rebelling a second and a third time, his eyes
were at length put out, and Kalman cruelly
put out the eyes of the rebel's unoffending
son. Suspecting his wife's faith, he sent her
back to her relations, where she died, after
having given birth to Boris, of whom more
anon.

Kalman completed the legislation of his
predecessors. He regulated revenues and
military duties, and established the relations
between subjects and the king, or the duke.
He diminished the cruelty of punishments,
limited ordeals, and proclaimed that there
were no such things as witches. He levied
taxes on a simple plan; and he completes the
series of energetic kings by whom the
constitution of Hungary, brought from the
Asiatic wilds, was perfected into a stable
European system. It was in the year 1114
that Kalman died.

Having arrived at this point, we can now
travel rapidly over all events that do not
concern the story of the Hungarians as a
nation. Stephen the Second, son of Kalman,
having no issue, would have recognised Boris,
the child of the divorced queen; but he
found Bela still living, the blinded son of the
blinded traitor Almas, and determined on
atoning for his father's crime. Bela the
Second, therefore, succeeded Stephen the
Second; his wife, Helena, the strong-minded
daughter of a Servian prince, ruled over her
blind husband, and Hungary was subject to
a vixen. Her slaughterings and oppressions
crushed the power of the chiefs; and in 1171
Bela died, almost an absolute monarch. His
son Geiza, being but ten years old, was
governed by his uncle, by the palatine, and the
Archbishop of Gran. These three formed a
good regency; and, among other things,
invited into Hungary Germans from Flanders,
who settled in Zips and Transylvania, and
enjoyed many privileges. These men are the
ancestors of the present Saxons of Transylvania,
and they are the men who, exploring
the resources of the country, commenced the
working of Hungarian mines.

Then there were crusades again, and
armies had to be watched, as in the days of
Kalman. Then there followed unimportant
kings; the court of Byzantium having by
this time, through marrying and plotting,
acquired influence in Hungarian affairs.
Bela the Third, who followed Stephen the
Third, was able, but not popular, being
Byzantine in his habits. He introduced
ceremonies from the court of Constantinople,
and burned the chairs round his throne, in
order that no noble might sit in his presence.
He governed the country, however, with
great skill, and made up for himself a private
purse. He left his throne to one son, and
his treasure to another. The son who had
the treasure strove, by means of it, to get
also the throne.

There came then a struggle very much like
that between Andreas and Bela, the king's
name being now Emric; the brother's,
Andreas; and the royal child's name Ladislas.
King Emric being in extremity—dressed in
royal robes, wearing his crown, and carrying
his sceptre—walked into his brother's camp,
among the soldiers then forming for battle
against him. He said, " I am your king;
which of you is a traitor? " And no man
lifting a hand against his sacred person, he
proceeded to his brother's tent, and there
arrested him, and took him away prisoner
from the midst of his own troops. So he
imprisoned Andreas, and sent his ambitious
wife home to her friends.

King Emric dying, made an appeal to his
brother's generosity, by naming him as
guardian of the child. But Andreas soon caused
the child and mother to fly to Austria for
refuge. The child died. The mother,
Constantia, became wife to the German emperor.
Andreas was then legitimately king.

Andreas engaged in useless wars of
conquest, and extravagantly wasted the resources
of the state. He sold and mortgaged the
castle domains, whose produce supported the
garrisons; and, using up the state capital,
soon rendered the state nearly bankrupt;
while the alienated lands, purchased by the
great nobility, had gone to swell their power.
The lower nobility and the people now came
to be oppressed by powerful magnates, who
were by a great deal stronger than the court.
The king at the same time strengthened
himself with foreign favourites, relations of
his wife. Intense discontent followed, chiefly
directed against the queen and her relations.
Andreas, to mend the matter, made a crusade,
or pilgrimage, to Palestine, paying for his
journey by a seizure of Church treasure, and
of property belonging to Constantia, by which
act he made an enemy of her husband,
Frederic, Emperor of Germany. On his return
from Palestine he found matters more complicated
than he had left them: treasury still
empty; magnates still overbearing; people
still oppressed; and foreign conquests breaking
up. His first care was to look after the
foreign conquests; for which end he drained
the country,—went with an army to Galicia,—
was defeated, and taken prisoner.

Bela, the king's eldest son, was now called
upon to undertake a reform. He convoked
the oppressed parties—the low nobility, the
franklins, and garrisons—demanding restoration
of the old Constitution, and the old
system of finance. The magnates resisted,
and civil war was imminent, when the Pope
threw the whole weight of the clergy into the
Reform side of the balance. Peace was
procured, under a treaty called " The Golden
Bull "—the Magna Charta of the Hungarians.
This confirmed all ancient rights and liberties,
restored the alienated domains to the service
of the state, and forbade them to be thereafter
devoted to any purpose but the defraying
of the public expenditure. Various other
details were adjusted; and the Bull