Grantville Gazette, Volume 67

by Bjorn Hasseler

  The next Turkish-Hungarian wars were fought near the Bosnian and Croatian Frontier castles and the Croatian armies defeated the enemy in the battles of Dubica, Jajca and Korenica. The hero of these fights was Peter Berislo, but his victories were over with his death in 1520.

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  Things became worse when Nándorfehérvár (Belgrad) was taken in 1521 and the Turks had a free way into the country. Suleiman the Magnificent arrived in 1526 with his modern and immense army of eighty thousand men with his one hundred and fifty cannons and Jannissaries armed with muskets.

  The Hungarian royal power was in decline, and some say the hand of the Fugger bankers was also involved in this decline. There was no pope nor emperor elected during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries without these bankers' involvement. The Catholic Fuggers had a role in triggering the Reformed movement, mainly through the commercialization of indulgences, which trading right was sold to them by the Catholic Church. We might refer to Anton Fugger's letter to the emperor in 1518 wherein the banker urged the ruler to pay him back the loan of eight million guilders or face the consequences.

  It is true that Austria was deeply in debt to the Fuggers and the Habsburgs were badly in need of money. In 1525 they owed ten million guilders to the Fuggers. Everybody would have wanted the rich mining towns of Upper Hungary. These mines had previously been rented by the Fuggers but King Lajos II took their right back to the Treasury of Hungary in 1525. In order to get the gold and silver mines back, Hungary had to perish.

  There is a story about a forged letter, written on behalf of the Hungarian King Lajos II to his baron, János Szapolyai, who was ordered not to hurry with his considerable army of 15,000 soldiers to the battlefield of Mohács. The young king had to die.

  Others say that Szapolyai, the Voivode of Transylvania, waited for the inevitable death of the young king to gain the throne for himself. In fact, Szapolyai was delayed and the opponents met on the field without him.

  Nevertheless, young King Lajos II bravely took the challenge and faced Suleiman the Magnificent with his 24,500 strong army of knights and mercenaries at Mohács. After some initial success, the battle turned out to be a disaster and the king lost his life. He was said to have been drowned in a flooded stream during his escape. There is hearsay that there was a mark of a mercenary's three-edged dagger on his plate armor and he may have been assassinated. Some one thousand other Hungarian nobles, bishops and aristocrats were also killed.

  It is generally accepted that more than fourteen thousand Hungarian soldiers were killed in the initial battle. The modern pike-musket units which consisted of Polish, Hungarian and Czech mercenaries, were left behind by the fleeing cavalry. Finishing them off with the cannons, the Sultan personally supervised the beheading of two thousand captured Christian soldiers on the battlefield. Suleiman could not believe that King Lajos' small, "suicidal" army was all that the once-powerful country could muster against him, so he waited at Mohacs for a few days before moving cautiously against Buda.

  Though they entered the unguarded and evacuated Buda and pillaged the castle and surroundings, they retreated soon afterwards. It was not until 1541 that the Ottomans finally captured and occupied Buda. Between 1526 and 1541 there weren't any Turkish soldiers permanently in the country.

  The Battle of Mohács meant the end of the independent Kingdom of Hungary as a unified entity. Amid political chaos, the divided Hungarian nobility elected two kings simultaneously, János Szapolyai in 1526 and Ferdinand of Austria in 1527. Ferdinand took advantage of the situation and made a successful coup d'état. As a result, he was soon able to pay back his debt to the Fuggers.

  Ferdinand claimed Hungary's throne by inheritance and by referring to previous contracts, but János Szapolyai had been elected by the nobility. Moreover, the Holy Crown of Hungary was in King Szapolyai's possession. The country became a battlefield between them and Ferdinand succeeded in chasing Szapolyai to Poland.

  In the hope of finding a protector against the Ottoman Empire, the Hungarian nobility began supporting Habsburg Ferdinand, thinking that he would be the stronger. At this point, Suleiman entered the fray by declaring war on Austria and Hungary. Although he had only two weeks for the siege of Vienna in the autumn of 1529, it proved to be his first failure abroad. He tried again in 1532 and was delayed by the heroic defenders of a small Hungarian Frontier castle called Kőszeg.

