This book including Hungary of story not history; an undertaking in which writer, Árminius Vambéry, had simply to deal with the salient events, the most noteworthy personalities, and the most thrilling episodes in a narrative which covered nearly a thousand years.
The stores laid up by the tillers of the soil, the year before, had been carried away by the Mongols, and the little grain they could sow after the departure of the enemy had hardly sprung up when it was devoured by locusts. The famine assumed such frightful proportions that starving people, in their frenzy, killed each other, and it happened that men would bring to market human flesh for sale. Since the birth of Christ no country has ever been overwhelmed by such misery.
—King IV. Béla, 1235
Do not constantly trouble yourselves with the vanished glories of the past, but rather let your determined patriotism bring about the prosperity of the beloved fatherland. Many there are who think that Hungary has been, but I for my part like to think that Hungary shall be.
—Széchenyi
