LASZLO

HUNYADI (1433—1457)  , Hungarian statesman and warrior, was the eldest son of Janos Hunyadi and Elizabeth Szilagyi . At a very early age he accompanied his father in his campaigns . After the battle of Kossovo (1448) he was left for a time, as a hostage for his father, in the hands of George Brankovic, despot of Servia . In 1452 he was.a member of the deputation which went to Vienna to receive back the Hungarian. king Ladislaus V . In 1453 he was already ban of Croatia-Dalmatia . At the diet of Buda (1455) he resigned all his dignities, because of the accusations of Ulrich Cillei and the other enemies of his house, but a reconciliation was ultimately patched up and he was betrothed to Maria, the daughter of the palatine, Laszlo Garai . After his father's death in 1456, he was declared by his arch-enemy Cillei (now governor of Hungary with unlimited power), responsible for the debts alleged to be owing by the elder Hunyadi to the state; but he defended himself so ably at the diet of Futak (October 1456) that Cillei feigned a reconcilia- tion, promising to protect the Hunyadis on condition that they first surrendered all the royal castles entrusted to them . A beginning was to be made with the fortress of Belgrade, of which Laszlo was commandant, Cillei intending to take the king with him to Belgrade and assassinate Laszlo within its walls . But Hunyadi was warned betimes, and while admitting Ladislaus V. and Cillei, he excluded their army of mercenaries . On the following morning (9th of November 1456) Cillei, during a private interview, suddenly drew upon Laszlo, but was himself cut down by the commandant's friends, who rushed in on hearing the clash of weapons . The terrified young king, who had been privy to the plot, thereupon pardoned Hunyadi, and at a subsequent interview with his mother at Temesvar swore that he would protect the whole family . As a pledge of his sincerity he appointed Laszlo lord treasurer and captain-general of the kingdom .

Suspecting no evil, Hunyadi accompanied the king to Buda, but on arriving there was arrested on a

charge of compassing Ladislaus's ruin, condemned to death without the observance of any legal formalities, and beheaded on the 16th of March 1457 . See I . Acsady, History of the Hungarian Realm (Hung.), vol. i . (Budapest, 1904) . (R . N .