  On top of that, the Habsburgs had roused the Serbians of southern Hungary against the Hungarians and massacres and uprisings were destroying the country from 1526 on. In 1528, after pleading for help against the Austrian usurper from all the Christian rulers and the Pope, King Szapolyai humiliated himself by making a treaty in 1529 with Suleiman. King Szapolyai was made to kiss the Sultan's hand at the battlefield of Mohács. In return, the Sultan gave him back the Holy Crown and restored him to power. The Sultan sent an Italian adventurer called Lodovico Gritti to act as a Governor over King Szapolyai on his behalf. The King could get rid of him only in 1534 when Gritti was not favored anymore by the Sultan.

  Before long, many Hungarian nobles became disillusioned by the Austrians' "help," and sided with the national king, János Szapolyai. The two kings finally made a treaty in Nagyvárad (Oradea), 1538, and divided Hungary between them. Szapolyai agreed in this treaty to cede his lands to Ferdinand in the event he died without a heir. To everybody's surprise, King János Szapolyai had a male child before his death in 1540. János Zsigmond II was crowned the same year of his birth, and ended up being Hungary's last elected national King and the first Prince of Transylvania at the same time.

  After King Szapolyai's death, the Habsburgs sent a strong army to take the castle of Buda in 1541. Their formidable army was led by Willheim von Roggerdorf and they laid siege on Buda which was heroically defended for three months before Sultan Suleiman arrived and defeated the Austrian usurper's army.

  Having scattered the Habsburgs, Suleiman just walked into Buda and the Turks remained there for 150 years. Hungarian historians are very divided on this event, many feeling that if the Habsburgs hadn't interfered into Hungary's affairs, the Turks would have had a lot more difficulties in occupying the country.

  After defeating the Austrians at Buda, Suleiman ceremonially watched the execution of six hundred German and six hundred Czech prisoners and then finally let Queen Isabella and her son go and "gifted" them the control over the territories over the Tisza river and Transylvania, in exchange for an annual tax.

  Although those lands were not actually in Turkish hands, Suleiman thought that he could get ahold of them in the years to come. He was to be disappointed in the loyalty of his new "vassals" because Brother György, the Jesuit guardian of the young King János Zsigmond II, made tremendous efforts to raise an army and strengthen the Frontier against the Turks as well as against the Habsburgs. The Turks watched it with dismay and the next war with the Muslims broke out in 1550 when they came in force to widen further their occupied territories. Brother György succeeded in stopping them and the Pope made him an archbishop. Shortly after this, Ferdinand had the intelligent Jesuit statesman and general assassinated in 1551.

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  The aging Sultan, Suleiman the Magnificent, had dreams of becoming the second Alexander the Great but many heroic sieges at various Frontier castles stopped and delayed his hopes of taking Vienna. But it was he who brought down the sovereign Hungarian Kingdom, bonding Hungary to Vienna for a very long time and causing incredible destruction over the span of forty-five years before his death in 1566. The report of his victorious campaign of 1526 describes it like this: "The warriors of the Muslim faith had spread out all over the country and wherever they found the despised infidels, let them be in the fields or in the hills, killed the men by the sword and by the arrows and carried the women and the children to slavery. They devastated their houses and put their homes to the torch and collected all kinds of goods and huge treasures to themselves." They herded tens of thousands to captivity and according to the records they left
behind brutally massacred babies piled up by the hundreds.

  Until the Habsburgs, Turks and Hungarians of Transylvania agreed to make a truce in 1564, the country had suffered constant wars. and great changes took place in every aspect of life. Even in times of "peace" there were raids and sieges all along the Frontier.

  Dueling had become a favorite pastime between Hungarian and Turkish warriors who sought each other out by name. It is very entertaining to read their correspondence in which they challenged each other to duels. They used a very insulting vulgar style, identical to the famous letter of Cossacks sent to the Sultan in 1675.

  In the meantime, Transylvania was divided from Royal Hungary and gradually became independent from the Turks as well. We must remark that King János Zsigmond II was a Unitarian, the only Unitarian ruler in world history. He was famous for introducing freedom of religion in 1557. After King and Prince János Zsigmond's death in 1571, Prince István Báthory was elected in Transylvania. This is the beginning of the Transylvanian Principality that had finally come to its summit before the RoF period.

