The Baron's Sons

A Romance of the Hungarian Revolution of 1848

By
Dr. Maurus Jókai
Author of
"Midst the Wild Carpathians," "Black Diamonds," "Pretty Michal," "The Hungarian Nabob," etc.

Translated from the Fourth Hungarian Edition by
Percy Favor Bicknell
Joint Translator of "The Jesuit Relations."

Boston
L. C. Page and Company
(Incorporated) 1900

Copyright, 1900 By L. C. Page and Company
(INCORPORATED)

All Rights Reserved

Colonial Press
Electrotyped and Printed by C. H. Simonds & Co.
Boston, Mass., U.S.A.

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.

No page of history is more crowded with thrilling interest than that which records the uprising of the Hungarians, in 1848-49, in a gallant attempt to recover their constitutional rights. The events of that stirring period, even when related by the sober pen of the annalist, read more like romance than reality; and thus they cannot fail to lend themselves admirably to the purposes of historical fiction. More than one of that brilliant series of novels with which the genius of Hungary's greatest story-writer has enriched the literature, not of his own country merely, but of the world, takes its theme from those memorable scenes in which the author himself played no unimportant part. Into none of these fascinating romances has the writer succeeded in crowding so much of the life and colour, of the heroism and self-sacrifice, the triumph and the despair, of that national convulsion, as into the pages of "The Baron's Sons" ("A Kőszívű Ember Fiai," literally, "The Sons of the Stony-hearted Man"). Especially effective is his description of the historic flight over the Carpathians of the two hundred and twenty hussars who, at the outbreak of the Revolution, deserted the Austrian army and hastened to their country's aid. No chapter in all the author's writings exceeds this one in breathless interest and in the skilful handling of detail.

The necessity of abridging the author's text, while regretted by no one more than by the translator, has, it is believed, tended to contribute to the story an element of unity and compactness which, owing to the undue elaboration of certain minor details, seems somewhat lacking in the original. It is with extreme hesitation and diffidence, however, that I venture, even in self-defence, to impute the slightest blemish to a style in which so many of the author's admirers can see no fault. The curtailment has necessitated, in some chapters, a certain amount of adaptation, and a slight departure from strict literalness of rendering; but it is hoped that the spirit of the original has nowhere been sacrificed.

P. F. B.

Malden, Mass., April, 1900.

CONTENTS.