The Austrian Hapsburgs liberated Hungary, capturing the city of Budapest in 1676. The Hungarians welcomed the liberating army, but were dismayed when the Austrians refused to go, initiating more than 200 years of Austrian rule. Francis Rakoczy, a Transylvanian prince, led an unsuccessful rebellion in the early eighteenth century. (Click on the pictures to enlarge.)

Meanwhile, the Catholic Church rolled back much of the gains made by Protestantism. The Jesuit order led a brutal Counter-Reformation, converting people to Catholicism through education, intimidation and persecution.

The following story comes from the History of the Protestant Church in Hungary, p. 208-209. Catholic monks incited Count Nanasdy to imprison a Protestant preacher, Stephen Pilarick, and burn his books. They put the preacher’s Bible on a spit and roasted it over the burning books. The wind caught one of the pages of the Bible and blew it into the chest of the Count. Before the monks could retrieve it, the Count read these words from Isaiah 40, “The grass withers and the flower fades, but the Word of God endures forever.” The count turned deathly pale as the court fool shouted, “How shall you feel, Sir Count, when the Devils are roasting you on a spit in hell?”

Hungary experienced a revival starting in the 1840’s. Two Scottish missionaries to the Jews introduced Rabbi Isaac Saphir to Jesus Christ as his Savior and Messiah. God used Saphir’s family and others to bring many people to Christ. (Isaac’s son Adolph immigrated to England where he pastored a large church in London and maintained a warm friendship with Charles Spurgeon.)

Another unsuccessful revolution against Austrian rule took place in 1848-49, led by Louis Kossuth. The Hungarian army could have held its own against the Austrians, but the Hapsburg king hired the Tsar and, with the Russian army invading from the east, the Hungarians did not stand a chance.

About twenty years later, the Austrians suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of the Italian army. When the Austrian monarch appealed to the Hungarians for aid, the Hungarian statesman Francis Deak negotiated a deal to send Hungarian soldiers to support the Austrian army. In exchange, the emperor agreed to almost all of the demands that the Hungarians had made in 1848. The resulting political arrangement, called the dual monarchy, allowed the Hungarians to have their own parliament and make their own laws. Austria and Hungary became two separate countries with the same king.