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  The history of Hungary fifty years before the RoF and until 1699

  The Long War or as some call it, the Fifteen Years War between the Turks and the Habsburgs and Royal Hungary began between 1591-93. The Holy Roman Empire, the Habsburgs, and Royal Hungary allied themselves with Spain and the Pope but the Cossacks and the Persians were included as well. During this war numerous castles were taken back in Hungary. Transylvanians also joined in. The Hungarian, Transylvanian and Romanian armies defeated the Turks on their lands at Gyurgyevo (Giurgiu) in 1595 but the Sultan defeated the Christian army the following year at Mezőkeresztes. This battle proved to be the second Mohács and it was a turning point of the war: the armies were fighting back and forth and finally nobody had gained anything, just the locals and the soldiers suffered again. The Tatar raids had become usual and their destruction was twice that of the Turks'.

  The Long War was finally ended in 1606 by Prince István Bocskay, the victor of Gyurgyevo (Giorgiu), who dictated the terms of the Peace of Zsitvatorok. He was the first great Transylvanian prince who stopped the Habsburgs' intentions whereas they had tried to seize the properties of Hungarian nobles by accusing them of treason. He could achieve it by leading his Hajdu soldiers (armed herdsmen) against Vienna, conquering almost the entire Royal Hungary.

  Bocskay was also the first who effectively defended the Protestant faith from the Habsburgs. After him came Prince Gábor Bethlen, and in 1630 Prince György Rákóczi I took the throne of the Principality. All of them led an independent country strongly against the Habsburgs' interests. While they turned Transylvania into a "fairy garden" of Europe, their goal was to reunite Hungary under a national king and liberate the whole country from the Ottoman Empire.

  Their concept was based on the idea of religious tolerance, and they didn't trust that an Austrian-led Catholic Holy Roman Empire would serve the above-mentioned purposes. Their diplomatic activity and spy network was very good since they had to balance between two hostile empires.

  The second Transylvanian-Turk war took place in 1636 when Prince György Rákóczi I defeated the Pasha of Buda and István Bethlen's army. István Bethlen was Prince Bethlen's younger brother and would have wanted the throne for himself but it turned out otherwise. After this Prince Rákóczi I got involved in the Thirty Years War, siding with the Swedes, which will be discussed elsewhere. His anti-Turk war shows how little he was a friend of the Ottoman Empire and how independent Transylvania was from the sultan.

  Unfortunately, Prince György Rákóczi II, son of Rákóczi I, was not so fortunate. In alliance with the Swedes, he attacked Poland in 1657, hoping to get the Polish crown. His campaign had not been welcomed by the Turks, and his entire army was captured by the Crimean Tatars. Soon Transylvania was overrun by the Tatars and their terrible harvest sacked the "fairy garden" bare. The Prince died after being defeated again in 1660.

  The newly elected Prince Apafi tried to regain the past power of the principality, but its days began to decline.

  Another great figure of the age was the aristocrat, poet, and general Miklós (Nicholas) Zrínyi (1620-1664), the Hungarian-Croatian hero who had defeated the Turks many times in Habsburg service. Considering his character, he might be an even more appropriate person than Prince György Rákóczi I to interact with the RoF. Zrínyi was reputed to have been the greatest general against the Turks in his day but during his career gradually he had realized that Royal Hungary and Croatia could not rely on the Habsburgs' mercy or whim in order to overcome the Ottoman Empire. After being bitterly disappointed in the Habsburgs, he was killed by a boar when hunting in 1664. His younger brother, Peter Zrinyi, was beheaded for treason in 1671. His person and activity will be also detailed later.

