From the Noon Bell to the Lads of Pest-chapter V

7/21/2019 From the Noon Bell to the Lads of Pest-chapter V

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430 YEARS

PART TWO

ROM THE BATTLEOF MOHCS TO 1956

Turkish and Hungarian warriorson a Calvary altar made by Meister

M.S. in Selmecbnya (BanskaStiavnica)


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Meeting of milleniain Heroes Square

FROM THE BATTLEOF MOHCS TO THEBATTLE OF ZENTA: 15261697

HE MILITARY HISTORY OF HUNGARY

Anna Kubinyi: Mass grave


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220for the homeland unto death 1100 years

King Charles V of Spain (15001558), Holy Roman Emperor. Engraving by Viennese engraver Franz Leopold Schmitner (17031761)

The victory at Szvaszentdemeter (SremskaMitrovica, Serbia) merely gave the Hungarianborder defence forces a little breathing space. The main Turkish forces did not attack overthe next two years, but there were severalminor incursions. The Hungarians camethrough these with a mixed balance sheet.Klissza (Klis, Croatia), the most southerlyof the border fortresses, was successfullydefended twice (1522, 1524), and there wasalso a successful relief expedition to Jajca(Jajce, Bosnia-Hercegovina) in 1525. At theother end of the defensive line, however,they lost two castles on the left bank of theDanube, Orsova and Szrny.

Although the military situation had notdeteriorated dramatically since 1523, Hungaryhad become fatally isolated politically. Oneof the powers which might have been lookedto for assistance, the empire of Charles V, was preoccupied with a war against France,and insofar as it was concerned with defenceagainst the Ottomans, it concentrated itsefforts on the Mediterranean. The contestbetween France and the Habsburg Empire hada tragic consequence for Hungary: the Frenchcourt directly asked the Ottoman Empire forsupport against the Emperor, thus involvingthe Sultan in the European diplomatic arena. The struggle against the Ottomans wasclose to the heart of the Emperors youngerbrother Archduke Ferdinand, who ruled thehereditary lands of Austria, but his resources were for the moment suf cient only for thedefence of the most-threatened province,Krajna. Venice had recently signed a truce withthe Ottomans, and provided Hungary withno further support except a minor nancialsubvention. Poland, threatened by the Tartars,acted similarly and King Sigismund pressedhis nephew Louis II to settle with the Sultan.Only the Pope sent regular nancial aid, andhis legates in Hungary strictly supervised itsuse.

The Ottomans launched the decisivecampaign in 1526. The offensive was the

logical continuation of the campaign veyears previously, and was clearly directed atcrushing the Hungarian defence. Accordingly,the Sultan set off from Istanbul at the headof his ar my in the last week of April. The Anatolian army crossed the Bosphorusat Gallipoli and arrived in Philippopolis(Plovdiv) two days after the Sultan, on 21May. Here, the Ottoman army split in two:the Janissary infantry, the artillery and thebaggage proceeded along the most commonroute, through the Traianus Gate (DerbentPass) towards So a, and the Anatolian andRumelian cavalry via the Slatica Pass, knownfrom Hunyadis campaign. The victualling ofthe army was organised with the usual care,as far as possible sparing the population ofthe towns on the marching route. In So a,Suleyman held a review of his army and sentGrand Vizier Ibrahim at the head of theRumelian army, reinforced with Janissaries,to secure the crossing of the River Sava. When the Sultan arrived at Nndorfehrvr(Belgrade) on 30 June, the bridge was ready;the Hungarian forces had made no attempt todisrupt its construction work.

Although alarming news reached Hungarycontinuously from February 1526 onwards,the court was paralysed by lack of funds. TheCaptain-in-Chief of the border forts, Pl Tomori (Archbishop of K alocsa), attemptedto obtain money in Buda in March, but to noavail. At the end of the month, he and theborder fortress commanders tendered theirresignation. In the event, he stayed in his post,but still received no aid. At the end of April,a Diet was held in Rkos, where the Turkishattack was initially not even mentioned. TheDiet did ultimately call for a tax to be leviedfor defence of the realm, but without hopeof it being collected. In June, the Kingsgovernment sent out orders for mobilisation.In the light of events ve years previously,this meant that the whole Hungarian army would not muster before September. TheKing requested cannon and infantry from the

The Battle of Mohcs*


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222for the homeland unto death 1100 years 223 the mIlItary hIstory of hunGary: 1 5261697

towns, and the counties called on the nobles tomuster. In the southern counties, the order hadalready gone out for the peasants to presentfor military service after the harvest. Becauseof the dif culties of mobilisation, by the timethe Ottoman army was already crossing theSava at the end of June, only Tomoris borderfortress troops, the militias of some southernbarons and prelates, and the Archbishop ofEsztergoms contingent serving in the south,no more than a few thousand men in all, werein a combat-ready state.

At Nndorfehrvr (Belgrade, Serbia),the Ottoman army was joined by troopsof the Sanjak of Bosnia, the Akindjis ofthe border country and the Black Sea eet.Sultan Suleyman held a review of his ar miesas they crossed the Sava bridge; the crossingtook a whole week. On 13 July, Grand VizierIbrahim, supported by the river otilla, put thelast major Hungarian border fortress on theDanube, Ptervrad (Petrovaradin, Serbia),under siege. The defenders surrendered two weeks later. Tomori, leading an army only afew thousand strong and suffering dif cultiesof supply, could not even attempt the reliefof this key fort. On 1 August, Ibrahims armystarted the siege of jlak (Ilok, Croatia), weaker than Ptervrad, and it fell within a week. As the siege of jlak progressed, theOttoman army captured the smaller forts in

Syrmia, completing the neutralisation of thesouth-eastern stretch of the Hungarian borderfortress line. On 14 August, the Turks were atthe Drava.

On 20 July, King Louis set off from Buda with intention, following the customaryprocedure, of gathering troops from variousplaces as he marched. From 6 August hecamped at Tolna for two weeks, but the armyswelled in number only very slowly. By thattime the noble leve had been proclaimedin every county, the bloody sword had goneits round, the signal for mobilisation of asection of the tenant peasantry. At the Kingscommand, Tomori threatened shirkers with therope. Mobilisation was delayed by the harvestand the long distances, and most of all by thelong-standing inertia and internal divisions ofthe Jagiello government. This explains why theCroatian forces and some of the Bohemianand Moravian infantry did not come to theMohcs camp at all, and Ferenc Batthyny,Ban of CroatiaSlavonia, arrived only onthe morning of the battle, with one-third ofhis promised strength, some 4000 men. It istelling that, having received the command tomobilise on 23 June, the Slavonian estates onlygathered at the beginning of August, and setoff in the middle of the month. The Voivodeof Transylvania, Jnos Szapolyai, was sentcontradictory instructions: he rst receivedan order to exploit the absence of the Sultansarmy to invade Ottoman territory together with the Voivode of Wallachia, but when themagnitude of the peril became apparent, he was instructed to join the Kings army. He setoff with an army, but only reached Szeged.Given the example of the Slavonians, it ismore than probable that Szapolyai would nothave managed to arrive in Mohcs before theend of August even if he had received clearorders.

On 15 August, the Turks started to build abridge at Eszk (Osijek, Croatia), and nishedit on the 19th. Although Tomori had quiterightly realised that defence of the Osijekcrossing point was their only chance to holdup the Ottoman army, neither he nor PalatineBthori, who had been speci cally ordered todo so, acted in time. After the fall of Ptervrad, Tomori retreated to his archiepiscopal seatof Bcs, crossed the Danube, and took up

a position north of the Drava. King Louissent from his camp at Tolna the Palatine andformer Lord Chief Justice Ambrus Srkny, atthe head of the Ppa infantry and the countyleve, to defend Eszk Castle and preventthe river crossing, but they either did not goat all, or turned back on the way, so that theOttoman army crossed the Drava unimpededbetween 21 and 23 August, burning the bridgebehind them. The causeways through themarshes to the north of the Drava offered thelast chance of stopping the Ottoman advancein circumstances unfavourable to them. The Hungarian military leadership made noattempt at this, indeed Tomori ordered histroops back to the royal camp.

In the end, according to the eye-witnessChancellor Brodarics, some 25,000 men

gathered at Mohcs. Although some historianscalculate the strength of the Hungarian armyat 50-60,000, in view of the dif culties ofmobilisation there is no reason to doubtBrodarics gure. Even if we take the numberas 50,000 and add Szapolyais Transylvanianand Krsto Frankapans Croatian armiesand the German and Bohemian auxiliaries,putting the potential size of the Hungarianarmy at 80,000, this strength, together withthe adverse terrain and other conditions would not have justi ed engaging in battleat Mohcs. Furthermore, since the regularunits of the Ottoman army numbered nomore than 60,000, a Hungarian army ofsimilar size, even considering the undoubteddifference in quality, would not have sufferedsuch a catastrophic defeat. The Hungarian

Portrait of Louis II


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army comprised about 15,000 cavalry, mostof them armoured, and about 10,000 infantry,mostly Bohemian, Moravian and German. The highest combat-value formations werethe border fortress companies, thebanderia (militias) who had served extended terms inthe south, and foreign mercenaries.

One of the main questions surrounding theBattle of Mohcs is the choice of battle eld. Why that particular location? The logicaloption of retreating, building up strength, andonly then taking up battle, is one which aroseat the council of war. Considering that on theday of the battle Szapolyai was in Szeged, theBohemian auxiliaries at Szkesfehrvr, andFrankapans cavalry at Zagreb, retreat mustsurely have been advisable given what wasat stake, even at the expense of some losses. According to Brodarics, the King himselfargued for this: If the enemy were to seize theland between Mohcs and Pozsony, and evento lay it waste, Hungary would suffer less harmthan if such a g reat army, and with it the Kingand so many dignitaries and soldiers, were tobe destroyed in a single battle. A proposition which would have handed over to the enemythe most densely-populated counties of thecountry, and may have required temporaryevacuation of the capital, Buda, was not likelyto arouse much enthusiasm, but in the eventit was not such rational arguments whichdecided the issue so much as desperation-induced indiscipline. Upon learning of thegenerals hesitation, Tomoris border fortressmen, the best soldiers in the army, threatenedto turn against the royal camp if battle wasnot immediately joined.

