Hungary
István Tisza
1861–1918 Prime Minister of Hungary, 1913–1917
Tisza was the strongest Hungarian politician of his generation, a stern Calvinist landowner who ruled with an iron hand and defended the Magyar position within the monarchy. In July 1914 he was the main brake on Vienna's war party. He feared that a war would bring in Russia and Romania and that annexing Serbian lands would add more Slavs to an empire already struggling with them. He held out for a diplomatic prelude, then yielded on 14 July, partly out of fear that Germany would lose confidence in Austria-Hungary, on the condition that no Serbian territory be annexed. He remained prime minister until 1917. On 31 October 1918, during the Hungarian revolution, soldiers murdered him in his Budapest home.