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248 István M. Szijártó
to those enjoyed by their Polish counterparts. They were, however,
forced back to realities and accepted a compromise with Leopold
II (1790-1792) that more or less corresponded to the earlier status
quo. The long reign of his son, Francis I (1792-1835, as Holy Roman
emperor, Francis IH, 1792-1804, as emperor of Austria, Francis I,
1804-1835) was defined by the wars waged against revolutionary and
Napoleonic France and a corresponding conservative consolidation,
against which a liberal political opposition was formed in Hungary.
THE FELSOBUKI NAGY FAMILY AND THE RISE OF THE
OFFICE-HOLDING GENTRY
In Hungary, noble privilege was extended to a significant section of
the population: five per cent by the late eighteenth century. Beneath
the small group of titled aristocracy, we find a huge and complex
lesser nobility with its overwhelming majority composed of various
groups of petty nobility, and with its landed gentry elite on the top.
The highest social layer of the latter was the well-to-do gentry, the so
called bene possessionati. Together with the aristocracy, they were
the most important players in politics in early modern Hungary. In
the period under consideration in this volume, the Felsöbüki Nagy
family belonged to the bene possessionati.
Chapter 1 of the present volume, written by Péter Dominkovits
(The river-head: Data and a sketch of the history of the noble soci¬
ety of Sopron county), gives an overview of the beginnings of our
story in the seventeenth century and of the social milieu of Sopron
county on the western edges of the Kingdom of Hungary, not far
from Vienna, dominated by great landholdings. In contrast to the
count Nadasdy family, predominant in the sixteenth century and the
first half of the seventeenth, the count (later prince) Esterhazy family,
overwhelming by the late seventeenth century with an uninterrupted
and unquestioned dominance for two centuries to come, achieved a
much more thorough social control. For the gentry of Sopron county,
social elevation was possible only through their service. While the
Zeke, Récsey and Tolnay families supply well-researched examples
of the servitor families of the Nadasdy house, members of the Eérsy
and Kirtéssy families give examples of gentry families who served
the Esterhazys. These families held county offices managing local
administration and justice, and their most talented members were