Kósa László (szerk.): A Cultural History of Hungary. From the Beginnings to the Eighteenth Century (1999)
Chapter 3. Iván Bertényi: Hungarian Culture in the Middle Ages
Hungarian Culture in the Middle Ages to make only 20-30 km a day). Servants, villeins, and merchants who transported smaller amount of goods, carried their burden on their back, possibly in panniers or on the backs of horses, donkeys or mules. Besides smaller, two-wheel barrows pulled along by hand, there were also four-wheeled carts in use. Customs tariffs from the thirteenth century on often mention large weigh-carts drawn by several horses and able to transport large amounts of goods. Up to the fourteenth century the front wheels of carts could not be turned, so they could be steered only with great difficulty. (A fine depiction of the cart in which the dead body of King (Saint) Ladislas was carried is to be seen in a miniature in the Illuminated Chronicle of 1358.) From the fourteenth century onwards, carts were made whose front pair of wheels could be turned and which were thus easier to steer; these came to be called after the village of Kocs [pronounced ‘kotch’] in Komárom County, where they were first built. From approximately the fourteenth century onwards they started making coaches whose body hung on straps, thus eliminating much of the bumping on the poor roadways. This design was a major innovation which was to spread throughout the world, as is attested to by the use of the Hungarian loan word in several languages, such as ‘coach’ in English or Kutsche in German. The driver often rode the left-hand horse, in order to be able to spot the potholes. As the roads were muddy and clayey, freight traffic, especially the transport of weightier goods, only happened in the drier seasons, either the summer or the icy winter. As we have already mentioned, rivers played an important role in traffic and transport. When moving upstream, boats were towed. This exhausting work was first performed by servants, later it was delegated to draught animals. Paddles were occasionally used. According to the Description of Eastern Europe, whose author is unknown, the navigable waterways in Hungary were the rivers Danube, Dráva, Tisza, Vág and Hemád. The river Maros was also an important fairway for the shipping of salt from Transylvania. Medieval sources mention an abundance of river crossings, ferries and fords. The busiest was the ferry at Pest; there are records from as early as 1148 of the crossing of carts laden with wine, salt and foodstuffs. Boatmen and boat-builders joined to form their own professional bodies, the guilds, in the early Middle Ages. Boats may have been built of oak. (Those used in the wars against Byzantium in the twelfth century were dugouts: hollowed-out tree trunks.) Cargo boats were 20-30 metres long; 5-6 metre-wide vessels with large hulls drawing over a metre, in the middle section of which a storage structure was erected to protect goods from the weather. Barges were shorter and narrower and were rowed by oarsmen. The swift lighters did good service in the summer of 1456, during the defense of Nándorfehérvár (Belgrade) against the Ottoman Turks, when they were used to break through the river-barrage of the Turkish boats and establish contact between János Hunyadi’s relief forces and the garrison in the besieged castle. The larger barges were also equipped with sails which were used mainly at sea. From 1368, when the Dalmatian coast was acquired, until it was lost in 1420, Hungary also 70