Seite 258 [258]
256 Istvan M. Szijarto
the 1790s to recover as much of his inheritance as possible. He
claimed that certain landholdings should have been reserved for the
male branch of the family, but the female branch expropriated the
male. As these estates ended up in the hands of vicecomes Sandor
Fels6buki Nagy who helped Lajos Jr. and his son with loans, he
finally withdrew his legal claims.
Another example of conflicts within the family is the case of the
Csuzy inheritance. Gaspar Csuzy lost most of his paternal inheritance
to his stepfather, Gyorgy Fekete Sr., and to his half-brother Gyorgy
Fekete. Other chunks of the Csuzy inheritance were cut by his sister,
Krisztina and his brother-in-law, Péter Végh. Péter Végh’s son, with
the same name, was promoted to the high dignity of the lord chief
justice (judex curiae regiae) in 1795, second to the palatine only,
by this time a Habsburg archduke. When Végh was promoted, his
son-in-law, clearly enjoying his full support, got an appointment as
personalis. He was no one other than Jözsef Felsöbüki Nagy.
Not only Végh was appointed to the highest position available
for a Hungarian of his time, but one of his predecessors in office
was Gyorgy Fekete, Gaspar Csuzy’s half brother, lord chief justice
between 1773 and 1783. Fekete could build on the support of his
father-in-law, Gyorgy Niczky, causarum reagalium director, that is,
chief crown prosecutor, who actually preferred Fekete to his son,
Kristóf Niczky, and gave him most of his support. Fekete clashed
with Gaspar Csuzy in the diet, the first being at that time persona¬
lis, chairman of the lower house of the parliament and leading the
loyalist MPs in the lower house, the latter a county deputy leading
the opposition. Similarly to this conflict, also Fekete and Kristóf
Niczky were rivals — in this case, among the professional office¬
holders. Also Kristóf Niczky could climb to the highest available
position in Hungary, that of the lord chief justice, which he filled
between 1786 and 1787.
As these cases demonstrate clearly, in gentry families we can often
meet signs of not just cooperation but also rivalry, even hostility.
The gentry family was held together by the fact and the hope of a
common inheritance — which could easily turn the members of the
family against each other.