 2, 1916; Rose, In Schussweite, 40–41.

132 Letters of Franz Carl Rose to his wife Claire June 2 and 7, August 13, September 15 and 26, 1915; letter of Franz Carl Rose to his son Heinz August 7, 1915; Rose, In Schussweite, 40, 44, 94–95, 101, 116, 125 and 134. Rose and his wife really visited the war-zone after 1918, as a photograph in Rose, In Schussweite, 27 shows.

133 Letters of Franz Carl Rose to his wife Claire 18, 26 June, 1, 3, 13 August, 8, 26 September, 2, 18 October and 21 December 1915; Rose, In Schussweite, 53, 65, 81, 83, 85, 97, 102, 112, 121–22, 127, 149.

134 Letter of Franz Carl Rose to his wife Claire 12 December 1915; Rose, In Schussweite, 146.

135 Letters of Franz Carl Rose to his wife Claire 22 August, 8, 26 September and 2 October 1915; Rose, In Schussweite, 105–6, 113, 122, 128.

136 Letters of Franz Carl Rose to his wife Claire 26 September, 21, 23 December 1915; Rose, In Schussweite, 125, 148–52.

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pdfVolume 7 Issue 3 CONTENTS

Was There a Socialist Type of Anthropocene During the Cold War? Science, Economy, and the History of the Poplar Species in Hungary, 1945–19751

Róbert Balogh

HAC RCH / University of Debrecen

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The paper argues that exploring the content and sites of transnational entanglements is a more adequate way to study the relationship between the Cold War and the Great Acceleration phase of Anthropocene than looking at the so-called East vs. West in isolation. By focusing on how scientific ideas, economic concepts, industrial projects, and data production emerged and intertwined in the case of activities related to poplar trees in Hungary, it becomes clear that anthropogenic landscape change during the state socialist period was embedded into the global circulation of ideas about forests, materials and ecology. The paper also points out that forestry is a relevant area of knowledge for studying the reasons behind anthropogenic change leading to the Anthropocene because of continuities it provides across World Wars and regions, and because the profession engages with biological knowledge production, business interests, political demands regarding long-term economic growth, and notions of ecological crisis in its everyday practice.

Keywords: anthropocene, science studies, history of forestry, state socialism, paper production

Anthropocene, Cold War and Poplar from the Perspective of Hungary

Trees can become symbols of historical change. In early 2018, a group of Australian scientists proposed that one of the rings of the only Sitka spruce tree living on Campbell Island, 600 kilometers south of New Zealand, namely, the ring dated to 1965, should become the marker for the divide between Holocene and Anthropocene epochs. Chris Turney and his team found that the 14C content of the tree rapidly grew in 1965 date due to fallout from nuclear bomb testing that had taken place some years earlier.2 This perspective emphasizes the globalized nature of ecological change. Turney’s observation focuses on a location that looks extremely remote, thus, marginal from the Global North. Reinforcing the same message, the scientist talks of biochemical changes taking place at the level of cells in a tree that a human being purposefully planted there, thousands of kilometers away from its natural habitat. Turney overcomes what might appear as a contradiction between global challenge and local phenomena by stressing that human activity had its impact even in the most remote locations in 1965.

Anthropocene may simply be translated as the Age of Humans. This term emerging around the year 2000 indicates that human influence has become the single most important factor changing the biophysical system of the Earth. The use of the term has been criticized from a number of perspectives. According to critics, talking of Anthropocene recreates the idea of a sharp division between nature and culture that is the very notion that has led to the current damages to sustainability, it veils the role that capitalism has played in biophysical change, and it also ignores non-Western perspectives of ecology as well as the historical contingency of thinking of ecological crisis in the West.3 Despite the importance of chronology and historical narrative in these discussions, few historians have used Anthropocene as a framework of analysis. Coming close to Turney’s proposed dating, J. R. McNeill and Peter Engelke’s recent global environmental history associated Anthropocene with the term Great Acceleration that signifies the rapid rise of the quantity of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.4 The authors posit that while the post-1945 period was the age of omnipresent ecological destruction, the Cold War was only one of the factors behind biophysical changes since global-scale urbanization, demography, and consumption were powerful factors in their own right. McNeill and Engelke also demonstrate that while talking about the impact of Cold War, countries of the ‘West’ and the ‘Socialist States,’ including China, were all engaged in environmentally harmful activities as part of the arms race and struggle for influence. This latter view is not the mainstream among environmental historians working on East-Central Europe. As Zsuzsa Gille’s and, more recently, Viktor Pál’s monographic studies have pointed out, a number of writings emphasize that it is the Soviet Union and Sovietized thinking that is to blame for pollution and loss of biodiversity and habitats.5 The purpose of this paper is to contextualize planned and actual anthropogenic landscape change taking place in Hungary, one of the countries of the ‘Socialist Bloc,’ emphasizing both specificities of global connectedness and locally specific features. As Zoltán Ginelli has recently argued, Hungary’s semiperipheral position is a vantage point from which relations that look like dichotomies may be reviewed: “Semiperipherality shares both central and peripheral aspects: being strongly connected through its cultural or geographical proximity to the global center, but remaining peripheral, dependent and subjugated to the global core as its ‘internal other’; not having colonies, but benefiting from civilizational superiority and imperialist practices over the global periphery; developing a strong urge to catch up with and imitate the center, while sharing its civilizational and modernization mission towards the periphery.”6 Looking at the Anthropocene thesis from this angle contributes to describing the relationship between capitalism and global biophysical change as well as the ‘Western’-ness of the term Anthropocene.

The idea that state socialist regimes developed a Sovietized and harmful pseudo-science instead of carrying out research in the interest of humans has encroached on the popular image of poplar trees in Hungary. On August 30, 2017, the Assembly of the Capital City of Budapest decided that it should get rid of all the trees belonging to the species commonly called ‘Canadian poplar’ because its flowers damage respiratory health, carry the risk of fire, and is a relic from socialist times.7 The decision indicated that it referred to the species taxonomically named Populus × canadensis. However, this term is a terrain of ambiguity. In the accepted nomenclature of the poplar species, which came into force in 1955, Populus × canadensis is no longer accepted as a name of a taxon.8 It is most likely that the decision of the assembly targeted Populus × euroamericana, which is a hybrid of a North American poplar species, Populus deltoides, and another one believed to be an indigenous species of Hungary, Populus nigra. The text of the decision errs when it ignores that this hybrid is not the result of a scientific or pseudo-scientific project; instead, it is a natural outcome that has been around since the eighteenth century. The frequency with which hybridization can take place is in fact talked of as a danger to the genetic stock of poplars.9 Throughout the twentieth century, especially since the 1920s, a number of cultivar varieties have been produced of the Populus × euroamericana hybrid. In fact, the name Populus × canadensis may also refer to the variety called Merilandiana that is called ‘early poplar’ in common Hungarian.10 With the recent politicization of the poplar, we are at the heart of the uncertainty between nature and culture and its archival production in the post-socialist context. Moreover, this is an instance when dendrology experiments and conventional historical records both form part of the archives used for historical research.