Another dif culty was the choice ofcommander-in-chief. No Hungarian armyhad engaged either an Ottoman or any othermajor army in regular battle since 1448. Asa result, there was not a single soldier in thekingdom who had experience of commanding

such a large body of several tens of thousandsof men. There were generals who had led and defended against many border raids,and had besieged minor forts, includingPalatine Bthori (who was suffering fromgout), Szapolyai and Tomori himself. Butthey knew from Hunyadis example that thesecapabilities were inadequate ag ainst Ottomanarmies toughened in battle in the east. Bthori

declined leadership because of his illness, andLord Chief Justice Jnos Drgffy, who hadmilitary experience as ispn (comes) of Temes, was not considered, for reasons unknown.He was given the ag of the kingdom, andhis spurs were loosened so that he could notrun away. Ultimately, the matter went to anunprecedented vote, and the choice fell on the Voivodes younger brother Gyrgy Szapolyaiand the reluctant Tomori. Szapolyai had noexperience of command at all, and Tomorismilitary exploits had been accomplished at thehead of cavalry formations no more than afew hundred strong. An interesting gure wasthe Polish of cer Lenart Gnoinski, appointedchief of the general staff. He interestingly citedthe lessons of the TurkishHungarian wars ofthe 1440s. His main proposal, that a forti ed wagon fort be set up as Hunyadi had done atKosovo Polje, went unheeded. He also arguedthe importance of the personal defence ofthe King, and here he found agreement: LouisIIs protection was entrusted to three highly-capable cavalry captains, Gspr Rskai, Jnos Vitz of Klla and Blint Trk.

The Hungarian army took up battle order

on a eld to the south of Mohcs on 29 August 1526. T he eld was bounded to theeast by the marshy ood plain of the Danube,and to the south and west by a 25-30 metrehigh terrace, whose exact gradient is hotlydisputed by historians. What is certain is thatthis terrace was crucial to the course of thebattle. The Borza stream runs through the

eld, and it was to the south of this streamthat King Louis and his army took up theirposition. The Hungarians most probablystood some 2-2.5 km from the terrace. Thearea in between was described by the eye- witness Brodarics as a plain, but i n reality it was divided by small ridges and valleys whichhampered the clear view of the battle eld. There was a village at the foot of the terrace,

usually identi ed by historians as Fldvr. Thechoice of battle eld suggests that Tomori wanted to engage with the Ottoman army atthe foot of the terrace and in view of thelower numerical strength of the Hungarianarmy drew up an offensive battle plan. There is no de nite evidence, however, forthe historians hypothesis that the Hungariancommanders envisaged an attack on theLouis II holds a council of war near Mohcs.

The armoured knights are lined up in closed ranks behind the tents. Contemporary Turkish miniature.


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These two tableaux are the most authentic Turkish representations of the battle of Mohcs. Suleyman and his war retinue are centre right.The artillery in action in front of him opens a way for the Sultan and the ag-bearing horsemen. The Turkish gures in the battle scene are mainly

Spahis, Janissaries and Solaks. On the bottom left are Turkish and Hungarian cavalry in erce combat. The dead lie all ar ound.The Hungarian army is shown in close battle order at the top of the picture.


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Turks as they came down from the terraceout of their battle order. It is interesting, ifnot astonishing, that Tomori did not preparefor the option of an orderly retreat, the samemistake Hunyadi had made at Kosovo Polje in1448. Once again, the Hungarian tactics werebased on a si ngle, devastating charge.

The Hungarian army lined up in twoechelons parallel with the terrace, in the

north-west/south-east direction, at dawnon 29 August. Most of the ten thousand

or so infantry stood in the centre of thefront echelon, making up a front about onekilometre long. On the right wing stood BanFerenc Batthyny of Slavonia with his heavycavalry, and on the left Pter Pernyi, whosetroops were also mainly heavy cavalry. Themost reliable expert on the Battle of Mohcs,Gza Perjs, has estimated the rst echelonto have extended along a front of 4 km. T he

two commanders, Tomori and Szapolyai, werealso in the front echelon, ready to intervene

anywhere as became necessary. The Kingstood in the second echelon with some threethousand heavy cavalry, arranged in the centre. The light cavalry units protecting Louis werealso in the second echelon, as were a smallnumber of infantry. The Hungarian army asa whole was not structured in depth, and thesecond echelon was not strong enough tofollow up a successful charge. This implies

that anything short of complete success by thecharge would seal the fate of the Hungarian

army. Tomori distributed the Hungarianartillery along the line of the rst echelon.

On the morning of 29 August, the Ottomanarmy, having camped on the north bank of theKarass stream, set out, in battle formation,towards what was to become the battle eld.Somewhat before this, Grand Vizier Ibrahimleft camp with the Rumelian corps and his Janissaries and artillery.

Since they took nearly seven hours tocomplete the distance of not more than

Mr Thans paintingof the 1526 Battle of Mohcs


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12 km to the terrace (according to Suleymansdiary the Turks arrived at Mohcs eld ataround two in the afternoon), the Ottomanarmy must clearly have maintained battleorder throughout. This must have been trueeven in what must have been dif cult going,over land soaked by the very heavy rain whichis known to have fallen. It can be establishedquite de nitely from the sources that when

the Ottoman generals came to the edge of theterrace, they got a clear view of the Hungarianarmy and its battle order, and so had a goodbasis for choosing their tactics.

Despite countless reconstructions, thecourse of the battle has not been satisfactorilydetermined. Gza Perjs has clearly establishedthat the battle order of the Hungarian army was good for nothing except a desperatecharge. The Turks also saw it that way: theBey of Nndorfehrvr advised the Grand Vizier not to stand up to the charge but to avertit. The Ottoman army was certainly ready forbattle, the Sultan having issued the commandthe day before. They held a council of warat the edge of the terrace in full knowledgeof the Hungarian battle order, and then the

Rumelian corps started the descent to the footof the terrace. At the same time, the Grand Vizier sent the light cavalry of Bali Bey andKhosrev Bey to the anks of the Hungarianarmy. The purpose was clearly to distract theHungarians while the main Turkish armymade the descent. Tomori sent against themthe cavalry assigned to guarding the King, amove that has generated much argument since. The view that this was a tragic and irreparablemistake seems to stand up to scrutiny.

Later events make clear that the Rumeliancorps descended to the foot of the ter raceunopposed, and even had time to set up theircannon in the customary batteries, defendedby stakes. It is not known where the Sultanand the Porte mercenaries, or the Anatolian

corps, were at that time. It is generally assumedthat they only came to the terrace after theHungarian charge. Gza Perjs, who carriedout the most thorough calculations, estimateda 5-6 km lag. He also established, however,that the Anatolian corps only had to march6-8 km on the day of battle, which wouldmean they had not even started out from campbefore noon, and this is utterly inconceivable.

Bertalan Szkely (18351910),

Discovery of the Body of King Louis II, painted in 1860. This was Szkelys

rst major historical painting.


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Much more likely is that when the Rumeliancorps started their descent, the wholeOttoman army was standing on the edge ofthe terrace, and could not even have been verytired, because a 6-8 km march even in battleorder does not take too much out of soldiers.

When the Rumelian corps reached thefoot of the terrace, the Sultan nonethelessunexpectedly commanded them to pitch

camp. Similar preparations were being madeon the Hungarian side. Some take the viewthat the Hungarians saw that the Turks didnot want to join battle that day. According toBrodarics, the sun was already heading west,so that the afternoon was well advanced. Thecatch is that the return to camp was, accordingto the Chancellor, proposed by the baronsclose to the King, who as Brodarics himself could not see what was happening with theRumelian corps because of the battle line infront of them and the undulating land. Whatprobably happened was that both the Sultanscouncil and King Louis retinue judged that it was too late for starting a battle, and wantedto postpone it to the next day. It should beremembered that the Hungarian army had

been standing in battle order since dawn, andso must have been at least as tired as the Turksforming up from the march.

Nonetheless, Tomori, in the front echelon,ordered the charge sometime between 3 and4 in the afternoon. For this, however, he hadto ride back to the King to convince him it was the right action to take. He then returnedto his place and ordered the right wing, ledby Batthyny, and the central infantry, tocharge. His plan must have been to rout theRumelian corps before the Sultans centralarmy had formed up. The Hungarian heavycavalry could in principle have made the one-and-a-half or two kilometre distance in a fewminutes without their battle order breaking up.It had to take account, however, of its infantry,

which had to arrive in time at the gap openedup by the cavalry. The infantry needed at leasthalf an hour to approach the Turks. This wasmore than enough time for the Turkish cavalryto take up battle order again and execute thepartition proposed by Bali Bey. Not for the

rst time, this practised movement by theSpahis was interpreted by the Hungariancommanders as victory. Tomori also fell for it,

Mihly Kovcs: Dorottya Kanburies the dead on the Mohcsbattle eld. After the defeatof Mohcs, Dorottya Kanizsalooked for her sons body on thbattle eld, and with the help o priests and peasants buried thesoldiers in a common grave.


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and gave the command for the second echelonto charge.

