THE HUNGARIAN CONNECTION 91the invitation was sent and accepted. Throughout 1384, the disappointed can-
didates battled each other's candidacy into oblivion. After much slaughter, the
junior Angevin princess, aged 10 years and 7 months, was crowned in Cracow
as Queen Jadwiga, on 15 October. In the event, no voice was raised against her.
Historians cannot be prevented from wondering if Louis's efforts were
worthwhile. He had certainly mortgaged his daughters' happiness against an
uncertain future. His family's precarious hold on their inheritance would obvi-
ously depend as much on his daughters' husbands as on them; and one of the
two was not yet wed. But such were the unwritten rules of the age. Here was a
strong dynast with a weak dynastic hand. No success could redeem the elemen-
tary failure to sire a son. In any case, Poland was but one of his many domains,
and a touch of confusion there was not the mark of ultimate catastrophe. In the
constitutional sphere, it could be argued that the Statute of Kosice was merely
intended to win time. The growth of a strong executive, and of a robust fiscal
and military system on the Hungarian model would undoubtedly have offset
those early concessions, and would have put the King in a position to recover his
prerogatives. Such may well have been Louis's design. At all events, death inter-
vened before the design could be started. The Crown of St. Stephen in Hungary
passed to the House of Luxembourg. The Polish Crown, and the fate of the
House of Anjou, rested on the frail brow of Jadwiga.
From Poland's point of view, Louis's short reign was decisive. The privileges
which he granted were not rescinded by his death. They put the political initia-
tive into the hands of the nobility at a moment when the cement of social and
constitutional structures was starting to set. They obstructed the action of all
subsequent monarchs, and formed the foundations of a long tradition. In the
sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, when the Kingdom of
Hungary had long since lost its independence, the Hungarian-style liberties of
Poland still stood intact.
JS- * si- >!• *In those later centuries, the Polish-Hungarian connection remained close.
Under the Jagiellonian kings, the Hungarian alliance formed a corner-stone of
foreign policy. In 1440-4, and again in 1490—1516, Polish princes were elected to
the Hungarian throne. In 1576-86, a Hungarian prince proved to be the most
successful king in Poland's history. Common fears inspired common attitudes.
Strong sympathies and personal contacts persisted even when political co-
operation was impossible. The Partitions of Poland mirrored the earlier fate of
Hungary. The partial revival of Hungary in the Dual Monarchy in 1867 was
accompanied by the partial revival of Poland in Galicia. In the nineteenth cen-
tury two similar nationalist movements drew on an essentially comparable his-
tory to create a common friendship unique among the antagonistic nationalities
of the region. In the twentieth century, two independent republics, squeezed
between Germany and Russia, followed parallel courses of development. Even