During the Italian campaign Hungary was also called upon to meet another enemy in the East. Roving populations were making constant inroads on the eastern border, harassing the Hungarian inhabitants, who had by this time become accustomed to the peaceful avocations of the husbandman and tradesman. The victorious arms of King Louis soon put an end to those lawless incursions. But one of the most beautiful legends of Hungarian history is connected with one of the campaigns against these marauding populations. Kieystut, the Prince of Lithuania, after having been defeated several years before, broke into Transylvania with an army considerably swelled by the accession of a numerous body of Tartars. The king sent Louis Laczfy, the vayvode of Transylvania, against him, and the brave Székely people followed in his train. But the Hungarian army was small and the issue of the battle remained for a long time doubtful. The legend tells that the news of the peril threatening the Hungarian arms reached Grosswardein, where St. Ladislaus lay buried, and that the heroic saint, leaving his grave, bestrode the bronze horse of his own statue, which stood in the centre of the public square, and hurried off to the relief of his distressed countrymen. The Tartars were struck with the apparition of a warrior “who towered over them head and shoulders,” and above whom was visible the holy Virgin Mary, the patroness of Hungary. The pagans were seized with terror at this sight, and the battle ended in a brilliant victory for the Hungarians.
The arms of the king were no less successful in Servia where he was about “to kindle the light of faith.” But the most glorious of his wars was the one carried on against proud Venice, which continued during the greater portion of his reign. Her enemies, especially Genoa, willingly sided with the king of Hungary, and the ultimate result was the utter humiliation of the city of St. Mark. At last, in 1381, one year before the king’s death, peace was concluded between the two belligerents, a peace of which the Hungarians had every reason to be proud, for by its terms Dalmatia was unconditionally annexed to Hungary, and Venice herself had to send the Hungarian king, annually on St. Stephen’s Day, the 20th of August, a tribute of 7,000 ducats. As an indication of the high esteem in which the name of Hungary was held at that time, it is interesting to learn that foreign rulers sent their children to the Hungarian court to be educated, and the inference is not a strained one that the court of Louis must have been a centre of the European culture and refinement of that day. The spouse selected by the king, Elizabeth, the daughter of Stephen, the Prince of Bosnia, had herself been sent to the court to be trained in courtly accomplishments. At the Hungarian court also, Charles IV., the Emperor of Germany, wooed Anna, the Duchess of Schweidnitz, his future empress. These two rulers were united by ties of close friendship, until the discontent of the Germans with “the stepfather of their country,” as they called Charles IV., ripened a scheme to transfer the German crown to the Hungarian king. Although King Louis refused to accept the crown proffered to him, the sting remained, and his imperial friend became his deadly enemy. The emperor persisted in indulging in his unfounded suspicions of the king’s good faith, and so far forgot himself as to speak insultingly of the king and his exalted mother. The Hungarian ambassadors at the emperor’s court, incensed at the affront done to their master, challenged the emperor to mortal combat. But he cravenly declined to accept the challenge, whereupon they declared war in the name of their king. Louis, who almost worshipped his mother, approved of the proceedings of his ambassadors, and sent the emperor an insulting letter, in which he declared that nothing better might be expected from a drunkard. Very soon a large army of Kuns devastated Moravia, until, at length, after a warfare of several years, the humiliated emperor begged for peace, obtaining the Pope’s intercession in his behalf. Peace was at last concluded, and matrimonial alliances were to make it doubly sure. Sigismund, the emperor’s son, was betrothed to Mary, the king’s daughter.