In the meantime, the Rumelian corpssartillery went into action, but the balls ewabove the heads of the charging Hungarians.Not so the volleys of the Janissaries; the cavalrycame to a halt in front of the Turkish infantryguarding the cannon, and were forced tomove to the side, taking serious losses as they

did so. It seems that by the time the infantryand the second echelon cavalry arrived, the Turkish central army and the Anatolia n corpshad formed up in battle order at the foot ofthe terrace, giving the Turks an overwhelmingsuperiority. In the melee, Tomori lost contact with Pernyis corps and central command ofthe army slipped away. Tomori was trying tostop the retreating cavalry when he was cutdown. It is not sure when the King was takenout of the fray; all that we know is that unlikethe barons and bishops in the second echelon,he did not fall on the battle eld but in ight,drowning in the marsh.

After the remaining cavalry has ed, theinfantry were left to themselves to ght fortheir lives. The Turkish numerical superiority

now prevailed to the full extent, and theinfantry had no option but to ght to the endof their strength, the Turkish light cavalrystanding ready to cut off any attempt at retreat. The experienced, and largely non-Hungarian,mercenaries managed to assume some kind oforder, and held out for longer. In the hand-to-hand ghting, rearms naturally played nopart, and the bloody close-quarters combatpractically ended in the complete destructionof the Christian infantry. At a cautiousestimate, ten thousand infantrymen lay deadon the eld.

Tomoris unexpected charge had leftPernyis left wing unable to exert any effectivein uence on the battle. Neither is it clear whether Pernyi received the order to charge

from Tomori or decided himself to rush at the Anatolian corps. What is certain is that whenthe heavy cavalry of the left wing started theiroffensive, the Janissaries of the Anatolian corps were already standing in battle order at the footof the terrace and received the Hungarians with withering musket re. A series of volleysseverely thinned out Pernyis division, whoselack of follow-on infantry doomed his attack

to failure in any case. According to the Turkishsources, the Hungarian cavalry thrown back bythe volleys regrouped several times, but wereincapable of breaking through the solid wallof Janissaries. Finally, like the remnants of theright wing led by Batthyny, they were obligedto give up the hopeless struggle.

In the words of Gza Perjs, the Battle ofMohcs ended with the total destruction of

the Hungarian army. The casualties numberedten thousand infantry, four thousand cavalry(one third of the total), seven prelates, twenty-eight barons and the ower of the Hungariannobility. The real catastrophe, however, asat Varna, was the death of the King and theensuing consequences. Unlike that 1444defeat, when the Hungarian army was ghtingfar from the borders of the kingdom andthe Sultan was not strong enough to invade,Suleyman in August 1526 had an open roadto the capital. When the news of the Mohcscatastrophe reached Buda on 30 August,Queen Mary and her retinue immediatelyabandoned the city, followed by the Germanand Hungarian burghers.

The Sultan reached Buda on 11 September.

After inspecting the city and plundering thecastle, he ordered Buda to be burned. Thesame fate befell Pest. The ames which ragedfor several days in these two wealthy citiessymbolised the fall of the medieval Kingdomof Hungary. The country still had somearmed strength, but the nearly 150 year-long

rst stage of the TurkishHungarian strugglehad come to an end. It was no reprieve forthe kingdom that Suleyman did not intendto leave a garrison in the capital at thatpoint. The Ottomans built a bridge over theDanube, and their whole army crossed it toleave Hungary in two columns through theland between the Danube and the Tisza. TheSultan entered Nndorfehrvr, the formergateway to Hungary, on 10 October. This, too,

was symbolic: both Hunyadis Long Campaign, which had given new momentum to the ghtagainst the Ottomans, and the 1526 campaignmarking the collapse of the Kingdom ofHungary, ended at Nndorfehrvr.

*Excerpt from Tams Plosfalvi: Nikpolytl Mohcsig13961526 (From Nicopolis to Mohcs 13961526, Zrnyi

Kiad, Budapest, 2005)

The capture of Buda Castle in 1526 proclaimed the triumph of the Ottoman army. The collapse of the enormous bastion in the picture is probablythe result of an explosion. Much of the castle is still in the hands of the defenders,

with its extensive walls, stout construction, soaring towers and bastions stretching up to the Pleiades was enormously strong, the pride of the giaurs. (Detail from a miniature in the Topkapi Seray Museum)


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Istvn Brodarics: A true account

of the Hungarians battle with the Turks at Mohcs*

The signal for battle was given, at which those inthe front rank bravely charged at the enemy. Allof our guns discharged, but the ghting causedonly minor loss to the enemy, even though it

was most spirited considering our numbers,and more of the enemy fell than of our ranks.Finally the erce ghting by our men caused theenemy to withdraw, either because our chargehad forced them, or to draw us towards theirguns. Andrs Bthori rushed to the Kings sideto say that the enemy was in ight, victory wasours, let us press forward and help our men inpursuing the retreating enemy. We advanced overhedge and ditch, and when we came to the place where the battle had proceeded we could see

many of our men lying dead on the eld, andeven more of the enemy, and some were stillalive and breathing. Our men were still engagingthe enemy, ghting valiantly, and in the meantimethe Kings squadron hurried there, insofar as anarmoured squadron can hurry, but the right wingbegan to yield. Many started to ee on that side, Ibelieve taking fright from the cannonballs whichthe enemy had only now s tarted to deploy. This

circumstance, and the cannonballs now yingabove our heads, struck fear in all of those besidethe King. From that time, the King was no moreamong our ranks!

*Excerpt from Tams Katona(ed.): Mohcs emlkezete (Memories of Mohcs, Eurpa Kiad,

Budapest, 1976)

After the Battle of Mohcs, the victoriousSuleyman I marched unresisted to Budaand occupied the seat of the Hungarian kings(12 September 1526). He waited, but no peacedelegation came, nor did any Christian army

appear for another trial of strength. No Ottomanarmy had ever penetrated so far i nto the country,and indeed the present one had not expected to. A month later, with several tens of thousandsof i nhabitants in chains, they withdrew from thecountry.

The paralysis was understandable. Hungaryhad suffered more than a simple military defeatat Mohcs. Its political leadership had been de-

capitated: the casualties included the King, sevenbishops and thirty barons. From being a mediumEuropean power under Matthias I, Hungary hadsuddenly been left without a ruler and withoutany substantial military strength.

The only combat-ready army was in the handsof John Szapolyai, Voivode of Transylvania. This, comprising 10,000 troops, stood on theleft side of the Tisza and observed the Ottomanarmy as it marched home beside the Danube.Most of the nobility thought they had found thestrongman of the country, and at a hurried Dietat Tokaj, the majority of the nobility elected Sza-polyai as King John I, on 17 October.

Two kings and civil war

The failed Turkish siege of Vie1529 from the Nuremberg editthe Hieronymus Ortelius and M Meyers chronicle Ortelius redcontinuatus (1602). The engravmade by Orteliuss brother-in lSibmacher, the Nuremberg paiengraver, whose pictures are a nest 17th-century vedutas (viHungary. The events of the Tuwars in Hungary were of greato foreign contemporaries, espeGermans, Italians and French. of the Turks in countries to theHungary inspired innumerablerelated pamphlets and books.

Some barons who remained loyal to the widowed Queen, Mary Habsburg, including thePalatine, Istvn Bthori, at a Diet called in Poz-sony (Bratislava), elected her brother Ferdinand, Archduke of Austria and already crowned Kingof Bohemia, as King of Hungary, citing dynasticcontracts made with the Jagiellos.

Ferdinand had no substantial army, but hisbrother Charles V, ruler of the Spanish Empire

(15161556) and Holy Roman Empire (1519 1556) promised in a letter to defend his brotherscountry from the Ottomans. The assistance hesent, in the form of money and troops, arrivedonly the next year.

Sultan Suleyman was satis ed with the out-come of his campaign. He had paralysed hisenemy, occupied Nndorfehrvr (Belgrade),the key to the kingdom, and retaken solid pos-session of the Syrmian castles, i.e. the militaryroad along the Danube to Hungar y.

Now elected king, John Szapolyai had to re-constitute the government and try to patch upthe gap in the southern defences caused by thelost of the Syrmian castles. In the winter of1526/1527, his forces recaptured some minor

castles (Bnmonostor [Banotor, Serbia] andCserg [erevi]), and arranged defence bysettling Serb soldiers eeing the Turks, led by Jovn Cserni. His experiment did not succeed. The Serbs fell into con ict wi th the local land-owners and inhabitants, and were driven off bythe armies of Pter Pernyi and Blint Trk,together with local peasants.

A marriage with the widowed Queen was pro-

posed as a way of settling with the Habsburgs,but none of the main protagonists were pre-pared for such a dramatic turn of events, andthe attempts to break out of the crisis the elec -tion of two kings almost inevitably descendedinto political chaos and civil war, from whichonly the Ottomans bene ted.

The civil war began in summer 1527. Fer-dinand, with an army of about 18,000, succeed-ed in expelling John from the country within aperiod of less than three months. Such militarysupremacy was enough to convince most of JohnIs followers to change over to the Habsburgside. When the crown of St Stephen was placedupon the head of Ferdinand at Szkesfehrvr,it was in the presence of most of the barons


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who had crowned John Szapolyai as king oneyear previously.

Szapolyais military defeats were compound-ed by his diplomatic isolation. First of all hesought the support of King Francis I of France

(15151547), the old enemy of the Habsburgs,and joined the anti-Habsburg coalition ofFrance, Milan, Venice, Florence and the PapalStates (the League of Cognac), but this gainedhim no assistance. In his straitened position, hesent an emissary to Istanbul, and accepted Sul-tan Suleymans offer. The treaty signed withthe Ottoman Empire in early 1528 seemed veryadvantageous, because it recognised Szapolyai

as King of Hungary, for the moment withoutpayment of tribute, and undertook to providemilitary support.