The short proposal to eliminate the poplar from Budapest did not spell out the most important context of the link between state socialism and poplar species: paper and cellulose production. Moreover, there are a number of other contexts to keep in mind. Poplar, growing faster than all other families of species considered for forestry in the twentieth century, made it important for urban planning, design of highways, and for containing desertification of areas of the Great Plains of Hungary since the 1920s. Yet, it was the rapid rise of demand for paper products and the cost associated with their import that brought the poplar project to center stage in the history of forestry of the state socialist period of Hungary. Poplar was not the only species that triggered large-scale investment and institutional and transnational effort for increasing the area of growth—in the hope of obtaining more arable land and raw material for industry. The story of pine, especially Pinus silvestris, merits a separate study in this regard.11 The history of afforestation is also intertwined with the history of poplar projects in Hungary, though it cannot be equated with it.12

In this paper, I study the history of knowledge production about poplar in Hungary in order to look at links between state socialism, scientific approaches, global institutions, ideas about the economy, and the Anthropocene during the Cold War period until the mid-1970s. In the first part, I explore the question if there was both an ‘Eastern’ and a ‘Western’ science in light of the production of poplar species and emerging views and research about a canker disease that attacked poplar plantations in various parts of the northern hemisphere in the twentieth century. The second section interprets and contextualizes formulas that high-ranking Hungarian foresters presented at global events related to projecting future commodification of forest resources. I will consider these thoughts in light of activities and agendas of Cold War institutions, such as, the European Economic Committee of the UN (UNECE) and the Comecon. The third section brings together the issues of science, data and economic decisions, and relates these to the social and political context of the Yugoslavian-Hungarian deal about paper production that had been in preparation since 1969 and was eventually signed in 1975. Studying the entangled nature of scientific, political, and economic projects related to poplar species, along with the history of how knowledge emerged in state socialist Hungary, contributes to understanding projects and actual changes in the nature-culture relationship during the Cold War decades.

The picture I draw here will not be a complete discussion of how the Anthropocene unfolded in state socialist Hungary. I do not discuss the roles that afforestation and poplar played in the history of the relationship between changing flood basin landscape and hydropower generation projects, such as Bős-Nagymaros or Lake Tisza. I also exclude the issue of pollution that the papermaking industry produced. Energy production, pollution, and protest are topics that other historians have been working on and they deserve separate papers.13 The present approach is relevant for the discussion on the validity of the term Anthropocene. It looks at developments from the perspective of a semiperiphery and studies forestry, which is an area of knowledge production where the relationship between nature and culture had a century of history by the 1960s.

A Case for Entangled History: Poplar Science in Hungary in the Context
of Postwar Ideas about Development and Transnational Science

The history of the poplar species is an entangled history transgressing geopolitical and chronological demarcation lines. Thus, the history of how the transnational scientific poplar project interacted with the launch and expansion of the poplar project in Hungary is a site for assessing the plausibility of the assumption that there was a ‘Socialist’ as opposed to a ‘Western’ science during Cold War.

Poplar is one of families of the tree species that are termed as fast-growing because its rotational cycle, as established by modern forestry, is a fraction of the number of decades that beech, pine, and oak take to reach what is believed to be their optimum industrial size. As a result, proliferation of poplar tree hybrids was one of the global projects that intended to bring about large-scale anthropogenic change in the post–World War II decades under the umbrella of the Food and Agriculture Organization of United Nations (FAO). As a result of an emerging global timber market, new ideas of economic development, and the growing importance of exploring industrial uses of timber in forestry research, beginning in the 1930s there were botanical and forestry experiments aimed at selecting and improving the poplar species.14 By that time, the European experience in the cellulose industry showed that the material was indispensable, but importing spruce as a major resource put a large burden on the national economy in times of exportation difficulties.15 European countries lacking pine forests or with significant regional variation of accessibility, such as the Netherlands, Italy, Yugoslavia, and Hungary, were in a particularly difficult situation in this regard. Italy became the first hub of collecting and selecting poplar species and Italian foresters gained specialized knowledge in vegetative propagation (cloning) of selected clones.16

The poplar program in Hungary has to do with three transnational histories. First, there were pre–World War II links to Italian forestry. Second, Hungary took part in so-called international provenance studies that aimed at finding what the optimal conditions were for certain varieties.17 Third, in 1949 the government of the Rákosi era allowed some foresters to take part in the 3rd Full Session of the International Poplar Commission (IPC) in Belgium and in the Netherlands.18 In fact, Hungarian foresters Miklós Rosner and György Koltay were the only participants from the ‘Socialist Bloc’ at the event. The international event in actual fact included only European participants: Swedish, British, Swiss, French, Hungarian, Italian, many Dutch and Belgian, and a few Luxembourgian foresters. FAO and the international organization of forestry research institutes, IUFRO, also sent a representative in their own right.19 The meeting of 1949 was an important milestone for the Hungarian perspectives because, due to discontinued membership of countries of the ‘Socialist Bloc’ in FAO and other UN organs in the 1950s, there was no Hungarian delegation at the subsequent six full meetings. During that decade, Yugoslavia was the only East-Central European country to take part in some of the full IPC meetings. From 1955, meetings became biannual or less frequent. Yet, this was a sign of decline only until 1961 when the IPC started to have its Executive Committee. By the 1960s the IPC stopped being a Western and Southern European event. Yugoslavia hosted a full session in 1962, Teheran was the venue of the full meeting in 1965, Bucharest in 1971. In the light of this trajectory, the regional event that Hungary hosted in September 23–29, 1956 was an important opportunity for reinvigorating the IPC network of contacts both among socialist countries and across the Iron Curtain.20 Assessing the international embeddedness of the poplar project of Hungary, the report on the event believed that:

 

In the first place, we need to highlight the general impression that foreign participants took with them. A few of them have taken part in other poplar conferences and when comparing our event and the other ones they stated that what they saw here was proof of the high standard of research and practical work. We may say that we used to work in isolation, but it has its advantages besides disadvantages, namely, we continued to work on processes (cross-breeding distant species, homogenous hybrid poplar stands) that have been rejected abroad and we managed to bring these to fruition.21

In other words, the report was critical of the era of isolation but was keen to point out that parallel experiments and innovation might contradict and refute contemporary mainstream practices. The IPC regional event was an occasion to gather feedback on ongoing experiments and applications. It also indicated that poplar research in Hungary began around 1950, during some of the coldest years of the Cold War and that is why a booming and high international visibility was possible and feasible immediately after Stalin’s death. Moreover, the event highlighted that there were three crucial issues for a transnational poplar research program, namely, reconciling sustainable levels of biodiversity of forest stands with needs of industrial use and with the push to lower costs of planting and felling, the acceptance and credibility of experimental results, and the issue of a poplar disease, Dothichiza canker. It was also clear that the three issues were intertwined. What the report on the regional event suggested as a definitive conclusion about the viability of homogenous plantations was actually still in an experimental stage in 1956. Two years earlier, János Magyar, the forester with superior knowledge of mathematics, set out to resolve the question of what constituted the minimum necessary biodiversity for the poplar project. His conclusion was that it would not make sense to mix different poplar species in the same stand; however, best results may be expected if below poplars there is a second tree level in the stand that is made up of species that tolerate shade. During the discussion of his results, György Koltay plainly stated that “The biological condition of homogenous poplar stands is bad, and their productivity remains acceptable only as long as the negative impact of biological conditions does not show up.”22 The concise nature of Magyar’s methodology and presentation asked for more research on more numerous stands before a final conclusion could be reached.

