Italian-Hungarian relations

[Szegedist]

http://www.nzhistory.net.nz/files/images/italy-1861-1946.jpghttp://flagartist.com/SVG/Jan-13/Scalable_Vector_Graphics/FLAG/F/flag_of_hungary_1940_drapeau_bandiera_bandeira_fla gga.png




Renaissance
After Italy, Hungary was the first European country where the renaissance appeared. The Renaissance style came directly from Italy during the Quattrocento to Hungary first in the Central European region, thanks to the development of early Hungarian-Italian relationships – not only in dynastic connections, but also in cultural, humanistic and commercial relations – growing in strength from the 14th century.

Many young Hungarians studying at Italian universities came closer to the Florentine humanist center, so a direct connection with Florence evolved. The growing number of Italian traders moving to Hungary, specially to Buda, helped this process. New thoughts were carried by the humanist prelates, among them Vitéz János, archbishop of Esztergom, one of the founders of Hungarian humanism. During the long reign of emperor Sigismund of Luxemburg the Royal Castle of Buda became probably the largest Gothic palace of the late Middle Ages. King Matthias Corvinus (r. 1458–1490) rebuilt the palace in early Renaissance style and further expanded it. After the marriage in 1476 of king Matthias to Beatrice of Naples, Buda became one of the most important artistic centres of the Renaissance north of the Alps

Matthias was educated in Italian, and his fascination with the achievements of the Italian Renaissance led to the promotion of Italian cultural influences in Hungary. Buda, Esztergom, Székesfehérvár and Visegrád were amongst the towns in Hungary that benefited from the establishment of public health and education institutions and a new legal system under Matthias' rule. In 1465, he founded a university in Pozsony, the Universitas Istropolitana which was the third university in medieval Hungary. His 1476 marriage to Beatrice, the daughter of the King of Naples, only intensified the influence of the Renaissance.

During the long reign of emperor Sigismund of Luxemburg, the so-called Fresh Palace of the Royal residence of Buda became probably the largest Gothic palace of the late Middle Ages. Matthias rebuilt the palace in early Renaissance style and further expanded it. His other favourite residence was the summer palace of Visegrád.

Matthias Corvinus's library, the Bibliotheca Corviniana, was Europe's greatest collections of secular books: historical chronicles, philosophic and scientific works in the 15th century. His library was second only in size to the Vatican Library. In 1489, Bartolomeo della Fonte of Florence wrote that Lorenzo de' Medici founded his own Greek-Latin library encouraged by the example of the Hungarian king.


Italian city-states and Western Europe were present in large numbers at his court. The most important humanists living in Matthias' court were Antonio Bonfini, Galeotto Marzio, Pietro Ranzano, Marsilio Ficino, Aurelio Lippo Brandolini and the Hungarian poet Janus Pannonius. Famous Italian artists served the king: Filippino Lippi, Verrocchio,Giovanni Dalmata, and Cristoforo Foppa. The young Leonardo da Vinci met with Matthias in the spring of 1485, where Leonardo painted a Madonna painting in the Visegrád Palace for the king. In his „Treaty on the Painting“ Leonardo da Vinci describes his conversation with king Matthias on the King’s birthday, when the King received his fiancée’s portrait. Leonardo’s description is almost a report showing his first hand knowledge of the King’s love for painting, his Platonic philosophy and the customs of his court. Verochio painted many portraits of famous historical persons for king Matthias. As Galeotto Marzio tells us, Hungarian 'heroic sagas', and love songs were often sung on special occasions in the king's court alongside the international, 'modern' Burgundian-Flandrian music.

The famous renaissance cartographer Francesco Rosselli lived at the court of Matthias (1476-1484) where he made many detailed maps of the known world for the king. Astronomer Johannes Regiomontanus built astrolabes for Matthias Corvinus of Hungary. There he calculated extensive astronomical tables and built astronomical instruments for the king. Like many of his acculturated contemporaries, he trusted in astrology and other semi-scientific beliefs; however, he also supported true scientists and engaged frequently in discussions with philosophers and scholars. Republics and Kingdoms and other governmental forms compared features a three-day discussion between the Florentine merchant Domenico Giugni and the Hungarian monarch Matthias Corvinus cleverly assembled by the humanist scholar Aurelio Lippo Brandolini. This was the first and only political debate where Republics and Kingdoms and other governmental forms were systematically compared in the renaissance era.

[Szegedist]

Neapolitan Adventure
The Neapolitan campaigns of Louis the Great, also called the Neapolitan Adventure (Nápolyi kaland) in Hungarian, was a war between the Kingdom of Hungary, led by Louis the Great, and the Kingdom of Naples. It was fought from 1347 until 1352.

In 1343 Robert I, the Sage, King of Naples, died. His only son, Charles of Calabria, had died in 1328, leaving two daughters, one of which, Joan, had been married to Andrew, son of king Charles I of Hungary. During his time in Naples, Andrew gained the fierce hostility of his more refined wife. After her father's death, she received by the Avignonese Pope Clement VI the official investment of the Kingdom, which was then nominally a vassal of the Papal States. Andrew, who aimed also to the crown, received only the title of Duke of Calabria.

