Fighting, Fighting

I have only fifteen pages left to translate out of five hundred fifty-five. I am towards the end (obviously) of the final, all-out Turkish assault on Eger Castle, October 14, 1552. That's about the fourth major assault over the thirty-nine day siege by some 40,000 Ottomans. The castle defenders number about 2,000. Or at least they did when the siege started.

The Women of Eger,
painting by Bertalan Székely

There is a great deal of mayhem in this Hungarian historical novel published in 1899, Egri Csillagok (Eger Stars). Most recently during this final assault — as I described to Shari yesterday afternoon, then again to Ray and Judy before going out for dinner — a widowed mother, Lady Balogh, her young son having just been killed in the fighting, grabs a sword and runs to the bastion. Meanwhile, the captain of the castle, István Dobó, wrestles with a giant Turk who falls off the platform by the bastion onto the cobblestones below. The Turk loses his helmet and gets up just as Lady Balogh is running by. Enraged, she swings her sword and, as the novelist, Géza Gárdonyi, writes, severs the Turk's head from his neck.

The siege takes up only the last half of the novel. The first half begins with two children skinny dipping, five-year old Éva and seven-year old Gergely. They are captured by a one-eyed janissary named Yumurdjak. What follow in that first half of the novel are descriptions of life in 16th Century Hungary and Constantinople. The last pages will surely complete the story of Yumurdjak. Éva and Gergely, now grown up and married, through a highly unlikely set of circumstances only a novelist can weave, are both fighting on the ramparts against the Turks, the husband not knowing his wife is there. It's a page-turner.

It is a historical novel. The siege of Eger really happened. Only two years later, Sebestyén Tinódi was composing ballads chronicling the heroism of the Eger defenders. The characters the novelist develops in the first half of the book actually existed and fought at Eger. Their names and deeds are known and were recorded, not just by Tinódi, but also in records kept during the siege by the aged castle steward, János Sukán. We know the names and deeds of soldiers and officers, blacksmiths, millers, the two priests, and the mayor of Eger, the inventory of supplies the castle steward maintained, and that the castle had thirteen barbers. Back in those days, the novelist explains, there were no doctors. Barbers washed, sewed and bandaged wounds. Someone counted 12,000 cannonballs inside the fortress, not including those embedded in the walls or those the defenders hurled down on Turks climbing siege ladders.

Granted, the first half is more novel than history, but even so the historical setting is accurate. The brutal suppression of the peasant revolt led by György Dózsa, the catastrophic Battle of Mohacs, and the Ottoman ruse to occupy Buda are all facts. And in the hands of a skilled novelist, which Gárdonyi certainly was, this brutal history is strikingly vivid.

The Siege of Eger Castle
painting by Béla Vízkelety

There is a great deal of mayhem. Gárdonyi is constantly weaving in colorful details that bring the medieval period alive, together with humor — sometimes black, sometimes almost slapstick, particularly his use of a gypsy character, Sárközi, for comic relief. But there is a great deal of mayhem.

And it's that mayhem that makes me reflect and write this blog post. It's the realization that we haven't changed all that much over the last six centuries.

I'm flipping through Netflx documentaries and see Rick Steves in Europe. I flip through his episodes, passing over four or five travel shows set in Germany, and stumble upon Bulgaria. ¿Bulgaria? It's one of those Balkan places loaded with centuries of animosity and bloodshed. Being raised Hungarian, I have such associations. I'm curious. The half hour program is delightful. You know, there is a lot of beauty and culture in Bulgaria.

So, someone remind me. Why do we hate and slaughter each other?