In the same years, another factor, the spread of Dothichiza canker, also underlined the salience of experiments about the biological condition of stands where poplar hybrids dominate. The issue of canker became so serious that it looked it would end the career of some of the most promising Populus × euroamericana clones in the second half of the 1950s. The disease causes the bark of poplar trees to swell and deform, but it may also begin as a leaf infection. Trees are likely to survive initial the disease, though many tend to die and collapse during the next wet period because of their reduced level of resistance. In Hungarian poplar stands, the symptoms appeared suddenly in the early 1950s, and specialists had to dig for a description that appeared in print in 1938. The cause of canker was a mystery that took years to solve. The bibliographical references of papers published in the 1950s point to lacunae in transnational knowledge circuits during Hungary’s years of relative isolation. In 1953, T. R. Peace’s the comprehensive study of poplar in UK stated that it had no information about the spread of canker in Eastern Europe, while researchers of the Forestry Research Institute of Hungary (Erdészeti Tudományos Intézet – ERTI) did not reference Dutch experiments and results from the 1930s and 1940s that T. R. Peace of the UK Forestry Commission praised.23 Hungarian foresters also did not know of Alma Waterman’s work which referenced turn-of-the century results, including specifications of large-scale canker damage registered in 1915–1916 in some of the states of the USA.24 The common denominator in literature was another British botanist, K. A. Sabet, who posited a link between weather and Dothichiza canker and between fungi and bacterial infection causing it.25 Eventually, foresters agreed that the disease appeared as a result of combined presence of fungi known as Cryptodiaporthe populea (Sacc.) and bacteria.26 By the time Magyar nyárfatermesztés (Hungarian Poplar Cultivation) was published in 1962, Hungarian researchers were aware of all previous publications and the various names that authors used to name the disease.27 Since all authors agreed that there was no cure for the disease, research was oriented towards identifying resistant and vulnerable varieties and circumstances that increase risk. To avoid a major loss of stands, foresters needed to prevent weakening of trees from dry periods and unsatisfactory soil conditions, and too much manure also increased susceptibility. The example of Dothichiza canker allows one to highlight three features of the transnational aspects of poplar research. First, the range of the poplar species and varieties that forestry experimented with was a common pool across the Iron Curtain in the 1950s. In fact, if it was not for the widespread of Populus × euroamericana clones, Dothichiza canker would not have threatened poplar plantations. Second, decades of expertise in vegetative propagation for engineering suitable variants did not mean that it became possible to control nature-culture interaction. Third, in the early 1950s, knowledge circulation was lacking between Hungarian foresters and their Western counterparts, but this did not mean a complete stop to scientific articles crossing borders. Peace’s study mentioned the lack of information in key publications appearing in the ‘West.’ This situation changed by the early 1960s, but the regional IPC event of 1956 played a key role in realizing distances and reconnecting Hungarian researchers to the circulation of ideas elsewhere.

These conclusions clarify the fact that the contemporary status of the state socialist form of political control was relevant to the history of the poplar in Hungary. Initially, planting more poplar species as means of water management along rivers and as part of protective forest belts was one of the aspects of afforestation. Afforestation had nearly a century of history by 1950, but it was during Rákosi’s regime that it became a means of mobilization and a link to ‘Stalin’s plan to transform nature,’ which was launched after the postwar famines in the Soviet Union. Propaganda and the need to respond or adjust to it remained an integral part of political life after the Rákosi era and after 1956. The poplar project evolved into a national assessment of all postwar poplar stands, and, subsequently into the National Poplar Committee under one of the key bodies of the early Kádár era, the Committee of Economic Affairs of the Council of Ministers. This meant the politicization of the attitude towards the poplar species and ever more propaganda about the issue.28 The high number and content of articles that appeared in the most important contemporary journal targeting foresters, Az Erdő, also confirm that the poplar campaign and the goals it set had a profound impact on forestry in the early 1960s. Looking at propaganda related to the poplar campaign is one of the ways to connect related written source material that researchers and institutions produced and a wider social realm of foresters and forestry employees working on the ground. Under such conditions, oversimplification of tasks and the tendency to look at poplar species as panacea were everyday issues. Poplar made its way to the agenda of the local units of the National Forestry Association. It appears from the debate articles that a younger generation of foresters was impatient with the limitations that classification of niches meant in terms of the choice of species. In regions such as Hajdú County, replacing oak with poplar looked like a natural process that loss of soil humidity had been triggering for nearly a century. However, senior researchers, especially Imre Babos, who produced textbooks about afforestation, were squarely against replacing oak stands along the Tisza River or overusing spruce and poplar in the Western border area.29 The tone that some members of the generation of foresters who played major role in producing basic literature for afforestation campaign in the 1950s used in an official professional journal to discredit the excesses of poplar propagation shows that there was a political decision to place limits on the undesirable transformation of forests, land use practices, and landscapes that the propaganda might have brought about. Debates about the ways soil and niche classification limited the expansion of the area covered by poplar species, in other words, about the usefulness of experimentation and scientific observation, intensified among Hungarian foresters as the poplar project gained political salience and a national dimension throughout the 1960s. As we shall see in the third section of this paper, the assessment carried out between 1973 and 1976 found that while the campaign of 1960–61 reached its goal in terms of drastically increasing the presence of poplar species in terms of both percentage and visibility in specific landscapes, poplar-based afforestation often took place without due regard for soil quality and requirements.

Studies summarizing knowledge produced on poplar cultivation (volumes published in 1954, 1962, 1978, and 1996) are consistent about stating that the poplar program in Hungary began as a set of transnational entanglements.30 This consciousness reflects that taking part in projects with global reach was considered to be a prestigious and valuable act throughout these decades. The interaction between the agenda of IPC and poplar research in Hungary shows that differences between experiments and goals did not constitute a fundamental divergence of scientific work on specific fields. This unity did not only stem from common elements of point of departure such as the reception of related work in Italy and the IPC meeting of 1949. The goal of Hungarian poplar researchers was to produce and eventually present globally relevant results on the occasion of regional level academic meetings even when formal full-scale participation in FAO meetings was halted by the ‘Eastern Bloc.’ Dendrology and scientific forestry aspects of the poplar project were fundamentally about the belief that it was possible to transform the state of nature into another one in which a group of specifically designed non-human species turn into resources in the foreseeable future and, thus, benefit goals of national economic development.

In summary, increasing the area covered by poplar was a transnational project in the post–World War II era. Despite years of relative isolation from transnational level knowledge production, the main goals of the poplar project in Hungary were in tune with international developments and major threats were also shared. Due to relatively fast growth, short rotational cycle, and the industrial qualities of its timber, the poplar species carried the promise for growing industrial output and economic growth, or at least, improving the terms of trade in a number of countries of the northern hemisphere by the late 1950s. The Hungarian poplar project was not a pseudo-scientific exercise. Yet, politicization of the poplar campaign and, thus, the difficulties of setting limitations for it, arguably, distinguished it from parallel projects elsewhere. However, zeal and propaganda were coupled with professional demand for experimental evidence before moving forward with plantation and the selection of cultivars.

Global Commodification, Economic Projections, and Cold War Institutions

Before turning to the question of how landscapes changed and how the timber was eventually used, the next step in assessing the relationship between the Anthropocene and the Cold War in the light of poplar projects is to consider the changes that the years between 1955 and 1975 brought about in terms of thinking about the calculability of the timber commodity chain and how entanglements worked in this field from the point of view of Hungarian foresters. The proposals that Hungarian forestry economists aimed to mainstream at the transnational level were closely intertwined with the vision about Hungary’s position in global economy that informed the “New Economic Mechanism” of the second half of the 1960s. This introduction of a new approach to state socialist economy in Hungary catalyzed thinking about linkages between timber and commodification and the global position of Hungary. Thus, the argument of this section complements recent results in the analysis of the global position of Hungary at that time. Tamás Gerőcs and András Pinkasz and the monographic study of István Feitl argue that one of the major histories of the political economies of 1960s was the failure of the countries of the Socialist Bloc to set up frameworks of closer integration that might have opened a way of emancipation in place of dependencies. Dependence was the result of the contemporaneous drive of modernization and import substitution and, more generally, a semiperipheral position.31 Second, this section also contributes to bridge the gap that seems to exist between the popularity of long-term economic projections with Hungarian foresters and the market-oriented New Economic Mechanism.