Szapolyai initially set out to maintain the unityof the country as he manoeuvred between the

Ottoman and Habsburg Empires, but it soonbecame clear that the path he had set out on wasleading not to the integrity and independence ofthe kingdom, but to the opposite, vassalage andbreak-up.

On the pretext of assisting his protg, Su-leyman I had virtually free passage into Hun-gary, but his objective was now to occupy Fer-dinand Is capital. He thought that, by capturing

Vienna, Hungary would fall into his lap, andbecome a buffer zone between the worlds twolargest empires.

The Sultans army, after accumulating victoryafter victory, was forced to a halt before Vien-na. Arriving at Vienna late in 1529, only at theend of September, the Ottoman army made noheadway against the well-prepared and deter-mined defenders. Three years later, the Sultans

army made rapid progress along the Drava, but were held up at the tiny castle of Kszeg by 600-700 troops led by Mikls Jurisics.

Jurisics performance was exemplary, although what nally brought the Ottoman war machineto a halt was Charles Vs 80,000-strong imperialarmy outside Vienna. Seeing this Habsburg dis-play of power, Suleyman did not push the cam-paign any further. From these defeats, he drewthe lesson that he had to take possession of theKingdom of Hungary before he could realisehis dream of restoring the Roman Empire, i.e.conquering Europe.

The Ottomans rst pushed forward the bor-ders of their Empire in Habsburg-ruled Croatiaand Slavonia, by taking Pozsega (Poega),Obrovc and Klissza (Klis). In the Kingdom ofHungary, ruled by John I apart from the westernstrip, they used the rst phase of their success -ful Balkan strategy of accustoming the countryto Turkish presence. Johns supporters in thecivil war played into the Ottomans hands by re-

questing and receiving assistance from Ottomanforces occupying the south of the country.

A treaty with the Ottoman Empirerecognised John Szapolyai as King ofHungary. John Szapolyai went before

the Sultan at Mohcs and surrenderedto him on the battle eld. The ceremonyis recorded on this Turkish miniature.

Kszeg Castle today(Photo: Attila Barczi)


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A l though European and Hungarian historyis studded with struggles amongst variousinterest groups within the estates, leagues of

barons, and between them and the king, thetussles between power groups in the periodafter 1526 were particularly destructive. Thebarons put their own narrow ambitions abovethe interests of the kingdom, ultimately servingnobody except the conquerors. All members ofthe political elite recognised this danger, but wereunable to agree on who should withdraw. Theydid at least encourage their rulers to come to asettlement. John Szapolyai soon realised that hisrule was advancing the Turkish cause, and so hemade a secret truce with Ferdinand I in Vrad(now Oradea, Romania) in 1538, undertaking

to transfer the lands under his rule even in thecase of a male successor. Szapolyai did have ason before he died, prompting his followers, led

by the man who had guided his political strategy,George Martinuzzi, Bishop of Vrad, to refuseto abide by the treaty, and upheld the claim to thethrone by the infant John Sigismund (15401571).

Ferdinand decided to implement the treaty byforce of arms, and set out with an army of nearly30,000 to besiege Buda. Despite the help of thecitizens of Buda, he was unable to capture thefortress, which was relieved by Hungarian forcesunder Blint Trk, with Turkish assistance. Atthis point, Sultan Suleyman I arrived in Buda with his main army and defeated Ferdinandsarmy. Suleyman, who now looked on his allies

as unreliable, broke with his policy, and to prevent the uni cation of the kingdom under theViennese king, decided to occupy the centreof the Kingdom of Hungary. On the 15th anni- versary of his victory at Mohcs, he took Budaby a trick, and informed the barons, upon sum-moning them to his camp, that John Is widowQueen Isabella may continue to rule the easternpart of the country. This established a new state,

the Principality of Transylvania, and split thekingdom into three parts. The fall of Buda to the Ottomans provoked

fear and panic in the Austrian and Germanprovinces of the Empire, quite reasonably con-cerned that they would be Suleymans next prey. A 50,000-strong army was assembled, with greateffort, out of German, Austrian and Hungariansoldiers and moved at snails pace towards Buda. Against an enemy which had had time to pre-pare, the campaign ended in humiliating failure, without even an attempt to take Buda, and only ahalf-hearted siege of Pest.

Over the next few years, Suleyman tookdevastating advantage of the Christian forcespowerlessness. He reinforced his route along theDanube, and set up a defence zone around Buda.In 1543, he took the castles of Sikls and Pcsin South Transdanubia, Esztergom, with its com-manding position on the Danube, and then Tataand Szkesfehrvr.

After the fall of the archiepiscopal seat, Arch-

bishop of Esztergom Pl Vrday transferred hisresidence to Nag yszombat (Trnava, Slovakia) andreplaced his lost fortress by building rsekjvr(New Archbishops Castle, now Nov Zmky)on the River Nyitra (Nitra). Within a few dec-ades, it took shape as one of the most advancedfortresses in the country, and became the seat ofthe Captain General.

George Martinuzzi, acting as regent for thechild king John Sigismund, created a new stateout of Transylvania and the counties of Tiszntlknown as the Partium and worked towards asettlement with King Ferdinand. The treaty as-

The ght for the castlesof Hungary (15431566)

Tata Castle (Dotis Ungaris Thata) from the six-volume Civitates Orbis

Terrarum (Cities of the World), published in Cologne between 1572

and 1617. The city plan bears thename of a Belgian artist Georg

Houfnagel (15421600) with theword communicauit (published by).

Eger Castle in the late 16 th century, from George Braun and FranzHogenbergs six-volume CivitOrbis Terrarum(Cities of the World).


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signing Transylvania and the Partium was signedin 1549, and in June 1551, a royal army of 7000mercenaries led by Gianbatista Castaldo arrivedto take over Transylvania. Queen Isabella clungto power, and could only be persuaded by forceof ar ms to relinquish Transylvania and renounceher sons claim to the throne (as John II).

Since George Martinuzzi realised that the mili-tary assistance sent by Ferdinand would be in-

suf cient to defend the country, he tried to gaintime by misleading the Turks. This was a fatalmistake. The Turks no longer trusted him, andCastaldo, regarding his talks with the enemy astreachery, had him killed in December 1551.

Istanbul would not tolerate the Vienneseking getting his hands on its vassal province of Transylvania, and set out to put a stop, once andfor all, to any attempts to unite the kingdom. Inlate spring 1552, the Ottoman armies started anoffensive against the Kingdom of Hungary onfour fronts.

The Buda garrison troops under Hadim AliPasha relieved the castle of Szeged, under siegeby the Hajduks, on the rst day of March. Insummer, they took the castle of Veszprm by

siege and in the county of Ngrd took a seriesof castles: Bujk, Drgely and Szcsny. The Sultan sent Kara

Ahmed Pasha, the Second Vizier, with an army some50-60,000 strong to takethe part of the kingdomjust handed over to Fer-dinand, Transylvania. The

rst obstacle was Temesvr(Timioara). Istvn Loson-czy,ispn (Comes) of Temes,defended the fort heroically with 2300 Hungarian, Span-ish and Czech soldiers. Afterholding on for 32 days, their

depleted numbers squeezedinto the inner castle by theconstant artillery re and waves of Turkish assaults, were forced to surrenderon 27 July. The Spanish de-fenders of Temesvr foughttooth and nail for every cor-ner of the castle, which is

more than can be said for Bernardo Aldanas sol-diers, who left the well-forti ed Lippa (Lipova)to its fate.

After capturing the Temeskz area, the mainarmy united at Szolnok with the troops of AliPasha of Buda, and after a brief siege captured(on 4 September) the castle of Szolnok, with itscommand over the second largest waterway ofthe country, the River Tisza.

The crowning objective of this success-ful campaign was to be the capture of Eger,the gateway to Upper Hungary. Possession ofthis fortress would have divided the Habsburg-controlled north and east parts of the coun-try from each other. For 38 days, the castellan,Istvn Dob, with only 2000 defenders, beatoff the enemy assaults. Kara Ahmed Pasha wasultimately obliged to abandon the siege on 18October, thus breaking a run of successes bythe Ottoman military which had continued fora generation.

The heroic defence of Eger in 1552 immedi-ately became the symbol of heroic resistance atthe time, and the tradition lives on today, madeimmortal through Gza Grdonyis novel Egri

Csillagok(Eclipse of the Crescent Moon), tellingthe story of Istvn Dob and his comrades.

Women of Eger,monumental paintingby Bertalan Szkely (183519

The siege of Ppa


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Istvn Dob; Drawings by EndreSzsz (19262003) for the lm

Eclipse of the Crescent Moon. Also published in book form in 1969

The Turkish Sultan. Drawingsby Endre Szsz (19262003) for the lm Eclipse of the Cre Moon. Also published in bookin 1969

The heroic defence of the little castle ofDrgely gained national fame through the balladby the frontier troubadour of the time, SebestynLantos of Tindi. Three centuries later, thepoems of Ferenc Klcsey and Jnos Arany madethe heroic deeds of Gyrgy Szondi and his sol-diers the symbol of self-sacri ce and courage.

Despite the failure to take Eger, the 1552 Turk-ish campaign was extremely successful. It com-pleted the defensive ring of Buda, and the new vilayet centred on Temesvr ensured control over John Sigismund, the vassal who was now restoredto rule Transylvania. Although the Porte did notpress further expansion in Hungary owing to thePersian War, the local Turkish forces did makeexpand their conquests in the country. The ambi-tious Toygun Pasha of Buda captured Flek in1554, driving a wedge between the western andeastern Habsburg-held areas. Later, Hadim Ali,returning to Buda, attempted to take Szigetvr(1556). He had less success than he had four yearspreviously. The castle held out against Hadim Alis siege for fty days.