  The Hungarians were getting more and more rebellious against Vienna and in 1678 there was the Thököly uprising in Upper Hungary. This high-born general, later Prince of Transylvania in 1690, put up a fierce fight against the Austrians, and he was not shy to ask for the Turks' aid, although he had been a famous military leader against the Turks. He helped the Turks get a safe passage to Vienna in 1683. Imre (Emericus) Thököly didn't directly take part in the siege of Vienna but without his involvment the Turks couldn't have reached it. Thököly's troops were able to capture the castle of Pozsony (Bratislava, Pressburg), and during that summer the majority of the western Trans-Danubian counties swore fealty to him. Why did all this happen? Finally the Hungarians in general had realized that their real enemy was Austria, mainly due to the politics of King Leopold I (1657-1705) who had intended to crush the remnants of the Hungarian feudal constitution and privileges as well as Protestantism with one blow. King Leopold I dismissed two-thirds of the frontier-castle warriors in 1671 and stopped calling the Diet together to govern Hungary. Moreover, he ceased to give the highest feudal offices to Hungarian nobles as had been the custom, ending the tolerance of religions according to the Treaty of Vienna, 1606. No wonder that Imre Thököly became more and more popular.

  When the Turks saw that Thököly had successfully torn great territories out of Habsburg hands, they decided to attack Vienna. Without Thököly they would not have even thought of it. Likewise, it was the Polish Sobieski who defeated them since the Austrians would not have been able to defend themselves. After the siege of Vienna, the conclusion was very quickly drawn: Hungary must be liberated, and the Turks must be dealt with for good. They could not afford a new Turk attack nor a new Hungarian uprising. They had to attack if they wanted to survive. (In a way, the liberation of Hungary was indeed triggered by Thököly.) Thus, Pope Innocent XI organized the Holy League in 1684 with the Papal States, the Holy Roman Empire, Poland, Venice, and later on with Russia. It was called a crusade and many soldiers, mercenaries, and nobles joined it from all countries of Europe. The Hungarian Hajdus and all kinds of dismissed castle-warriors and other soldiers from all over Hungary were a tremendous help to the Crusaders, not only because of their valiant warfare but also because they knew the land. The following war was so devastating that contemporary sources estimate the mercenaries' destruction of the recaptured places worse than many years of Turkish devastation.

  Finally they took Buda back and drove the Turks out, settling the war with the Treaty of Karlóca (Karlowitz) in 1699. There were no Hungarians present at the negotiations so they decided "sine nobis de nobis" - decided about us, without us. The peace was disadvantageous to Hungary: it left vast Hungarian lands in Turk hands, the Principality of Transylvania was not accepted as a sovereign state and so on. Hungary had to suffer three more Turkish wars in the eighteenth century.

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  History after 1699

  Transylvania fell into the hands of the Habsburgs and Serbian marauders broke into the recently "liberated" land and scorched what they found. Soon German, Serbian, Romanian, and Slavic nationalities were settled on the depopulated areas by the Habsburgs.

  Hungary rebelled against
injustice and Prince Ferenc Rákóczi II waged a freedom fight against the Austrians between 1703-1711. It should be noted that the Serbs immediately took the side of the Habsburgs and had been burning and destroying the Great Hungarian Plains for eight years, while the Rusyns of the Subcarpathian Area joined Rákóczi along with the Slovakians. The Romanians of Transylvania supported the rebels en masse against the Habsburgs, as well. This insurrection was unsuccessful, closed by the Treaty of Szatmár, however the Hungarian nobility managed to partially satisfy Hungarian interests. The nobility's rights remained more or less intact, and Hungary didn't become a mere province of Austria.

  After 145 years of Habsburg absolutism the country rose again in 1848-1849, led by Lajos Kossuth. It was the longest freedom fight and war of independence of all the revolutions of 1848 in Europe. The Austrians were able to put it down only with Russian help. The sixteen-year-old Franz Joseph turned to the Russian Tsar Romanov Nicholas I for half a million soldiers to field against his rebel subjects.

  After the bloody punishment of the rebels, the Hungarians created the so-called "passive resistance" movement that was later adapted by the Irish freedom fighters. When the Habsburgs realized that a country cannot be oppressed only by force for long, the parties brought about the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867. The Compromise re-established partially the sovereignty of the Kingdom of Hungary, separate from, and no longer subject to, the Austrian Empire.

  Hungarian regions of the state were governed by separate parliaments and prime ministers. Unity was maintained through the rule of a single head of state, reigning as both the Emperor of Austria and King of Hungary. Franz Joseph ruled through the common monarchy-wide ministries of foreign affairs, defense, and finance, which were under his direct authority. The armed forces also belonged to the Emperor-King who was the commander-in-chief. So Franz Joseph had all the real power to decide foreign policy, to decide about the money, and to lead the army.