There were three sites where interaction between Hungarian foresters’ economic ideas and transnational environments took place. Two of these were institutions operating within the framework of the United Nations: the FAO World Forestry Congresses, held every six years since 1948, were essential for aggregating and disseminating new ideas about what forests meant for society and economy. The congresses of Seattle (1960), Madrid (1966), and Buenos Aires (1972) were groundbreaking in this regard for their role in drawing attention to both global inequality and ecological sustainability in these assessments.32 At the European level, the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE, operating since 1947) was another important and permanent site for prognostication that brought together experts from across the ‘blocs.’ In 1972, the summary report of the activities of UNECE emphasized that collecting statistics about production and trade of wood and timber products was a novelty in the postwar period.33 The regular publication of Timber Bulletin for Europe was a key output of the activities of UNECE in the field. It maintained a database of commodity prices that allowed projecting and mapping economic factors, such as, demand for certain goods, availability of resources, and patterns of aggregate growth. Third, a specialized body of experts working on issues related to timber, cellulose, and paper appeared on the Comecon scene in the late 1950s. The Permanent Committee on Timber, Cellulose, and Paper Comecon was set up in 1956 and soon began to work on a 15-year prospective plan.34 The documentary footprint of that plan was an assessment of technological development vis-à-vis ‘capitalist’ countries, assessing the volume and extent of trade between individual member states and capitalist countries, with an evaluation of dependency and setting up a framework of exchange within which growth in efficiency and catching up would be possible. This exchange potentially included joint projects, but no specific ones were launched.

Biographies are the link connecting archives of a regionally specific UN body, professional global meetings, Comecon, the ministry-level dossiers of state socialist Hungary, and the story of poplar projects. In Hungary, foresters working in key positions during the late 1960s and early 1970s belonged to the same generation attending the Forestry College of Sopron just before 1945: Emil Sali, Aladár Halász, András Madas, and Béla Keresztesi were in their early fifties in 1970. While in the early 1960s, Keresztesi had the most political capital, it was Madas who reached the highest position in the group. After spending decades in senior positions at the Office of Planning, he was deputy minister at the giant Ministry for Agriculture and Food Procurement between 1972 and 1975. Upon his retirement, he produced academic texts that are keys to understanding how a generation of high-ranking forestry economists thought about turning forests into sustainable commodities under conditions of state socialism.35 Having to engage with the issues that a new price mechanism meant for forestry, and with the poplar project, influenced Madas’s thinking in a decisive way. From the mid-1960s, Madas posited in all his publications that the export of primary agricultural products could not finance paper related import, but export of previously imported timber material was an important asset in this regard.36 Madas became committed to applying the idea of ‘timber economy’ that reflected that forest management, timber processing, and international trade should be treated as a whole.37 For him, this meant that calculations about future timber consumption and availability at the continental and global scale should precede regional and national level planning and decisions.38 The long-term plan that the National Technical Development Committee of Hungary published in 1967 frequently referred to the Timber Bulletin that the UNECE published. Together with Aladár Halász, he was one of the Hungarian expert delegates to UNECE and he had a career there: Madas was repeatedly elected chief expert of forestry. In the mid-1960s, as a result of his participation in UNECE and his familiarity with statistical work produced at that institution, Madas began to work out a model about timber supply for the global scale. He presented his work at the section he chaired at the World Forestry Congress of 1973 and a year later the publishing house of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences published his model in English.39 On the one hand, his work was premised on assessing whether a certain region was a major timber importing region or an exporting one and if it was feasible to establish link between centers of demand and of supply. He did not see sites of export as underdeveloped. Rather, he argued that the most underdeveloped areas were those that were unable to export due to lack of infrastructure. His prime example for this was mechanization of timber production in Canada, the country that needed to double its export capacity if growing demand in the USA was to be satisfied. His geographic analysis had blind spots: he only considered growing demand in China in passing and he believed that the lack of infrastructure in Western Africa and in Latin America would prevent these areas from becoming centers of export. He was most nuanced in his assessment of Northern Europe, Japan, and North America. One of the most outstanding features of his presentation was that he treated Europe together, without reference to the Iron Curtain, but discussed the Soviet Union separately. In this form, ‘socialist’ countries were only one of a group of countries where Soviet exports were expected to grow to an unspecified extent. Madas’s second but related starting point was that historical trends and correlation between demography, GDP, and demand for different timber products should be combined in arriving at plausible estimate. He offered corrections to earlier models published by UNECE on this basis. Importantly, he posited that 20 percent of all forested areas should be reserved in the interest of the oxygen balance of the atmosphere and for recreational purposes. Altogether, Madas argued that demand would double until 2000 due to a surge in the consumption of paper products and despite a relative decline of many other categories of timber commodities, but he believed that this increase may be met in a sustainable manner. The model showed a belief in the possibility of prediction based on economic rationality and mathematical modeling and was receptive to fresh concerns about ecological crisis. He did not spend time on discussing the role of Hungary in the model, but the implicit message was difficult to miss: each country needed to integrate into a regional and global economic scene that had nothing to do with being or not being a socialist economy or a Soviet ally. His analysis also made it obvious that there was no database available at the time that could match his ambition to predict supply and demand.. Therefore, for his projection and estimation he used data available for end points fixed in time. He also thought it obvious that it is demand and supply that determined the future of commodities. Within this picture it would make no sense at all for a government to force the use of resources disregarding its own global position or not admitting uncertainties. For Madas, a sensible policy was one that was clear about challenges, addressing them strategically. Rational economic decisions and projections had a place, but short-term decrees contingent on concerns for a political support base could hardly fit in. In 1966, Halász, as head of a team of foresters, edited a publication that consisted of tables about timber trade. These tables did not list the ‘socialist bloc’ or Comecon member states as a separate region within Europe and did not apply political divisions to any other part of the world.40 This choice reflects a vision where commodity and hard currency requirements depended more on opportunities and availability than on power blocs.

‘Paper timber’ export and import in several European countries between 1955 and 1964 in 1000 m3

Country

Import

Export

1955

1960

1964

1955

1960

1964

Austria

138.6

307.4

626

–

–

3.2

Belgium

201.9

330

516

12

13.7

11

Bulgaria

–

–

–

–

–

–

Czechoslovakia

–

–

–

125.9

307.1

445

Denmark

4.9

3

–

0.3

0.3

9.5

United Kingdom

364

328.8

313

–

–

–

Finland

28.4

206.1

1120

3083.8

3176.1

837

France

656.7

833.3

1108

5.7

400.6

733

Greece

–

–

–

–

–

–

The Netherlands

335.2

276.4

374

0.3

11.8

10

Yugoslavia

–

–

–

700.2

445.1

358

Poland

–

75.3

205

534

372.7

512

Hungary

177.6

196.4

331.8

82.6

69.2

176.7

GDR

435.8

675.7

843

–

–

–

FRG

1663.8

1272.3

1242

0.9

8

34

Norway

818.7

1133.7

1898

225.8

290.2

286

Italy

740.1

1127.7

1203

–

–

–

Portugal

–

–

1.3

0.1

120.9

155

Romania

–

–

–

0.2

354.8

926

Spain

8.6

48.4

123

–

–

1.6

Switzerland

440.6

144.2

127

0.7

1.8

10

Sweden

279.9

603

259

1051

407

1308

Soviet Union

302.1

150

–

547.2

1589.4

4046

 

Table 1. Export and import of ‘paper timber’ in several countries
(Translation of Halász 1966, 54.)

