page_title: Maurice Benyovszky
section_title: Legacy
hierarchical_section_title: Maurice Benyovszky / Legacy
caption_attribution_description: Front page of Memoirs and Travels...
context_page_description: Count Maurice Benyovszky de Benyó et Urbanó was a renowned military officer, adventurer and writer from the Kingdom of Hungary, who described himself as a Hungarian and a Pole. He is considered a national hero in Hungary, Poland and Slovakia.
  Benyovszky was born and raised in Verbó, Kingdom of Hungary. In 1769, while fighting for the Polish armies under the Bar Confederation, he was captured by the Russians and exiled to Kamchatka. He subsequently escaped and returned to Europe via Macau and Mauritius, arriving in France. In 1773, Benyovszky reached agreement with the French government to establish a trading post on Madagascar. Facing significant problems with the climate, the terrain and the native Sakalava people, he abandoned the trading post in 1776.
  Benyovszky then returned to Europe, joined the Austrian Army and fought in the War of the Bavarian Succession. After a failed venture in Fiume, he travelled to America and obtained financial backing for a second voyage to Madagascar. The French governor of Mauritius sent a small armed force to close down his operation, and Benyovszky was killed in May 1786.
context_section_description: Much of what Benyovszky claimed to have done in Poland, Kamchatka, Japan, Formosa and Madagascar is questionable at best, but in any case has left no lasting traces in the history of war, exploration or colonialism. His legacy resides largely in his autobiography (Memoirs and Travels of Mauritius Augustus Count de Benyowsky), which was published in two volumes in 1790 by friends of Magellan, who was by then, as a result of the failed Madagascan venture, in serious financial difficulties.  Even at the time of the first publication of the book, it was met with significant scepticism by reviewers.    Despite this criticism, it was a great publishing success, and has since been translated into several languages (German 1790, 1791, 1796, 1797; Dutch 1791; French 1791; Swedish 1791; Polish 1797; Slovak 1808; Hungarian 1888).
  The Kamchatkan portion of Memoirs was adapted into a number of successful plays and operas (plays by Kotzebue 1792; Vulpius 1794.  Operas by Boieldieu 1800 and Doppler 1847) which were performed in suitable translation all over Europe and America.  The Polish national bard Juliusz Słowacki published a poem about him in 1841. More recently, films and television series have been made – a Slovak-Hungarian TV series in 1975 (Vivát Benyovszky!, director: Igor Ciel), a documentary for Hungarian TV in 2009 (Benyovszky Móric és a malgasok földje, director: Zsolt Cseke), and a Hungarian film Benyovszky, the Rebel Count of 2012 (director Irina Stanciulescu).
  In Hungary, Slovakia and Poland he is still celebrated as a significant national hero.   A Hungarian-Madagascan Friendship organisation promotes the links between Benyovszky and Madagascar, arranges conferences and other meetings, and maintains a website dedicated to the celebration of Benyovszky’s life. 
  The Polish writer Arkady Fiedler visited Madagascar in 1937, spent several months in the town of Ambinanitelo and later wrote a popular travel book describing his experiences. In it, he gives a romanticised version of Benyovszky's career. Fiedler appears to have made an effort to find out if Benyovszky was still remembered by the island's people - with mixed results. In fact his name did survive in Madagascar -  in recent years, a street in the island capital Antananarivo was renamed 'Lalana Benyowski'.
caption: Frontispiece of the London 1790 edition of Benyovszky’s Memoirs
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