Even though Sigismund did his best to secure in advance the undisputed succession of his daughter, Elizabeth, and his son-in-law, the Habsburg Albert V, duke of Austria, the barons insisted that, as king, Albert (1437—9) sign an election pact, just as Sigismund had done fifty years earlier. This document, reflecting the leading men’s dissatisfaction with most of Sigismund’s reforms, stipulated the abolition of all ‘novelties’ (including new taxes) and confirmed the barons’ intention to exclude ‘foreign counsellors’. In the following year dynastic business kept the king (who became Albert II, Holy Roman Emperor) away from Hungary. During his absence increasing disaffection among the nobility with the royal council’s government, combined with Turkish attacks on the border requiring the financial and military support of the counties, resulted in the calling of a diet. The 1439 meeting of the estates marks the beginning of the rise of what may be termed ‘the commons’ in Hungary. The county deputies virtually renegotiated the arrangements between king and barons, changing a fair number of articles (paragraphs of law) to their advantage. These issues ranged from matters of defence, to pardons for felons, to the marriages of the king’s daughters. Where the election promises had bound the king to the assent of his council, the diet either freed him or stipulated the consent of the nobility. However, little of all this was implemented because of Albert’s death in camp during an unsuccessful campaign against the Ottomans, only two years after his accession.
Having become aware, in 1439, of their corporate strength, the nobility insisted on their right to elect a ruler. Albert had only two daughters, but the queen was pregnant and her supporters were counting on the birth of a male heir. However, the ‘soldier barons’, who had acquired considerable power in the preceding decades and also enjoyed the support of the counties, thought that the country needed a military leader, preferably one who could bring troops and arms to the defence of the endangered realm. They elected the young King Wladyslaw III of Poland (Wladislas I of Hungary, 1440—4). This election was the first in which no dynastic link connected the new ruler to his predecessor. Barely had Wladislas entered Hungary, having signed an election promise, than Elizabeth bore a son, Ladislas (called Posthumous, as Ladislas V, king of Hungary). Through a ruse she managed to have him crowned with the Holy Crown ‘of St Stephen’ in May 1440, and then retreated, with the venerated insignia, to the western border of the country. The nobles assembled at the coronation diet decided to solve the problem by enunciating a new legal maxim: they decreed that the ‘force and power of coronation lies with the nobles representing the entire body of the realm’. (Nevertheless, hallowed tradition was strong enough to make them choose a crown from the reliquary of St Stephen to replace the one abducted by the queen.) Wladislas and his soldier barons soon defeated the queen’s supporters and gained control of most of the country. Only the north-western parts, with the rich mining cities, remained in the hands of a Bohemian captain, Jan Jiskra of Brandys. With the help of formerly Hussite Czech soldiers, Jiskra kept the territory — in the name of the Habsburg party — despite threats and armed confrontations, for almost two decades. While negotiating for peace, Elizabeth died and left the child king in the care of Emperor Frederick III, head of the house of Habsburg.
The four years of Wladislas’s reign were taken up with defensive and offensive campaigns against the Ottomans. These were the years of the rise of Janos Hunyadi, victor in the decisive battle against the pro-Habsburg party, together with his mentor and fellow voivode and ban, Nicholas Ujlaki, later king of Bosnia. Hunyadi, whose family had come from Wallachia only a generation earlier, grew up in the entourage of Sigismund’s barons and of the emperor himself. Through what may be termed military entrepreneurship he gradually amassed extensive properties, especially in the south-east and in Transylvania. With the fall of Serbia in 1439 the Ottoman Empire reached the border of Hungary. The defence system built up under Sigismund still protected the frontier, but the enemy now stood at the border. In the 1430s Ottoman raids reached deep inside Hungarian territory. The region between Drava and Sava (Slovania and Srem) became so depopulated that a number of noble counties ceased to exist. For example, the inhabitants of Keve along the Danube, once a rich city, had to leave their town and resettle in the vicinity of Pest. In 1441—2, Hunyadi, sensing the warlike mood in the country, launched successful attacks against the Ottoman bey of Smederevo and scored several victories in Transylvania and Wallachia as well. During 1443—4, in the so-called ‘long campaign’, Wladislas and Hunyadi led a Hungarian army, supported by allies from the Balkans, as far as the Rhodope mountains. Although no territory was regained, Hungarian troops, after decades of defence, were moving into enemy territory and instilled hope in the near-extinct resistance of Balkan people. In 1444, Hunyadi and the ruler of Serbia, Despot George Brankovic, who had fled to Hungary a few years before, secured a ten-year truce with the sultan allowing the return of Despot George to parts of Serbia. However, Wladislas, choosing to follow the prodding of the papal legate, Cardinal Giuliano Cesarini, and counting on Venetian help, broke the peace. Once again a crusade was called; and once again, it led to a disastrous defeat. In the battle of Varna (10 November 1444) the king, the cardinal, most of the Polish knights and a good part of the army were killed on the battlefield. Hunyadi barely escaped with his life.