 

These published tables had their roots in Ministry reports showing that Hungary was chiefly integrated into the European timber market via cellulose and paper products.41 The narrative was clear: the volume and value of imports multiplied between early 1950 and the early 1960s and stabilized at the high end. The changing figures related to export was the outcome of Hungary being increasingly involved in the re-exportation of timber from the Soviet Union for the purposes of paper production.42 Emil Sali, the Head of Forestry Department within the ministry, and member of Madas’s generation, believed that a greater capacity to share across Comecon countries would reduce the financial difficulties that paper demand caused.43 The report of Madas’s team about global trends and resources had reservations about Soviet Union’s capacity to open up new routes to timber in Siberia, and thus underlined that cooperation has to mean more than trade with the Soviet Union. Moreover, Madas’s team of researchers also saw limited further growth of timber resources and high labor costs in Northern Europe, and thus predicted that timber imports would grow steadily in ‘capitalist western’ economies.44 In their view, for Hungary, the way to go forward was to grow its own timber stock, and equally importantly, push for regional cooperation across borders. Comecon would have been a likely candidate for becoming a framework for this change, but Madas and the generation of forestry economists discussed above never seemed to have proposed anything in that regard. And this was a not simply a coincidence.

In 1957–58, as part of breaking away from the Stalinist notion of autarky, but keeping to the idea of import substitution, a number of experts’ meetings discussed the position and status of Comecon member countries in terms of potential timber resources and timber processing industrial capacity as well as their major problems. However, there was a long-lasting disagreement regarding the scope of the committee. While Hungary, the GDR, and Bulgaria were interested in more cooperation, Romania wanted to limit it. Their stance was that the Permanent Committee on Timber, Cellulose, and Paper should first discuss whether a certain product could be included in the agenda. Initially, the Soviet Union supported Romania’s position.45 One of the turning points of the discussion was when Hungarian representatives of the Committee argued that the Soviet support for the Romanian position related to agenda setting was untenable in the light of statements that the Soviet delegation at UNECE made about the importance of cooperation.46 During the first years of its existence, the work of the Permanent Committee revolved around gathering data and information, and decisions about strategic direction that should be followed. The meeting held in Moscow in February 1958 accepted that in the field of developing paper production, one of the goals should be sharing the burden of industrial capacity building among Comecon member states. The Hungarian delegation suggested that considering the technological superiority of GDR industry in processing hardwood, it might be considered if GDR can increase its capacity to take resources of other member states to produce cellulose.47

The document that Comecon’s Permanent Committee accepted was premised on a dilemma: it highlighted that paper production and production capacity were insufficient in Comecon countries and that these countries had overused their forest resources since the end of World War II and that this trend had to be reversed. As a workaround, the document promoted the use of reed, hay, and waste until better machines and production lines became available for more efficiency. The report that Hungary prepared about its own situation emphasized that with all efforts of afforestation and mechanization, only 50 percent of yearly timber requirement was expected to come from the forests of the country. The summary also showed that Hungary imported only 3 percent of its paper needs from Comecon countries while its paper import from ‘capitalist’ countries increased 62-fold even as overall paper supply decreased between 1950 and 1957. The drop in total use of paper was a sign of shortage rather than of drastically increased efficiency.48 Moreover, some of the technologies of cellulose production were entirely absent.

Cellulose and paper production were not the main focus of reports that Hungarian authorities prepared for the purposes of drawing up the 15-year plan of Comecon. The possibility of replacing timber with other materials, reusing waste, introducing more and better machinery in felling, moving, sawing, furniture making, and meeting the requirements of railways, mines, and construction occupied the center stage.49 Yet, these documents recognized that there was a need for change in the type of resources and cellulose products the paper industry utilized for better keeping up with demand in Hungary. The initiative regarding the shared establishment of cellulose factories among Comecon countries did not have a bright future. It also disappeared from the agenda of the meetings of the Permanent Committee by early 1961–62.50 Unfortunately, the archival record of the work of Hungarian representatives in the Permanent Committee between 1963 and 1968 is yet to be located. For the years in which related documents reappear in the archives of the supersized Ministry of Agriculture and Food Provision, Hungarian reports on meetings of the permanent Comecon committee on agriculture and forestry express a degree of disappointment in regard to how much cooperation actually took place. This picture resonates with István Feitl’s argument about the failed attempt of Hungary and Poland to fundamentally change the structure of Comecon.51 Despite wide-ranging data collection, estimates, and prognoses about the way substantial coordination within Comecon could improve the economic position of member countries in global comparison, by 1970 standardization and bi- or trilateral scientific cooperation were the only noticeable Comecon activities in the field of forestry. There were serious issues with mechanization due to the lack of available machines within Comecon and the unwillingness of member states to sign multilateral agreements.52 In terms of the archival landscape, the simple filing of reports written in Russian replaces discussions and position papers.53 There were no plans submitted for a joint cellulose project.

A revealing episode from 1973 connects global thinking and local events of the paper supply chain. Besides Madas, several members of the Hungarian delegation to the Seventh World Forestry Congress were also stakeholders in the issue of the poplar project. In 1973, Keresztesi was the head of ERTI and editor of collective efforts to summarize the state of the art of the Hungarian poplar project in 1962 and also in 1978. Aladár Halász was deputy head of the Department of Economics of the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Procurement; Endre Szenes was the director general of LIGNIMPEX, the state export-import agency dealing in timber. Thus, it was one of the highlights of the weeks spent in Argentina when, as part of their organized study trip, the delegation joined a Finnish party visiting a cellulose and papermaking factory near Rosario. The Hungarians were delighted to see an adjacent paper tree plantation consisting of 5–15 year old pine and eucalyptus species with felling going on in a part of the area at the time of visit. The group was so impressed with the method of propagation and care for the seedlings that they gathered and produced a detailed technical description of each step of the process.54 The scene represented the ideal situation of high technology applied in a paper tree plantation of very short rotational cycle a few kilometers away from a large processing complex that produced both cellulose and paper products. The ground reality in Hungary was far from this exotic perfection.

On the Ground: Data, Cooperatives, and the Yugoslavian-Hungarian
Paper Deal

In response to the lack of effective Comecon coordination in timber processing, the Hungarian government eventually moved to bilateral solutions, and imported related machinery from the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, the USA, and Italy. In the field of paper imports, the major bilateral move was a contract on timber products that LIGNIMPEX, on behalf of the Hungarian government, signed in the autumn of 1975 with Yugoslavia concerning joint production of cellulose and paper. The deal with Yugoslavia entailed that Hungary would transport poplar as raw material for paper to two Yugoslav paper mills along the River Sava: Krsko in present-day Slovenia, and Srmska Mitrovica (Szávaszentdemeter) in present day Serbia. Throughout the second half of 1960s, the relationship between the political elite of the Hungarian and the Yugoslavian party-states improved beyond imagination.55 Thus, bloc level politics did not stand in the way of using the opportunities that the Danube provided for timber trade. At the same, the relationship with another potential partner, Czechoslovakia, was at an all-time low around 1969–70. The volume of timber that Hungary had to bring to the factory at Srmska Mitrovica was three times larger than the volume intended for the Krsko plant. In return, Hungary would receive cellulose and paper products at a price that was 5% below the Scandinavian market price. The most important objective of the Hungarian government was to save hard currency on paper importation.56 In the lack of records about the negotiations, one may only assume that the Yugoslav government was interested in signing a deal to overcome problems of raw material supply to the factories. Transports to Krsko were to begin in the summer of 1976, while to Sremska Mitrovica only in 1977. The contract signed with Yugoslavia meant that the volume of poplar timber production needed to rise sharply until 1980 and stabilize at a high level for the next fifteen years.57 To gain insight to the ground realities of the poplar project in Hungary, we may look at the Yugoslav–Hungarian deal as the outcome of three decisions on the Hungarian side. First, it had to be decided that there should be no processing capacity built in Hungary for the timber material that the poplar project would produce. Second, the quantity and quality of timber had to be calculated. Third, transporting timber from Hungary to the processing plants had to be judged feasible and possible from the point of view of logistics.

