The Slaves of the Padishah
By Mór Jókai.
Translated by Robert Nisbet Bain.
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Introduction
Török Világ Magyarországon, now englished for the first time, is a sequel to Az Erdély arany kora, already published by Messrs. Jarrold, under the title of ’Midst the Wild Carpathians. The two tales, though quite distinct, form together one great historical romance, which centres round the weakly, good-natured Michael Apafi, the last independent Prince of Transylvania, his masterful and virtuous consort, Anna Bornemissza, and his machiavellian Minister, Michael Teleki, a sort of pocket-Richelieu, whose genius might have made a great and strong state greater and stronger still, but could not save a little state, already doomed to destruction as much from its geographical position as from its inherent weakness. The whole history of Transylvania, indeed, reads like an old romance of chivalry, cut across by odd episodes out of The Thousand and One Nights, and the last phase of that history (1674–1690), so vividly depicted in the present volume, is fuller of life, colour, variety, and adventure than any other period of European history. The little mountain principality, lying between two vast aggressive empires, the Ottoman and the German, ever striving with each other for the mastery of central Europe, was throughout this period the football of both. Viewed from a comfortable armchair at a distance of two centuries, the whole era is curiously fascinating: to unfortunate contemporaries it must have been unspeakably terrible. Strange happenings were bound to be the rule, not the exception, when a Turkish Pasha ruled the best part of Hungary from the bastions of Buda. Thus it was quite in the regular order of things for Hungarian gentlemen to join with notorious robber-chieftains to attack Turkish fortresses; for bandits, in the disguise of monks, to plunder lonely monasteries; for simple boors to be snatched from the plough to be set upon a throne; for Christian girls, from every country under heaven, to be sold by auction not fifty miles from Vienna, and for Turkish filibusters to plant fortified harems in the midst of the Carpathians. Jókai, luckier than Dumas, had no need to invent his episodes, though he frequently presents them in a romantic environment. He found his facts duly recorded in contemporary chronicles, and he had no temptation to be unfaithful to them, because the ordinary, humdrum incidents of everyday life in seventeenth century Transylvania outstrip the extravagances of the most unbridled imagination.
No greater praise can be awarded to the workmanship of Jókai than to say that, although written half a century ago (the first edition was published in 1853), Török Világ Magyarországon does not strike one as in the least old-fashioned or out of date. Romantic it is, no doubt, in treatment as well as in subject, but a really good romance never grows old, and Jókai’s unfailing humour is always—at least, in his masterpieces—a sufficient corrective of the excessive sensibility to which, like all the romanticists, he is, by temperament, sometimes liable.
Most of the characters which delighted us in ’Midst the Wild Carpathians accompany us through the sequel. The Prince, the Princess, the Minister, Béldi, Kucsuk, Feriz, Azrael, and even such minor personages as the triple renegade, Zülfikar, are all here, and remain true to their original presentment, except Azrael, who is the least convincing of them all. Of the new personages, the most original are the saponaceous Olaj Beg, whose unctuous suavity always conveys a menace, and the heroic