Szigetvr ultimately fell to Sultan Suleymanon his seventh and last campaign in 1566. The Turks started the war on the pretext of sup-porting an expansion into Upper Hungary by John Sig ismund, Voivode of Transylvania. Hesent Pertev Pasha, the Second Vizier, to takeGyula and he marched with the main army toSzigetvr, defended by Mikls Zrnyi with 2300Croatian and Hungarian soldiers. The garrisonof Gyula held out for two months, and Szigetvr withstood a siege by the Sultans army of 50,000regular soldiers for 38 days.The story of the de-fenders heroic stand and the death of MiklsZrnyi as he burst out of the ruined castle wereforged into an essential part of the Hungarianhistorical consciousness in a ballad written inthe following century by his great-grandson andnamesake. The ageing Suleyman did not surviveto see the castles fall, dying in his Szigetvr campon 6 September, two days before the defendersbreakout. The capture of Szigetvr marked theend of the great era of Ottoman conquest ofHungary.


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Peter Krafft Sr. (17801856):Zrnyis Sally (1825)

The sabre and helmet of Mikls Zrnyi,hero of Szigetvr


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Although the inscription on the miniature states that Suleyman led the army to Szigetvr, he did not live to see the victory.His death was kept secret for three weeks.

The rst miniature shows the splendid Ottoman army and the second a ne r epresentation of Szigetvr Castle.


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Suleymans successor Selim II signed a peacetreaty with Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian Iin Edirne in 1568. By capturing Szigetvr andGyula, the Ottomans had eliminated the fortsthreatening their defensive system, completingtheir military control of the centre of the coun-try. A sign of the successes of the Ottoman Em-pire is that as King of Hungary, Maximilian I wasobliged to pay a tribute, a kind of tax in effect. The relationship between the royal part of thecountry and Transylvania was settled in a treaty(1570). John Sigismund renounced the throneand recognised Emperor Maximilian as King of

Hungary. If he had no successor, the Principality would pass to the Habsburg ruler. The Kingdomof Hungary thus remained a single legal entity,but its de facto division into three parts becamepermanent.

The four decades between 1526 and 1566proved that the Ottoman Empire was not capableof permanently occupying the Kingdom of Hun-gary, but the Austrian Habsburgs were not cap-able of defending it. To Hungarys misfortune,the buffer zone between the two empires ranthrough the centre of the kingdom, where bothpowers set up their own border defence zones.

To prevent Ottoman expansion, a defensivesystem was laid out on the Hungarian andCroatian lands ruled by the Habsburg dynasty.It was some 1000 kilometres long, from the Adriatic Sea to the borders of the Principality of Transylvania, and 50-100 kilometres deep, dividedinto stages. It was nanced and garrisoned by the Austrian provinces, the Kingdom of Bohemia,and the principalities of the Holy RomanEmpire. The whole system was an integral partof a defensive zone running right across Europefrom North Africa, through the coastal fort

system in Spain and Italy, the coasts and islandsof Dalmatia and Greece, and the Venetianfortresses up to the Podolian castles.

The border zones or con nes forming the de-fence against the Ottoman Empire were dividedinto two Croatian and four Hungarian captain-cy-generals (supremus capitaneus). The captain-generals of the border fortresses were appointedby the king and were directly accountable to the Aulic Military Council. There were also districtcaptain-generals who operated on roughly thesame areas as the border-fortress captain-gen-

Siege of Szkesfehrvr

One country,three border defence zones

Temesvr (Timioara)was a vilayet (large provincial r egion)of the Ottoman Empire.The miniature is clearly the work ofan artist who knew Temesvr well.

ENEA SILVIO PICCOLOMINI (14051464), later Pope Pius II, wrote in a letter to ArchbishopDnes Szchy of Eszter gom (14401465) in 1444:

The Hungarians have every right to reclaim the crown,because the Hungarian Kingdom is an archiregnum (high kingdom).


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erals. The captain-general of a district coordi-nated the noble militias of the counties and tookcommand of troops raised on a feudal basis,comprising nobles and bondmen of the coun-ties and the towns, and troops of his own forcepaid for out of war tax. In the second half of the16th century, the border-fortress captain-generals were largely foreign, mostly Austrian aristocrats who knew the country well, and reliable baronsof the Kings party, but the district captain-gen-erals were all Hungarians.

The Aulic Military Council was set up in 1556to organise and oversee the defence against theOttomans. This was followed by the establish-ment of an apparatus for pay, supplies and equip-ment. The military infrastructure was built up ona much more orderly and professional basis afterthe Aulic Military Council started operation.

Major fortresses of modern design were builtat the strategic points of the defensive zone,mainly along the Turkish marching routes. Mostof them became fortress towns (rsekjvr

[Nov Zmky], Gyr, Kassa [Koice], Szatmr[Satu Mare]), and military and administrativecentres of the con nes. In addition to the keyforts erected to designs by Italian military en-gineers, many forts were modernised. Theseincluded privately-owned forts (Ecsed, Eger,Gyula, Kanizsa, Kassa, Kisvrda, Szigetvr, Tata) which the King took over from their own-ers in return for compensation or were improved with a nancial contribution by the crown. Thesystem also made use of natural obstacles in thecon nes, such as rivers, marshes and extensivesurface water, and the nal component com-prised several dozen minor palisades and guard-houses. The overall defensive system consistedof a chain of 100-120 forts of various sizes, anda dense fabric of palisades and guard towers.

The royal garrisons of Croatian, Hungarianand Slavonian con nes reached 20-22,000 in the1570s, of which some 16,000 soldiers served inthe four captaincy-generals in Hungary. Morethan two-thirds of these troops were Hungarian

and Croatian, and the rest were German and Bo-hemian mercenaries detached there.

The enormous costs of maintaining the de-fensive zone of garrisons and fortresses weremet by contributions by the Austrian HereditaryLands and, to an even greater extent, the Ger manprincipalities. The soldiers bounty, victuals, warmaterial, military administration and forti cation works consumed some 2 million Rhine orins.

Like Royal Hungary, Transylvania set up itsown border defences. Its geopolitical position,subject to incursions from both the Habsburgsand the Ottomans, required it to put up defencesalmost all round. The Tiszntl areas were de-fended by the fortresses of the Vrad Captaincy-General: Vrad, Zska, Bajom, Sarkad, Adorjn,Szkelyhd (Scueni, Romania), Belnyes (Beiu);the Szamos (Someul) valley by the fortresses ofBethlen and Szamosjvr (Gherla); the courseof the River Maros (Mure) by the Dva, Maros- vcs (Brncoveneti) and Radnt (Iernut) forts;and the southern districts by the Karnsebes

(Caransebe) and Lugos (Lugoj) forts. The north,east and south borders of the Principality weresurrounded by the Carpathians, where it wasnecessary to strengthen the forts near the moun-tain passes, such as those of Fogaras (Fagara),Grgny (Gurghiu), Vrstorony (Turnu Rou)and the town of Szeben (Sibiu).

The Ottoman defensive zone comprised theoccupied southern and central areas of the King-dom of Hungary. It initially consisted of theBuda vilayet (1541) and subsequently the Temes- vr vilayet (1552), which essentially correspondedto the military and civilian administrative entitiesof the Christian side. Buda and Temesvr hadgarrisons of several thousand and were the vi-layet centres of the conquered lands. The pashasin charge of them controlled a system of subsidi-ary fortresses.

A defensive system of 80-90 forts was set upon the territories of the Buda and Temesvr vi-layets. Besides Buda, there were garrisons of2000 soldiers at Esztergom, which commanded

Visegrd and rsekjvr(Owar, germanice Niev Hvisel et

Vizzegrad germanice Plindeburg) in1595, from the six-volume Civitates

Orbis Terrarum (Cities of theWorld).

Gyr Castle (Iaverinum vulgo1594, from the six-volume CivOrbis Terrarum (Cities of theWorld)


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the Danube, and Szkesfehrvr, which guardedthe route for Ottoman forces marching on Vi-enna. The fortresses guarding the river and landroutes of local signi cance (Flek, Hatvan, Jen,Lippa, Szigetvr) held 5-600 soldiers. This wascomplemented by a chain of smaller forts rang-ing from palisades with garrisons of 100-150down to guard posts with a few dozen soldiers.

The permanent garrisons of the forts totalledsome 18,000 men, to which the vilayets addedabout 7000 Spahis and their armed retinues. Notcounting the irregular units, there were about25,000 soldiers stationed on the newly-con-quered areas.

In the half-century following the Battle ofMohcs, the political map of the Kingdom ofHungary had been redrawn and a presence hadbeen established of conquerors whose politicalregime, culture and mentality diverged from theChristian world. The political chaos, the cynical,repeated changes of side, and personal sel sh-ness which reigned in the country are regardedby most historians, and by popular tradition, asthe main cause of failure in the ght against theOttomans. In fact, any feudal society in a similarsituation would have experienced these phenom-ena as it sought a way out. The alternatives ofsubmit or resist when faced with the Turkish

threat posed a dif cult choice at a time when thedomestic and foreign political environment wasso contradictory.

In Europe, the empire of Charles V was theonly power which put up its military and eco-nomic power against the expansion of the Otto-man Empire. The power struggle with Francis Iof France and the religious wars attempting tostem the Reformation divided the Habsburgsmilitary strength. Nonetheless, they confrontedthe Ottomans on three fronts. Viewed fromMadrid, the Hungarian front was the most dis-tant, and it was only with the troops left over foremergencies that Charles V went into battle inperson to aid his younger brother in 1532, whenSuleyman I again threatened Vienna. Throughenormous efforts in nance and organisation,he put 80,000 well-equipped, combat-hardenedsoldiers into battle order. This formidable armyfrightened off Suleyman, but did not undertakethe task of forcing the Ottomans out. Neitherdid the military, logistic, nancial or politicalconditions in Europe at the time permit theorganisation, supply and command of an armycommensurate with that of the Ottomans. Thecampaigns to recover Buda in 1541 and 1542 hadproved that they were incapable of adequatelysupplying and mobilising armies of 30-40,000,much smaller than Charles Vs. Ferdinand Ismilitary and nancial resources increased when

he became Holy Roman Emperor in 1558, butpermitted only the construction of a new borderfortress system.