Regarding the first question, archival traces are scanty, but it is clear that it was a matter discussion for nearly a decade as to whether the country should build its own productive capacity.58 In 1958, Madas believed that expansion of the paper mill at Csepel would solve the question.59 Another potential candidate was the paper mill in Dunaújváros (formerly Sztálinváros), south from Budapest, along the Danube. It was built and became operational in the mid-1970s, but studies submitted to the Ministry of Light Industry did not see it feasible to expand it further to process poplar grown in Hungary.60

The question of how the quantity and quality of available poplar timber was assessed is a more complex issue. The Hungarian–Yugoslavian poplar-paper deal entailed a large-scale effort of resource commodification that consisted of several steps during the 1960s and the 1970s. In 1966, the assessment of the implementation of the plan that the National Poplar Committee drew up showed that by 1970 there would be an abundance of poplar ready to be commodified. As András Madas put it in a letter to the deputy head of the National Planning Office (OT): “since liberation we have planted circa 330,000 hectares of forest. Fast-growing poplar species constitute around 20 percent of these new forests. Thus, the capacity of the country to produce raw material has been considerably increased.”61 However, the scale of the planned Yugoslavian–Hungarian deal made authorities feel that there might not be enough poplar trees in Hungary to fulfill contractual obligations.62 Thus, only a year later, the Department of Forestry of the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Provision also carried out an assessment of the availability of raw material for the Yugoslavian–Hungarian deal, making an account of poplar and willow species that were considered ‘paper timber.’ The assessment showed that the Hungarian party would be able to fulfil its obligation in the first year of the contract, especially since supplies to Sremska Mitrovica were to begin in 1977. The calculation also stated that even though large areas of poplar stands were set to mature in the same period, it would only be possible to keep up with such a rise in demand if additional species and sources were included, such as spruce imported from the Soviet Union and beech from Hungary.63 In 1975, amid such uncertainty, the Department of Forestry embarked on a third survey that was intended to produce a reliable database and be more comprehensive than the previous ones. The design of the study was such that it reflected awareness of the fact that the partnership with Yugoslavia meant that calculations about economic feasibility and availability of supplies had to be combined with a long-term ecological assessment of the poplar project that had been on-going since 1960. Sali explained in the books summarizing poplar research that researchers used data directly from management plans, but they checked each area for which a plan was prepared before 1966, and the survey included all forests where the proportion of poplar species was at least 5 percent.64 The assessment of 1958, which preceded and conditioned the forming of the National Poplar Commission, concluded that several local level forest management plans erred in assessing ratios of poplar species in afforested areas. In 1958, Keresztesi, in his paper summarizing this data, estimated that 162,658 ha. of poplar would be planted between 1958 and 1975.65 The assessment of 1975–78 showed that in 1973 the total area of poplar was 154,300 ha. and this figure was expected to decrease in the coming decade. This meant that in peak years poplar species covered around 11 percent of total forested area, while this figure was closer to 8 percent in most years of the period under discussion. This figure is comparable to the area covered by pine in the late 1960s. Delegated staff of ERTI and the planning unit of the Department of Forestry used computers for developing the predictive model and for calculating the quantity and quality of timber for each subsequent year. The models showed that certain factors, especially considerations of quality, would result in loss of the area of poplar until 1990, while additional plantation was also considered.66 Although when narrowing it down to the question of the Yugoslavian–Hungarian deal, the survey gave a positive response, the overall result was that the quality of poplar in Hungary was less than mediocre and that this was due to hasty decisions about the locations of poplar stands that did not take soil conditions seriously enough during the early 1960s. Foresters also concluded that Hungary would not be able to supply a pulp making factory if it were built on its territory. The recurring evaluation of the impact and implementation of the 20-year plan of the National Poplar Committee, namely, increasing the area and quality of poplar within the total forested area and within the afforestation effort, was one of the catalysts and opportunities for thinking in terms of a ‘timber economy’ in Hungary.67 The assessment was a formidable and successful exercise that contained valid methods for assuring data quality, evaluation, and predictive analysis using all available computational technology to achieve the best results. It was no less than the reappraisal of the sustainability of commodification of poplar species and stands in the light of changes that the new economic thinking, collectivization, and global market integration brought about in the relationship between nature and culture in Hungary. Uncertainty about the conclusion of assessments might make the impression that the study was the outcome of ‘communist’-style official optimism and calculation.68 However, the methods of data collection were the outcome of several factors, such as, ideas about the economy and about nature, transnational circuits of and long-term practices of knowledge production, and conflicts over land use. Forestry has been a data intensive science since the mid-nineteenth century. As part of the forest management documentation, foresters were expected to create a plan about how and when a specific forest area reached optimum timber output for the intended type of product. Experiments and mathematics were used for producing tables about growth rate of different tree species, and calculations of value and prices were also an integral part of the knowledge base. Data collection and the assessment of data played a key role in the poplar project as a result of continuities within the profession, and not only due to the nature of the state socialist regime or advances in computational technology.

As part of the complexity, specifically state socialist conflicts over land use also mattered. The launching of the plan of National Poplar Committee coincided with the final wave of aggressive collectivization. Studies of Gábor Máté demonstrate that in the drive to apply chemicals and water management techniques, collectivization at times brought about landscape degradation and created ecological issues that were not present before.69 It is yet to be explored how the poplar plan impacted the first years of new cooperatives, but there is at least one document that allows researchers to highlight points of tension. In regard to Somogy County, the author of a 1963 report believed that natural conditions were suitable for poplar and it would be possible to plant 6,000 hectares. According to the draft, cooperatives would have to undertake the bulk of the task, besides the Hungarian State Railways and Water Management authorities. The author, however, noted that 40–70 percent of seedlings died due to carelessness and grazing.70 When Madas and Halász dealt with the economic behavior of newly formed cooperatives and the actual shortage of raw materials such as pine and firewood, they brought attention to several risks that rational economic behavior of the leadership of cooperatives might cause. Madas pointed out that in terms of land ownership pattern, Hungary was unique among ‘socialist’ countries. There was virtually no private forest by the 1970s, but cooperatives managed 22 percent of forested areas and a relatively low proportion, 77.7% of forests, were under direct state management. Madas and Halász believed that this was not an ideal situation since cooperatives treated forests as secondary areas of activity and used timber for relatively inferior purposes, thus keeping the valuable material off the market.71 The pressures that the Yugoslavian-Hungarian deal triggered resulted in a showcase of these issues. In the first year of the contract, issues with actual supplies were so serious that they could potentially jeopardize the entire deal. The question of prices was no less complicated than logistics. In the climate of post-1968 economic regime where enterprises were encouraged to make profit, buying up stocks was only possible if the price offered was higher than it would have been for other products. Ministerial administration sought a fix to these pressing issues experienced on the ground. In order to make the supply chain operate, central administration organized meetings for various regional level actors of the reshaped realm of cooperatives, forestry enterprises, and state enterprises involved in trading timber related commodities.72 Despite serious issues encountered regarding cooperation between forestry enterprises and cooperatives, the latter were expected to take an ever-larger share in the poplar program since without their poplar stands the entire operation would have fallen short of supply.73 Because of these developments, and other logistics issues, less than half of the required quantity left for Yugoslavia by mid-June 1976, and later months looked uncertain too. It was also a difficult logistical task to make sure that production in the eastern part of Hungary reached the ports where ships departed from. Although the two neighbouring Pest and Bács-Kiskun counties, and a county along the Danube, Győr-Moson-Sopron, were the prime areas of poplar, without the output of the Trans-Tisza region there would not have been enough timber to transport.74 Despite these concerns and the social sensitivity of the World Forestry Congress of 1973, forestry economists did not consider social conflict or forms of resistance to the poplar campaign as a factor.75 It requires a further reading against the grain to locate specific instances and forms of resistance to the poplar project.