On June 14, 1345 Clement, after a payment of 44,000 marks, accepted to yield Andrew the title of king, but only as heir in case of Joan's death. Joan, who had an affair with Louis of Taranto, was at the time under the strong influence of the latter's mother, Catherine of Valois. On September 19, before the Papal bull could reach the Kingdom, a conjure led by Catherine's relatives and courtesans had Andrew assassinated during a hunt at Aversa. Bertramo del Balzo, great justicier of the realm, discovered and punished the assassins, but voices of a queen's involvement in the assassination had already become widespread.

In May 1346 Andrew's brother, King Louis of Hungary, sent envoys to Clement to ask her deposition. Unsatisfied by the Pope's reply, he mustered an army, planning to embark his troops in Zara. However, at the time the maritime city had rebelled against the Venetians, whose ships were blockading its port. After a failed attempt to free it, the King had to postpone his expedition, while Zara returned under Venice's aegis.

The War
In November 1347 Louis set out for Naples with some 1,000 soldiers , mostly mercenaries. When he reached the border of Joanna’s kingdom, he had 2000 Hungarian knights, 2000 mercenary heavy cavalry, 2000 Cuman horse archers and 6000 mercenary heavy infantry. He successfully avoided conflict in Northern Italy, and his army was well-paid and disciplined. King Louis forbade plundering, and all supplies were bought from locals and paid for with gold. The Hungarian king marched on the land, announcing he was not going to fight any Italian city and states, and thus was welcomed by most of them. Joanna in the meantime had married her cousin Louis of Taranto and had signed a peace with Naples' traditional enemy, the Kingdom of Sicily. The army of Naples, 2700 knights and 5000 infantrymen, was led by Louis of Taranto. At Foligno a papal legate asked Louis to renounce his enterprise, as the assassins had been already punished and also considering Naples's status of Papal fief. He did not relent however, and, before the end of the year, he crossed the Neapolitan border without meeting any resistance.

On January 11, 1348 in the Battle of Capua he defeated the army of Louis of Taranto. Four days later the queen repaired to Provence, while her husband followed soon afterwards. All the kingdom's barons swore loyalty to the new ruler as he marched to Naples from Benevento. While visiting Aversa, where his brother had been murdered, Louis had Charles of Durazzo assassinated in revenge by his condottiero Malatesta Ungaro and others. Once in Naples, Louis released most of his mercenaries and their commander.

Here, Louis and his men were struck by the arrival of the Black Death. He therefore decided to leave the Kingdom of Naples. The Neapolitans, who had quickly grown unsatisfied of the severe Hungarian rule, called back Joan, who paid for her return expedition by selling her rights on Avignon to the Popes.

[Szegedist]

Italians in the Hungarian 1848-1849 war of independence


http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/08/Olasz_l%C3%A9gi%C3%B3_z%C3%A1szl%C3%B3_1849_1.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/be/Olasz_l%C3%A9gi%C3%B3_z%C3%A1szlaja_1849.JPG
(Banners of the Italian legion)

The Italian Legion (Olasz légió) was a group of Italian volunteers that supported the anti-Habsburg uprising in Hungary between 1848-1849, it was lead by Alessandro Monti.

Hungarian Legion in Garibaldi's army.
The revolutions of 1848 in Hungary and in the North Italian territories created a rapprochement, later a natural alliance, between the Sardinian kingdom and Hungary, against the common enemy, the Habsburgs. Many Hungarian soldiers of Radetzky's army deserted instead of fighting against the Italian revolutionaries. Italian volunteers, organized in a legion, went to Hungary to fight in the Honvedseg against the Habsburgs. The defeat of the Italian forces and of the Hungarian Revolution did not end this comradeship. Louis Kossuth, the self-exiled president of the Hungarian Republic, found asylum in Turin, where the government of King Victor Emmanuel II (1849-1878), King of Piedmont (in 1861 to become the first King of Italy), treated him as the real representative of Hungary.

In 1858 Emperor Francis Joseph fell into the carefully-prepared diplomatic trap of the Piedmontese prime minister, Count Camillo Cavour, and declared war on Piedmont. Cavour counted on the alliance of Napoleon III. in this war. Napoleon and Francis Joseph, however, coming to an understanding at Villafranca, thwarted the plans of the Piedmontese. The King was ready to accept the conditions imposed upon him by the Villafranca agreement, but Cavour vehemently protested: ". . . this peace will never be made! This treaty will never be executed! . . . I will turn conspirator! I will become a revolutionist! But this treaty shall not be carried out. No, a thousand times no! Never, never! . . The emperor of the French is departing. Let him go. But you and I, Monsieur Kossuth, will remain. We two will do what the Emperor of the French did not dare to accomplish. By God, we will not stop halfway."