The newly laid-out defensive wall served asthe shield of Christendom, but often consistedonly of Hungary itself, whose inhabitants werearmed and its towns and villag es converted intoforts as a barrier to the Ottoman conquerors. As such, however, the people of the conqueredlands were never fully cut off from the King-dom. The administration and jurisdiction of theestates lived on, and a kind of dual regime tookshape in these territories. The inhabitants had toserve two masters, their taxes shared by their oldlords and new Ottoman rulers.

In consequence, Islam never put down rootsin the conquered lands, and most of the popula-tion retained their faith and identity.

Flek Castlein the 17 th century

Fgra Castle today(Photo: Attila Barczi)


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The treaty of Edirne was made betweenKing Maximilian I of Hungary (MaximilianII as Holy Roman Emperor) and Sultan SelimII on 17 February 1568 at Edirne (Adrianople).In the treaty, Maximilian I acknowledged theOttoman conquests between 1552 and 1566and made a promise to pay a tribute to theSultan of 30,000 Hungarian golden orins. The treaty prohibited either side fromfurther campaigns to gain territory, thusmutually guaranteeing the borders as theystood. The parties undertook not to attack Transylvania, and Transylvania was not toattack either the Habsburg Empire or theOttoman Empire.

In the meantime, there were majorchanges going on in military affairs in Western Europe. Handheld rearms werestarting to be used on a mass scale, requir-ing changes in tactical procedures. The new weapons and tactics were quickly adoptedin the Hungarian defensive borders, sothat Christian forces became increasinglyeffective in clashes with the enemy. The wars with Persia (15781590) reduced theamount of money and supplies the Otto-man Empire could assign to its garrisonsin the conquered territories, causing a de-terioration in morale and discipline.

Following the Persian War, the local Turkish military hoped for a new war to im-prove their situation. This prompted TelliHassan, Beglerbey of Bosnia, to launch aregular border war on the Croatian frontierin 1591. He captured the castle of Bihcs(Biha, Bosnia-Hercegovina), but when heattempted for the second time to besiegeSziszek (Sisak, Croatia), in 1593, the reliefarmy of Croatian Ban Tams Erddy wona victory over the Ottomans.

In reprisal, the highest body of the Ot-toman Empire, the Porte, declared waron the Viennese king. Sinan Pasha, the

new Grand Vizier, launched and unexpectedcampaign in September. One Ottoman columncaptured Sziszek, while the main army headedfor Vienna, taking Veszprm on 7 October andPalota on the 11th, but with the approach ofKasim, the day marking the end of the Ottomanmilitary year (26 October), they had to abandonthe siege of Tata.

Sinan aimed to conquer all of Hungary andcapture Vienna, so that the northern part of Transdanubia became the main theatre of war.Of the thirteen campaigns between 1593 and1605, nine were directed at this area. The Ot-tomans revived their old recipe of gaining thesubmission of barons, offering Ferenc Dobvoivodeship of Kassa and Istvn Bthori ofEcsed the Kingdom of Bohemia, but theseovertures fell on deaf ears.

In Vienna, the Aulic Military Council tookout the strategic plan which by Johann Rueber,Captain-General of Upper Hungary, had drawn

up in 1577. This included the proposal of winteroperations following the departure of the main Turkish army.

After Suleymans armies withdrew, the royalforces went on the offensive on two fronts. Thearmy of Ferdinand Hardegg, Captain-Generalof Gyr, laid siege to Szkesfehrvr, and thatof Christoph Teuffenbach, Captain-General ofUpper Hungary, prepared to capture the mostnorthern fort of the Buda vilayet, Flek. The op-eration against Szkesfehrvr did not succeeddespite defeating a relief army sent by the Pa-sha of Buda (3 November). Teuffenbachs army,

The Long War(15931606)

Siege of Sziszek in 1593, from Ortelius redivivuset continuatus by Ortelius and Martin Meyer. Legend: A) Sziszek Castle.B) Turkish camp andearthworks.C) D) E) G) H) Christian forces.F) Colonel Auersperg setsHassan Pasha to ight.K) R. Kulpa L) R. Szva. M) Janissaries cover. N) Ruins of the old town.


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Half-armour of Count MiklsPlffy (15521600),

Hero of Gyr

however, which comprised mainly Hungarianborder fortress garrisons and eld soldiers tookFlek and went on to take several smaller forts inNgrd county.

Exploiting the absence of the main Otto-man army, the Christian forces continued theiroperations in early 1594. In South Transdanu-bia, Mikls Plffy, Captain-General of the bor-der fortresses protecting the mining towns, andGyrgy Zrnyi, Captain-General of Transdanu-bia launched an operation which recapturedthe Turkish forts in front of Kanizsa: Babcsa,Berzence, Csurg and Segesd.

The capture of Ngrd castle in March droveanother wedge into the defensive ring aroundBuda. The main army of 15,000 Hungarian and20,000 imperial troops under Archduke Mat-thias Habsburg set off to capture Esztergom,the gateway to Buda. In contrast with the cam-paigns of previous decades, they completed theenclosure very early, at the beginning of May, buttwo months of struggle with enormous lossesproved insuf cient to capture the castle. It washere, on 19 May, that one of the greatest poetsof the Hungarian Renaissance, Blint Balassi,

who wrote of life in the border fortresses andhad fought valiantly in the capture of the Ngrdcastles the year before, was fatally wounded.

Grand Vizier Sinans army captured Tataon their way and started a siege of Gyr, thelast major fortress before Vienna. The well-constructed castle was defended by more than6000 soldiers. Archduke Matthias army re-treated to Szigetkz, but Sinan, having beenjoined by the Crimean Tartars, executed a veryrapid action which destroyed Archduke Mat-thias forces and hermetically sealed off the fort. Theconstant cannon re, mine warfare and the Janis-saries charges over three weeks ground downthe defenders strength. Since Ferdinand Hard-egg could not expect to be relieved and could nothold on to the now-ruined fort with his depletedgarrison, he capitulated on 29 September.

With the loss of Gyr, the border fortress sys-tem under the captain-generals collapsed. Ppa was taken by the Ottomans, as were the borderforts of Csesznek, Tihany and Vzsony aroundLake Balaton. Gyr became the centre of a vi-layet, a springboard towards Vienna. The Prot-estant Hardegg was held up as a scapegoat, and

the next year he was tried for treason and exe-cuted.

Vienna itself was now a border fortress. Panicspread throughout Europe, but the threat alsorevived the spirit of the Crusades. Several rulers,including the Prince of Tuscany and Ferrara,joined the Holy League against the Turks; andthe three Ottoman vassal states, Transylvania,Moldova and Wallachia, also turned against Is-tanbul, contributing to the swing in the balanceof power.

Sigismund Bthori, Prince of Transylvania(15881602), by imprisoning and executing theTurkish party barons who opposed alliance with the Habsburgs, r emoved the obstacle tojoining the Holy League. Although the formaltreaty with Rudolf II, Holy Roman Emperorand King of Hungary, was only signed later, Transylvania, Moldova and Wallachia openeda new channel of attack against the Ottomanrear in 1594. Next year, forces under GyrgyBorbly captured thirteen forts and palisades inthe south-west border country of Transylvania,including Lippa and Jen. Michael the Brave,

Voivode of Wallachia, with the support of 2000Szkely soldiers, occupied Turkish fortressesalong the Lower Danube from Vidin to Brilain autumn 1594.

The entry into the fray of Transylvania,Moldova and Wallachia forced the Ottoman mili-tary leadership to divide their forces. In summer1595, Grand Vizier Sinan marched on Wallachiainstead of Vienna, to recapture lands regarded asthe breadbasket of Istanbul. His success provedtransient, because when he took his army back totheir winter quarters, the TransylvanianWalla-chian armies came out from their refuges andrepossessed the forts he had taken. Adding to his woes was an action by Istvn (Stephen) Bocskaiand Wallachian Voivode Michael the Brave whichrouted his rearguard as it was crossing the Dan-ube at Giurgiu.

The core of the Transylvanian military com-prised the mercenaries of the border fortressesand the Prince, some 5-6000 troops, many of which had gained combat experience in Polandduring Stephen Bthoris time as King of Poland. The Szkely army was the strongest numerically.

Turkish siege of Gyr in 1594Ortelius redivivus et continuatOrtelius and Martin Meyer. Enwas made by Ortelius brother Johann Sibmacher, painter andof Nuremberg.

Legend: A) Castle .B) Outer ciIsland. D) Christian camp. E) Tcamp. F) Turkish earthworks. Gcavalry crossing the Danube. Hassault. I) R. Rbca. K) R. DanShips carrying supplies. M) Chearthworks

260f h h l d d h 00 261 f


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After relinquishing their privileges, the Szkelysent some 23,000 soldiers to the camp of Sigis-mund Bthori in autumn 1595. The main branchof the Transylvanian army, as of the Hungarianarmy, was the light cavalry, although there wasan increasing presence of light infantry, mostlyHajduk and Szkely soldiers. To make up theshortfall in number and standard of rearmscompared with the royal army, thousands ofmodern rearms were delivered to the Principal-ity of Transylvania, along with an imperial auxil-iary force, in 1596.