The Yugoslavian–Hungarian paper deal led to a major professional, institutional, and academic enterprise to assess and predict the future availability of a species seen as a natural resource, the presence of which had been the result of anthropogenic intervention in the late 1950s and during the 1960s. Attention shifted to the issue of identifying and sustaining ecological conditions that made commodification possible. The assessments of the poplar project included the problem of the distance between data and information, institutional interests, Hungary’s place in the global economy and within the so-called ‘Eastern Bloc,’ and the problem of combining local efforts into a single cause. The correlations and risks that the tables point to reflected that the production of paper poplar was a site where the collectivization of agriculture, forestry, prices induced by the New Economic Mechanism, and scientific practices of producing information about nature all intertwined.

 

 

 

Conclusion

This paper addressed the science and economy of an Anthropocene thesis from the vantage point of semiperipheral Hungary during the Cold War. It chose the poplar species as the subject matter because poplar-based industrial production underwent a surge in post–World War II Hungary and it included large-scale efforts at landscape change, while research activities began in the first half of twentieth century. Historicizing poplar is an opportunity to study how the performativity and transnational nature of economics and life sciences intertwined with the political history of Cold War institutions and the social-political history of state socialist countries to bring about a new era of nature-culture relationship that we may call the Anthropocene.

The first section highlighted that forestry research on the poplar species was an essentially transnational one, even if that history might look domestic or isolated to present-day interpreters. The history of the interaction between activities of the International Poplar Committee was intertwined with major stages of the Cold War, such as the withdrawal and return of countries of the Socialist Bloc to UN organizations. Moreover, the institutionalization of links among researchers also connects to natural-cultural histories, such as the history of engineering hybrid clones, the idea and technology of tree plantation, and the presence, destruction, and economic loss that living organisms preying on trees might cause. This is not to deny that that the social history of landscape change, and the way professional groups might influence it, was arguably specific to state socialist regimes such as Hungary. That is because the science of the Anthropocene is about entanglements.

Economic models that top leaders of Hungarian forestry profession presented at global events were reflections and an attempted means to break away from a semiperipheral position, despite the limitations and failed hopes that Comecon meant by the 1960s. The section on the projecting of long-term patterns of timber availability showed that it was the combination of the drive to growth, consciousness of dependencies, emerging notions about a potential ecological crisis, and a shifting social context that resulted in changes in the nature-culture relationship. The global economy and ecology of the era of Anthropocene has been a process of emergence, rather than an outcome of plans.

Besides transnational entanglements of science and economic models, the history and specific stories of data collection proved to be a hub for understanding what was specific about the way ideas about aggregate demand and economic potential come together with measurements of ecological sustainability—to turn potentially valuable resources into commodities of calculable-calculated value in state socialist Hungary. The third section addressed how the state socialist economy of Hungary adapted to the changing natural-cultural circumstances that its very actions of commodification contributed to. The assessment of the poplar project between 1973 and 1976 pronounced that what looked like policy at first sight was the hybrid of many factors: incompletely counted trees, the political decision to promote or harm certain interests, human economic behavior and its perception, and regional and global ecological, economic, and political contexts. The Yugoslavian–Hungarian paper and cellulose deal signed in autumn 1975 was the key element at the juncture of the poplar planation campaign that began 1960s and assessments of timber resources. The context of the deal underlines that linking local events and global change is indispensable for the studying the Anthropocene from a historical perspective.

These histories of linkages, entanglements, and complexities help us see both state socialism and the Anthropocene less as a matter of course. Since the history of the formula of nature-culture is not fully accessible, there is scope to add new and unexpected elements to it in order to change the model of future ecology.

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Madas, András. Erdészeti politika [Policy in forestry]. Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1978.

Madas, András, et al. A fafogyasztás és faellátás várható alakulása [Projecting timber consumption and timber supply]. Budapest: Országos Műszaki Fejlesztési Bizottság, 1967.

Madas, András. World Consumption of Wood: Trends and Prognoses. Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1975.

Magyar, János. “Nyárasok faállományszerkezeti vizsgálatának eddigi eredményei” [Recent results of the examination of the structure of poplar stands]. In Magyar Tudományos Akadémia Agrártudományi Osztályának Közleményei IV, edited by András Somos, 111–55. Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1954.

Máté, Gábor. “Táj és kollektivizálás” [Landscape and collectivization]. In Állami erőszak és kollektivizálás a kommunista diktatúrában [State violence and collectivization in the communist dictatorship], edited by Sándor Horváth and József Ö. Kovács, 157–80. Budapest: MTA, 2015.

McNeill, J. R. and Peter Engelke. The Great Acceleration: An Environmental History of the Anthropocene since 1945. Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2014.

Mitchell, Timothy. Rule of Experts: Egypt, Techno-Politics, Modernity. Berkeley: The University of California Press, 2002.

Moore, Jason, ed. Anthropocene or Capitalocene? Nature, History, and the Crisis of Capitalism. Oakland: PM Press, 2016.

Pál, Viktor. Technology and the Environment in State-Socialist Hungary. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017.

Papers of the 2nd World Forestry Congress. Budapest: 1936.

Peace, T. R. Poplar. London: Forestry Commission, 1952.

S. Ravi, Rajan. Modernizing Nature: Forestry and Imperial Eco-Development, 1800–1950. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.

Sabet, K. A. “Studies on the Bacterial Die-Back and Canker of Poplar.” Annals of Applied Biology 40, no. 4 (December 1953): 645–50.

Sali, Emil. “Nyárfatermesztési célkitűzések” [Targets related to poplar cultivation]. In A nyárak és a füzek termesztése [Cultivation of poplars and willows], edited by Béla Keresztesi, 14–28. Budapest: Mezőgazdasági Kiadó, 1978.

Tóth, Imre. “Megfigyeléseim a nyárfákról” [My observations about poplars]. Az erdő, no. 7 (1957): 251–56.

Tulbure, Narcis. “Post/Socialist Infrastructures of Knowledge: Statistics, Data, and Competition across the Iron Curtain.” Forthcoming.

Waterman, Alma. “Canker and Dieback of Poplar Caused by Dothichiza Populea.” Forest Science 3, no. 2 (1957): 175–83.

1 This paper was written with the support of program entitled “Tudás, tájkép, nemzet és birodalom: A tájkép megismerésének és átalakításának gyakorlatai Magyarországon és a Balkánon, 1850–1945” [Knowledge, Landscape, Nation and Empire: Practices of knowing and transforming landscape in Hungary and the Balkans, 1850–1945] that is program number FK 128978 of the National Research and Development and Innovation Fund, Hungary (NKFIH).

2 Amos, “‘Loneliest tree’ records human epoch.”

3 See Moore, Anthropocene or Capitalocene.

4 McNeill and Engelke, The Great Acceleration.

5 Pál, Technology and the Environment in State-Socialist Hungary; Gille, From the Cult of Waste to the Trash Heap of History.

