„Hozzáfognak hát buzgón, hisz Turnus a példa”. Buda város követei az 1741. évi országgyűlésen
“Urg’d by his presence, ev’ry soul is warm’d.” Representatives from Buda at the Diet of 1741

Summary/Abstract: Town representatives played a marginal role in the eighteenth-century history of Hungarian diets. Relevant literature usually notes both their limited leverage and their loyalty to the government in general. The present inquiry probes deeper by studying in detail the activities of the representatives of Buda at the 1741 assembly as recorded in the correspondence between the city council, the representatives themselves, and the town’s agents in Vienna, as well as the diet records kept by the representatives. The main research questions include the demands and complaints put forward at the diet by the Buda representatives and how successful they were in resolving these during their stay in Pressburg/Pozsony (today Bratislava, Slovakia). Further, the author explores the various methods deployed to assert town interests and demonstrates the representatives’ “lobbying” at the diet and beyond. The study reveals that by 1741 the city of Buda – despite the Ottoman rule and the devastation caused by the “Rákóczi uprising” – had fully regained its former privileges and power as (capital) city. The archival sources also shed light on the evolution of bills regarding free royal towns through a closer look at the motivation and political agenda of the towns in the assembly’s decision making process. The examination of the decision making mechanism revealed that in the course of the diet proceedings, the representatives of Buda attained a leading position as one of the free royal towns and managed to close the gap with Pressburg and Pest.

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