Whilst the country was pursuing its downward course, the Czech attendants of the king were incessant in their clamors against poor Hungary. They complained that if they did not wish to starve they would soon have to leave the country. The king himself had not money enough at his disposal to provide for the ordinary expenses of the royal household. And yet the taxes were as high, and even higher, than during the reign of Matthias; nay, the chronicles of the time tell us that the people were better off under that Matthias who arbitrarily imposed taxes, than now under Uladislaus. In truth, the many burdens which were now weighing down the people were owing to the desire of many in high places to enrich themselves. The disorders of the time afforded a rare opportunity of doing so with impunity. It happened, though, at times, that the mismanagement of such greedy men would leak out, as in the case of Lukács, bishop of Csanád, and Sigismund Hampr, bishop of Fünfkirchen (Pécs), who were both treasurers of the realm, and whose fraudulent transactions were discovered. But the king was too weak to visit their crimes with condign punishment, and amongst the great of the land none were disposed to throw the first stone at the criminals. The impotence of the king caused the decline of the national strength, the ruin of the finances, and, as a natural consequence, the complete disorganization of the military institutions.
In this connection we have to record a strange encounter which took place in 1492 in the vicinity of Halas, in the county of Pesth. Paul Kinizsy, the terror of the Turks, the general who had grown gray on victorious battlefields, met there, in hostile array, the army he himself had formerly commanded, the famous “Black Guard” of Matthias. This very army, with their brave old leader, had a few months earlier repulsed the Turks near Szörény. After this victory the soldiers demanded the pay which had long been in arrears. As usual on such occasions, tumults and disorders broke out in consequence of this failure to keep faith with the troops. The wisdom of the Hungarian National Assembly knew no better remedy than to instruct Kinizsy to march against the exasperated men. The old general obeyed orders. Seven thousand men were massacred, and the remainder, flying to Austria, dragged out their weary lives as robbers, constantly at war with the law. This cruel and impolitic measure deprived the nation, at a time when she was preparing for the life-and-death struggle against the formidable power of the Turks, of one of her main supports, in destroying that army which alone could have saved her. For Kinizsy, the former miller-boy, this was the last campaign, for very soon after he was stricken with paralysis and deprived of the power of speech. His contemporaries saw in this a punishment decreed by Providence for the part he had played on that bloody occasion.