6 Ginelli, “Hungarian Experts in Nkrumah’s Ghana.”

7 City Council, Municipality of Budapest, http://infoszab.budapest.hu:8080/akl/tva/Tir.aspx?scope= kozgyules&sessionid=6894&agendaitemid=94197 Accessed March 5, 2018.

8 Bartha, “A Magyarországon előforduló nyár (Populus L.) taxonok.”

9 Gaál, “Az őshonos nyárak és füzek génmegőrzése.”

10 Bartha, “A Magyarországon előforduló nyár (Populus L.) taxonok határozókulcsa és rövid jellemzése.”

11 Balogh, “Transnational Modernity, Biography and the Anthropocene in a Cold War Arboretum.”

12 Balogh, “A Program for Afforestation.”

13 Kochetokova, “Industry and Forests.” For an analysis of the Lake Tisza project see Borvendég and Palasik, Vadhajtások; for pollution see Pál, Technology.

14 For changes in world economy and invention of the idea of national economic space see Goswami, Producing India; Mitchell, Rule of Experts. For global timber economy see Beattie, Empire and Environmental Anxiety, 1800–1920; Ravi, Modernizing Nature.

15 Papers of the 2nd World Forestry Congress.

16 Kopecky, “A nyárak nemesítése.”

17 Koltay, “A nyárfa.”

18 Ibid.

19 International Poplar Commission.

20 Bakkay, A Magyar Tudományos Akadémia és az Országos Erdészeti Főigazgatóság együttes rendezésében megtartott nyárfakonferencia.

21 MNL OL XXVI-K-3 box no. 16. “A nyárfakonferencia” [The poplar conference].

22 Magyar gained reputation with his work on designing the web of protective forest belts necessary for increasing agricultural output in 1948–49. Magyar, “Nyárasok faállományszerkezeti vizsgálatának eddigi eredményei.”

23 Peace, Poplar.

24 Waterman, “Canker and Dieback of Poplar Caused by Dothichiza Populea.”

25 Sabet, “Studies on the Bacterial Die-Back and Canker of Poplar.”

26 Tóth, “Megfigyeléseim a nyárfákról.” See alsoWaterman, “Canker and Dieback of Poplar,” 175–83.

https://academic.oup.com/forestscience/article-abstract/3/2/175/4763880?redirectedFrom=PDF Accessed on July 10, 2018.

27 Keresztesi, A magyar nyárfatermesztés.

28 Keresztesi, “Nyárfagazdálkodásunk helyzete.” About the Committee of Economic Affairs see Csernyánszky, “Kádár csúcszerve. A Gazdasági Bizottság megalakítása.”

29 Debate about poplar in the journal called Az Erdő 1963–64: Babos, “Hozzászólás Polner Antal;” Babos, “Viszontválasz Borsos Zoltánnak;” Borsos, “A fafaj megválasztás néhány kérdéséről; Cebe, “Hozzászólás a fafajmegválasztás kérdéséhez.”

30 See Koltay, A nyárfa; Keresztesi, A magyar nyárfatermesztés; Keresztesi, A nyárfa és a füzek.

31 Gerőcs and Pinkasz, “A KGST a világrendszerben;” Feitl, Talányos játszmák.

32 See FAO Unasylva.

33 Az Európai Gazdasági Bizottság tevékenysége 1947–1972.

34 MNL OL XIX-K-13-a box no. 22.

35 Madas, Erdészeti politika; Madas, Ésszerű környezetgazdálkodás a mezőgazdaságban.

36 For example see Halász and Márkus, A fagazdaság ökonómiai alapjai.

37 Madas, World Consumption of Wood, 19.

38 Ibid. 7–8.

39 Halász et al., Beszámoló a Hetedik Erdészeti Világkongresszusról; Madas, World Consumption of Wood.

40 Halász, Faellátásunk helyzete és fejlődése.

41 MNL OL XIX-K-9-az box no. 37. “A fafelhasználás, az erdőgazdálkodás és a fafeldolgozás” [Timber use, forest management and timber processing].

42 Ibid.

43 MNL OL XIX-K-9-az box no. 37. “Az erdőgazdasági termelés feladatai” [Tasks of production in forest management].

44 Madas et al., A fafogyasztás és faellátás várható alakulása.

45 MNL OL XIX-K-13-a box no. 22. folder no. 6.

46 Ibid.

47 MNL OL XIX-K-13-a box no. 22. “Az erdőgazdaságra vonatkozó következtetések és javaslatok” [Conclusions and suggestions relating to forest management] 3.

48 MNL OL XIX-K-13-a box no. 22. “A faanyag és cellulóz terén dolgozó…” [Working the field of timber and cellulose…].

49 MNL OL XIX-K-13-a box no. 22. “Irányelvek kidolgozása a cellulóz és papíripar 15 éves műszaki fejlesztéséhez” [Working out guidelines for the 15-year technical development of cellulose and paper industry].

50 MNL OL XIX-K-13-c box no. 14. and MNL OL XIX-K-13-a box no. 23.

51 Feitl, Talányos játszmák; Gerőcs and Pinkasz, “A KGST a világrendszerben.”

52 MNL OL XIX-K-9-m box no. 327. “Varna meeting.”

53 See for example MNL OL XIX-9-m box. no. 116, 244. and 346.

54 Halász et al., Beszámoló a Hetedik Erdészeti Világkongresszusról, 560­–65.

55 See for example Bottoni, “Majdnem Nyugat.”

56 I could not locate the contract itself, which is not in the archives, but MNL OL XIX-K-9-m box. no. 311. describes it.

57 MNL Ol XIX-K-9-m box. no. 311. Note that the guide for archival unit XIX-K-9-m did not always reflect actual stack situation. Assistance from archivist György Ritter was crucial for locating relevant material.

58 MNL OL XIX-K-9-az box. no. 37. “Földes László” folder no. 13.

59 Madas, “Nyártelepítések jelentősége papír- és cellulóziparunk fejlesztése szempontjából,” 231–36.

60 MNL OL XIX-K-9-az box. no. 37. “Földes László” folder no. 13.

61 MNL OL XIX-K-9-aj box. no. 22. “Földes László” folder no. 12.

62 MNL OL XIX-K-9-m box no. 206. “Assessment of poplar project in 1967–68 and expected volume of timber.” See also among papers of the Forestry Research Institute MNL OL XIX-K-13 box no. 339. and 341. For doubts see MNL OL XIX-K-9-m box no. 209.

63 MNL OL XIX-K-9-m box. no. 294.

64 Sali, “Nyárfatermesztési célkitűzések,” 13.

65 Keresztesi, “Nyárfagazdálkodásunk helyzete,” 219.

66 Sali, “Nyárfatermesztési célkitűzések,” 14-28.

67 Madas, et al., A fafogyasztás és faellátás várható alakulása.

68 Tulbure, “Post/Socialist Infrastructures of Knowledge.”

69 Máté, “Táj és kollektivizálás.”

70 Library of the National Forestry Association, Bundle for the year 1963.

71 Madas, Erdészeti politika, 248–49.

72 MNL OL XIX-K-9-az box no. 37. “Földes László” folder no. 5. and XIX-K-9-m box. n. 412.

73 MNL OL XIX-K-9-m box no. 311. and Sali, “Nyárfatermesztési célkitűzések.”

74 MNL OL XIX-K-9-m box no. 311. and 412.

75 MNL OL XIX-K-9-az box no. 37. “TSZ-ek faanyagának értékesítése” [Selling timber from coops].

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