Exploiting the absence of the main Turkishforces, the armies of the Holy League this timesuccessfully besieged Esztergom. After its capit-ulation, they went on to occupy Visegrd, but thedepleted army, struck by disease, had no strengthleft to besiege Buda.

Although Gyr was still in Ottoman hands,the Holy League had made substantial progressin the third year of the war. The entry of Tran-sylvania, Moldova and Wallachia was a major po-litical and strategic success. The occupation ofEsztergom and Visegrd was a worthy tacticalaccomplishment, opening the way to the recap-ture of Buda, and isolating Gyr.

Following the military failures of the previousyear, the Sultan himself, Mehmed III, rode at thehead of his armies in 1596, to restore Ottomanin uence in Transylvania and the Romanian prin-cipalities. In order to isolate the turncoat vassalprincipalities from their new allies, the Ottomanmilitary leadership set off to capture Eger, asthey had in 1552. The 30,000-strong main armyof Archduke Maximilian took Vc and Hatvan,but then clashed with the Sultans army, morethan twice its strength.

With half-constructed ramparts and only 7cannon, Pl Nyry had little chance of success,but Eger nonetheless held out for three weeks. The relative strength of the armies was then bal-anced out with the arrival of Captain-General Teuffenbach of Upper Hungary and Prince Si-gismund Bthori of Transylvania. The alliedarmy, swelled to a size of 55-60,000, set off torecapture Eger.

The battle took place at Mezkeresztes, therst time since 1526 that the main Christian and

Ottoman armies had faced up to each other. TheChristian armys repower gave them the edgeon the battle eld. They rst overwhelmed thecorps of Grand Vizier Ibrahim, and then the

imperial and Hungarian infantry broke throughthe centre of the Turkish front and broke intothe Sultans camp. This set off what the Chris-tian generals had feared: the troops battleorder broke up, and instead of pursuing the Turks started to loot the camp. Seeing the dis-persion of the Christian battle lines, the retreat-ing Turkish forces turned back and pulled off adecisive counter-attack against their enemy.

The military events of 1597 were inaugurated with Mikls Plffys successful action against Tata. They captured the castle in a night raid when they deployed a new military invention, thepetard, to blow up the gate and allow them in. The main armys operations started with the cap-ture of Ppa, but the siege of Gyr was relievedby Saturdji Mehmed Serdar (Second Vizier), whoalso recaptured Tata.

In spring 1598, Mikls Plffy and AdolfSchwarzenberg use the petard-assault which hadbeen proven at Tata to capture Gyr, following which they captured the forts of Tata, Gesztes,Palota, Veszprm and Vzsony. The series ofsuccesses that spring set up the opportunity forrecapturing Buda, but the 32,000-strong armyfailed to prevail against the 6000 defending Turks.

The Christian armys accomplishments innorthern Transdanubia allowed the Porte toconcentrate its forces on recovering Transylva-nia. After the abdication of Sigismund Bthori,the Transylvanian estates again took an oath toRudolf I as King of Hungary. Then SaturdjiMehmed, leading an army of 50,000, appearedin the western reaches of Transylvania. They re-captured the palisade forts of Arad, Csand andNagylak, which had fallen in 1595, but Vrad suc-cessfully held out against the one-month siege.

The political chaos and wars arising from Si-gismund Bthoris successive resignations andreturns caused the collapse of the eastern wingof the Christian League, and so Transylvania,together with Moldova and Wallachia was nolonger able to make a military contribution tothe war against the Ottomans. The civil war in Transylvania (15981602) not only prevented thearmed forces of the three principalities from tak-ing part in the struggle, it also withdrew imper-ial and Hungarian forces from the main theatreof war. The protracted war had exhausted bothsides, and peace talks were held in 1599. The sta-tus quo was regarded as unacceptable by bothsides, and negotiations were broken off.

Recapture of Kanizsa from thein 1601, from Ortelius redivivu

continuatus by Ortelius and M Meyer. Legend: A) Castle.B) Old castle C) Round bastionD) Gunpowder tower. E) HorseF) Moat. G) H) Bridges. I) MarK) Outer city, which burned doL) Papal troops. M) DelphinoFlaminius. N) Archduke FerdinO) John Medici. P) Colonel MaGandentius. Q) Prince Mantuawith Spanish troops. R) Earthwabandoned by Turks. S) Germacavalry. T) Hungarian cavalry.V) Ferencz De Monte.W) Earthworks guarding bridg X) Road to Graz. Y) Road to SZ) Road to Szkesfehrvr. R.

Fresco from a series by Hans Rudolf Miller on the coved vault of Ndasdy

Castle in Srvr

262for the homeland unto death 1100 years 263 the mIlItaryhIstory of hunGary: 1 526 1697


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Right pro le of Prince SigismundBthory of Transylvania

(15721613), in oval frame. His hathas a broad fur edging.

Mace of Sigismund Bthory(15721613),

Prince of Transylvania

Siege of Buda and Pest in 1602, from Ortelius rediviv us et continuatus by Ortelius and Martin Meyer.Legend:

A) PestB) Buda CastleC) Upper city

D) Rear outer city E) Vzivros (Zsidvros)

F) Lower outer cityG) Upper outer cityH) Customs House

I) Hot baths K) Gellrt HillL) Pontoon bridge

M) Christians camp

The mil itary e vents of the turn of the cen-tury turned sour for the Christian allies. Firstthe unpaid Wallonian mercenaries in Pparevolted, and then Grand Vizier Ibrahim putKanizsa, the gateway to Styria, under siege.Georg Paradeiser, with hardly a thousand men,held the fort with little food or ammunitionfor a month and a half, but after a series offailed actions by the relief army, he eventuallysurrendered. Like Hardegg, he paid for his ac-tion with death.

The counter-strike by the Christian allies was not slow in coming. In 1601, they launchedan offensive in three directions at once. Theforces of Giorgo Basta scored several suc-cesses in Transylvania, and Prince Philip Mer-coeurs army recaptured Szkesfehrvr, but Archduke Ferdinand s army was less for tunate

in its siege of Kanizsa, so that the seat of thenew vilayet stayed in Ottoman hands.

Between 1602 and 1604, the imperial androyal armies made no substantial headway.In the Hungarian theatre of operations, they were grad ually force d on to the de fensive, andneither was Transylvania held successfully.Following the power struggle between Sigis-mund Bthori and Voivode Michael the Brave,Giorgo Basta put the country under militaryrule.

Holy League forces attempted the captureof Buda twice more (1602 and 1603), but onlysucceeded in taking Pest. The Christian forces were also unable to retain the positions theyhad gained in previous years. The Ottomans re-captured Szkesfehrvr in 1602, Pest, Hatvanand Vc in 1604, and Esztergom in 1605.

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264for the homeland unto death 1100 years the mIlItary hIstory of hunGary: 1 526 1697

I n its scale and duration, what becameknown to posterity as the Long War orthe 15 Years War stood apart from what wentbefore. Instead of single campaigns sweepingthrough the narrow territory of Hungary (SultanSuleyman brought his main forces through sixtimes, and the Second Vizier once, between 1520and 1566), armed forces numbering several tensof thousands constantly battled on both sides fora decade and a half. The operations progressedon several fronts at once, and a large part of boththe Christian and Ottoman armies remainedquartered in Hungary during the winter.

No corner of the country was spared the rav-ages of war, and no section of society escaped the

increasingly intolerable war levies. In addition, tore ll the empty treasury, aristocrats were tried fortreason, and Counter-Reformation measures in-creasingly involved force of arms. The politicaland social crisis was at i ts most severe in the eastof the country, principally Tiszntl and UpperHungary.

Standing up to championing the dissatisfac-tion of the Upper Hungarian nobility and sol-diery, especially the Hajduks, was Istvn Bocskai,Sigismund Bthoris former Habsburg-leaningcounsellor and Captain-General of Vrad. Theuprising broke out at lmosd in 1604, whenthe Hajduk army, in league with Bocskai, at-tacked an imperial column marching to confront

War within a war Istvn Bocskais uprising against the Habsburgs

Istvn Bocskai as fispn (Comes, Lord Lieutenant) of Bihar. Engraving by Baltasar Camox

Hajduk of cer (left) andHajduk (right), after anengraving by Dutch artistCaspar Luyken (16721708)(F. Stefan, 1829)



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y y y

Allegorical clash ofChristians and Turks,

1684

Owing to de ciencies in discipline, logisticsand nance, during the war the Christian forces were unable to take proper advantage of theincreasing technical and tactical advantages af-forded by the spread of rearms. The imperial-royal forces feudal-based system of recruiting,logistics and nance was as inadequate as ever incompetition with the highly ef cient supply andrecruiting organisations of the autocratic Otto-

man state.Bocskais movement, and subsequently theuprising of Hajduk soldiers dissatis ed with theexecution of the Treaty of Vienna (1607/1608),proved very useful to the Hungarian estates intheir manoeuvring to strengthen their traditionalprivileges and protect religious freedom.

Supervision of military affairs stayed with the Aulic Military Council, but the captain-generalsof the border fortresses were from that timedrawn from among Hungarian aristocrats, exceptfor the Captain-General of Gyr, who was re-sponsible for the defence of Vienna. After nearly

fty years, the of ce of the highest dignitary afterthe King, the Palatine, was again lled by a Hun-

garian. In the following decades, the Palatines were to play a major part in resolving Ottomanand Transylvanian con icts and in command-ing troops raised by the estates. The mercenaryarmy, seen by the people of Hungary as embodi-ments of oppression, and generally regardedas German, were gradually withdrawn fromthe country, except in the strategic fortresses

of Komrom, rsekjvr, Lva and Flek.By the 1660s, this resulted in the emergence ofa dualistic regime in which the estates had muchmore say in the governance of the Kingdom ofHungary and in local control of military affairsthan they had had in previous decades.