Cavour's confidence in Kossuth was justified by the common interest of Piedmont and Hungary, as well as by the active help of Kossuth in the preparation of the unification of Italy. Besides a good chance to incite a revolt in Hungary against the Habsburgs during the Italian war, Kossuth offered military help in the form of a legion organized from Hungarian emigrants living in Italy. The legion's effective force reached 5,200 soldiers organized in five battalions under the leadership of well-known Hungarian freedomfighter generals such as George Klapka and Moritz Perczel.

n 1859 the Legion had to be dissolved according to the provisions of the Treaty of Zurich (November 10, 1859). Many of the rank and file went back to Hungary, but the generals and officers who were sentenced to death by Habsburg military courts in absentia (such as Count Alexander Teleki, General Gyorgy Klapka and Antal Vetter) remained. With the help of Kossuth, who by December, 1859 had renewed his contacts with Garibaldi and Count Teleki (a friend of Garibaldi since they met in Nice in 1849), Hungarian officers volunteered to join the Piedmontese Army as well as the army of the Sicilian revolutionaries. The Hungarians were welcomed. Their number began to grow in Garibaldi's division as news arrived from Hungary that those members of the Hungarian Legion who returned to Hungary confident in the amnesty announced by the Viennese Court after the 1858 war were mistreated upon their return. Political developments in Italy once again required the military skill and help of Hungarian soldiers.

Garibaldi in the spring of 1860 hurried to the aid of the Sicilian revolutionaries. The famous "1,000" fighters of Garibaldi included several Hungarians, among them Colonel Istvan Turr, who was appointed division commander during the Sicilian operations. By the time Garibaldi invaded the kingdom of Naples, the Hungarian brigade led by General Ferdinand Eber numbered 3,200 men, with a cavalry unit 200 hussars strong. The brigade and hussar units played a key role in the Battle of Capua (October l, 1860) which decided not only the fate of Naples but also the entire campaign. Garibaldi recognized the heroism of the Hungarian Legion with the following words:

The Hungarian legion, that I had the honor to command, proved its glorious, brotherly devotion toward the 1,000 of Marsala with brilliant bravery which is the quality, of the heroic Hungarian nation.


On October 21, King Victor Emmanuel entered Naples with the Piedmontese Army. On November 8, Garibaldi resigned. His troops, which by that time numbered over 23,000, were dismissed. General Turr and several of his officers were accepted in the royal army as career officers. The legion also became an integral part of the Italian forces until 1866 when it was officially dissolved and integrated into Italian units. The flags of the Legion were deposited in the royal armory of the Italian kingdom of Turin. The heroic deeds of the Hungarian soldiers were preserved on the pages of Italian military history books.

Only six years after the dissolution of the Hungarian legion in Italy, General Gyorgy Klapka, the famous general of the 1848/1849 Hungarian freedom fight, organized a Hungarian legion in Prussia on the eve of the Austro-Prussian War in 1866. The legion entered Hungary through Moravia, but, unable to secure popular support against the Habsburg forces, it withdrew without influencing the outcome of the war.

After the Austro-Hungarian compromise of 1867 the outflow of political emigrees stopped. Hungarians, like other European nationalities, were able to migrate to the U.S. if they were unhappy with the political or economic conditions at home. In Hungary the newly organized Honvedseg provided an opportunity for those wishing to pursue a military career in the national army. Although individual Hungarians in small numbers continued to serve in foreign armies (example: fourteen Hungarians fought in the Boer War in South Africa in 1899-1902), no groups participated in armed conflicts.

[Szegedist]

Interwar era and WW2
During his decade in office, Bethlen led Hungary into the League of Nations and arranged a close alliance with Fascist Italy, even entering into a Treaty of Friendship with Italy in 1927, in order to further the nation's revisionist hopes. He was, however, defeated in his attempts to change the Treaty of Trianon, which stripped Hungary of most of its territory after the First World War. The Great Depression shifted Hungarian politics to the extreme right, and Horthy replaced Bethlen with Gyula Károlyi, followed quickly by Gyula Gömbös, a noted Fascist.



Shortly after becoming prime minister, Gömbös flew to Italy and visited Benito Mussolini. The two came to an accord, and Mussolini gave Gömbös his support for the revision of the Treaty of Trianon. Mussolini also promised Gömbös Italy’s aid if Hungary went to war with Yugoslavia and Romania in an attempt to regain Hungary’s former territory from those nations.

Gömbös attempted to forge closer trilateral unity between Germany, Italy and Hungary by acting as an intermediary between Germany and Italy whose two fascist regimes had nearly come to conflict in 1934 over the issue of Austrian independence. Gömbös eventually persuaded Mussolini to accept Hitler's annexation of Austria in the late 1930s


http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/fa/Mikl%C3%B3s_Horthy_de_Nagyb%C3%A1nya-Pd-italy-334.jpg
Miklós Horthy (Regent of Hungary 1920-1944) with King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy in Rome on 25 November 1936, during a military parade in via dell'Impero

[Szegedist]

Horthy's state visit to Italy 1936

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkTc_5ismzg