The peace between the two great powers freedmilitary resources on both sides for redeploy-ment elsewhere. In 1603, the Ottomans started

a three-decade-long struggle with the Persians atthe eastern frontiers of the Empire, and in 1645,they fought the Republic of Venice for the is-land of Crete. The Austrian Habsburgs had todeal with the internal crisis of the dynasty andlater a political crisis in the Austrian HereditaryLands and the religiously-divided Holy RomanEmpire. In 1618, opposition by the Bohemianestates mounted into armed rebellion, launchingthe Thirty Years War in the Holy Roman Empire, which soon divided i nto the Protestant Unionand the Catholic League.

The internal crisis of the Habsburg Empire,followed by the Thirty Years War, forced theKing to rely more and more on the armed and

nancial power of the Hungarian estates in de-fence against the Ottomans, even in the West-ern theatres of operation. The rst stage of thiscame in spring 1608, when the Hungarian forcessupported Archduke Matthias in the dispute withhis brother Emperor and King Rudolf II, ultim-ately electing him King of Hungary in autumn1608.

them. Within little more than a month, BocskaisHajduks took the greater part of Upper Hun-gary into their control, persuading most of theborder fort and eld soldiery to join them. Theyachieved this despite defeats against the numeri-cally superior imperial-royal armies rstly at Os-

gyn (Oany, Slovakia) and then at Edelny.Consisting mostly of Hajduks and border for-tress units, Bocskais army carried out a seriesof raids which, by spring 1605, had worn downthe resistance of the imperial-royal army. Bas-tas dwindling forces were con ned to Eperjes(Presov) and its surroundings in the winter of1604/1605, and the Habsburgs empty war chestmeant that they could not send a substantial forceto assist them. The rebels, who from the starthad enjoyed Ottoman support, had an enormousnumerical superiority.

After taking the fortress of Szatmr (January1605), the Hajduk troops led by Lszl Gyulaffypenetrated Transylvania. With the support of the

Szkely (whose freedoms had been restored byBocskai in February), they captured the greaterpart of the Principality. In spring 1606, BocskaisHajduks overran Lower Hungary, The forces ledby Gergely Nmethy took control of the greaterpart of Transdanubia, although the imperial-royalforces ultimately pressed the rebels out of thatregion.

This marked the endof the major military op-erations, because it was inthe interests of both sidesto bring the war to an end. The Habsburg and Otto-man Empires were bothexhausted by war. Boc-skai was unable to main-

tain his army, now 60,000strong, and the dark sideof the Ottoman alliance,such as the Turkish oc-cupation of Esztergom,took collaboration furtherthan he could tolerate. Atthe beginning of the year,Bocskai, already Prince of

Transylvania, urged the Porte to recognise himas Prince of Hungary by granting him a crown(the Transylvanian princely insignia consistedonly of sce ptre and ag), but when this actuallyhappened, he accepted the crown only as a gift.

Bocskais rebellion, launched to protect the

rights of the estates and the Protestant faith, cameto an end with the Treaty of Vienna (23 June1606). Protestants were granted freedom to prac-tise their religion. By reviving the of ce of Pala-tine and calling the Diet, the conditions were setfor a new division of power between the King andthe estates. The acknowledgement of Transylva-nias separate status meant recognition of Bocskaias Prince, and he had succeeded in preventing theregion from being returned to the king.

The war between the two great powers, with Transylvanian mediation, ended with the Treatyof Zsitvatorok (11 November 1606), based onthe status quo. The nal balance was in favour ofthe Ottomans. By capturing Eger and Kanizsa,

they had expanded their conquests with anothertwo vilayets in Hungary and maintained their in-

uence over Transylvania. The Habsburgs, withsome losses, had defended the parts of Hungaryunder their rule, but had not succeeded in retain-ing Transylvania, indeed were forced to recogniseits separate status and acknowledge its vassalageto the Ottoman Empire.

Hajduk lieutenantsstandard



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forces scored an obliterating victory over thearmy of the Protestant Bohemians and Mora- vians at White Hill , near Prague (8 November1620). Bethlen could not, and did not really want to, effectively support his allies, now underpressure from the Habsburgs. The Ottomanshad openly informed him that they would notpermit Transylvania and the royal lands of theKingdom to unite under his sovereignty. The

defeat of his allies also reduced his support inRoyal Hungary, and so his military ventures ofthe next year, including the sieg e of Pozsony, were aimed only at reinforcing the outcome ofhis own campaigns.

Gbor Bethlen and Ferdinand II (King ofHungary 1618, Holy Roman Emperor 1619)signed a peace treaty in Nikolsburg on 31 De-cember 1621. In this, Bethlen renounced the titleof monarch and returned the Holy Crown. In

return, he received the seven counties closest to Transylvania until the end of his life. The treatyparticularly provided that soldiers may serve mu-tually in each others armies.

In his last campaign in 1626, Bethlen enteredinto an alliance with the Protestant states of theHague Alliance (England, Denmark, Dutch Re-public, Brandenburg). His army of nearly 20,000 Transylvanian and Upper-Hungarian soldiers had

just entered the territory ruled by the King whenhe found himself up against the mercenaries ofthe most famous general of the time, Albrecht Wallenstein and the royal soldiers of PalatineMikls Eszterhzy. Although he had been joinedby the 10,000 strong light cavalry of Murteza Pa-sha of Buda, the Prince was aware that withoutthe infantry of the Protestant auxiliary army hehad no chance of victory, and avoided a confron-tation.

D espite the peace treaty with the Ottomans,the Principality of Transylvania remaineda source of internal and external political con ict

in the rst half of the 17th

century. Although theHabsburg dynasty did not want to provoke thePorte in the matter of Transylvania, it did allit could to put a loyal prince on the throne. Inleague with the estates of Hungary, who opposed Transylvanias separate status, and by supportingthe constant stream of pretenders to the throne,the Habsburg monarch was always interfering inthe political affairs of Transylvania.

The anti-Habsburg endeavours of the Tran-sylvanian princes generally found approval in Is-tanbul, and any efforts aimed at uniting the twoparts of the kingdom or at expanding the in u-ence of the Principality to a greater-than-desiredextent were blocked by blackmail and by verbal

or military threats. Gbor Bthori (16081613)

and Gyrgy Rkczi II (16481660) came outthe worse of this political struggle, but GborBethlen (16131629) and Gyrgy Rkczi I

(16301648) succeeded in consolidating theirpower even in the face of the Ottomans. Bytransferring Lippa Castle in 1616, Gbor Beth-len was rst to pay the price of support. GyrgyRkczi I, taking advantage of the chaos in theSultans court, for a while successfully resistedthe demands of the Ottoman Empire, whichacknowledged the Princes campaign against thePoles in 1633, but received no armed or politi-cal Ottoman support for his anti-Habsburg cam-paign of 1644/1645.

Prince of Transylvania Gbor Beth-len launched military campaigns against theHabsburgs by taking advantage of the conditionscreated by the Thirty Years War. In autumn 1619,

with the Sultans permission, he set out, heading a20,000-strong army, to aid the Bohe-mianMoravian Protestants againstthe Habsburg regime. Defeating thetiny resistance, he occupied Upperand Lower Hungary and much of Transdanubia, and then united withthe BohemianMoravian allies nearPozsony. Although the imperialmilitary command feared an assaulton Vienna, the 32,000-strong alliedarmy, half of which were light cav-alry, was not suited to a siege.

Following a brief truce, the Tran-sylvanian army marched into the

western frontier lands of the RoyalHungary in late September 1620.It put Hainburg under siege and,joined by aristocratic and border-fortress troops, captured Trans-danubia.

The fortunes of war quicklyturned round when Catholic League

The wars of the Principalityof Transylvania against the Habsburgs*

Wing signal of the army of the

Transylvanian Principality

Flag awarded by Mikls Esterhin memory of the Battleof Lakompa. Before the battlebegan, Mikls Esterhzy sidedwith the Emperor duringthe uprising against the Kingdoof Hungary ledby Gbor Bethlen.



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Portrait of Prince Gbor Bethlen of Transylvania from 1620. Engraving by Lucas Kilian (15791637)

of Augsburg

Gbor Bethlen became Prince of Transylvania in1613, at the age of 33. He was the rst modernHungarian ruler, whose subtle political intelligencerendered him capable of breaking through theconstraints of the feudal state and building upa modern political system. He is credited withestablishing independent and centralised princelyauthority, introducing an economic systembased on higher output, concentrated increaseof treasu ry income and support for trade, andembarking on victorious military campaignsand treaties whose concessions safeguardedand consolidated Transylvania. His support forscholarship and the arts and his religious tolerance won the Principality wide respect.

Several times, in the wake of militar y defeat,he sought refuge in Ottoman-held lands. Hisprimary objectives were to preserve freedomof religion and to strengthen and ensure thesurvival of Transylvania, wedged betweenthe Habsburg and Ottoman Empires, buthis ultimate dream was the reuni cationof Hungary. Appreciating that Hungaryspolitical unity had to start in Transylvania,he identi ed an opportunity afforded bythe Thirty Years War which was raging inEurope, and three times took up arms onthe anti-Habsburg side of this struggle. Heconsidered the main purpose of his life thereuni cation of Hungary.

Prince Gbor Bethlen of Transylvania*

Victory of the Free Hajduksover the Ottomans at Tolnaon 22 June 1599. Engravingby Johann Sibmacher, painterand engraver of Nuremberg



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Obverse of standard of Prince GborBethlen (reconstruction)

Gbor Bethlens embroidered pelisse

Gbor B

Documents

From the Noon Bell to the Lads of Pest-chapter V