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On August 26, 1541, fifteen years after the
Battle of Mohács, Buda
Castle became the scene
of unusual events. Ferdinand of Habsburg had been besieging the castle since
April, but without success: the Hungarian defence forces continually repelled
his attacks. On this day, Sultan Suleiman also appeared under the walls of
the castle. Roggendorf, the Hapsburg commander, clashed with the Turks, but
shortly afterwards, made a quick retreat. At this point, the sultan invited
John Sigismund, the one-year-old prince, to his camp, together with the
Hungarian leaders. While the festivities were in progress in the camp,
janissaries pretending to be peaceful visitors infiltrated Buda Castle
and once inside, disarmed the Hungarian guard. The Sultan declared that a
Turkish garrison would be stationed in Buda, and that the region of the Great
Plain would become part of the Ottoman Empire.
The child John Sigismund and his power was limited to Transylvania and the
region beyond the Tisza.
The events leading up to the Sultan's coup
reached back fifteen years when, following their victory at Mohács the Turks
did not occupy Hungary.
Instead, looting and pillaging wherever they passed and seizing large number
of people as slaves, they withdrew from the country. This provided an
opportunity for organizing the resources of the country against another
Turkish offensive. However, this did not happen. The lesser nobility elected
the wealthiest landowner in the country, János Zápolyai, as king (1526-1564)
on the throne at their counter-Diet. The dual election was followed by
internal warfare. After the mercenary army of Ferdinand of Hapsburg drove
Zápolyai out of the country, he sought th Sultan's support in regaining his
throne. In 1529 Suleiman II personally led his forces into Hungary to help Zápolyai. On the
site of the battle of Mohács, Zápolyai formally planted the vassal's kiss on
the Sultan's hand. From this point on, Hungary became a battleground.
The Turks viewed Hungary
as the springboard for their attack on Vienna,
and the Hapsburgs, for their part, attempted to maintain at least the
northern and western parts of the country under their influence. In this way,
Hungary became the locale
for a great power struggle, in which both sides strove for decisive power in Europe.
After the Turkish occupation of Buda in 1541,
the central and most fertile part of the country, the region of the Great
Plain, became part of the great Ottoman Empire
which streched over three continents. The supreme ruler of the entire
Hungarian territory was the begler bey of Buda, who, having the title
of pasha, was directly responsible to the Sultan. The Ottoman system
of taxation inflicted a heavy burden on the Hungarian serfs, and the law
restricted their freedom of movement. The "heathen" were not
allowed to build stone houses and could not repair their damaged homes
without permission. On the other hand, the Turks left the population to
practice the religion in peace. When war broke out, the Ottoman army again
spoiled, destroyed and plundered the country. At such times, Hungary became a veritable slave market; Asian
slave traders travelled as far as Buda and transported thousands of slaves to
the interior of the Ottoman Empire. The
resulting sense of uncertainty forced the population to take refuge in the
larger settlements, a movement which led to the depopulation and desolation
of hundreds of villages.
Click on the map
for better resolution
Click on the map
for better resolution
After the battle of Mohács, the western and
northern areas of Hungary
came under the rule of Ferdinand of Hapsburg as the Kingdom of Hungary.
Charles V left the government of the eastern part of his Empire to his
brother Ferdinand, who exerted all his energies in an attempt to unite Austria, Bohemia
and Hungary
under one centralized government. His Council of War strengthened the front
defences which ran through the heart of Hungary, and by the second half
of the sixteenth century, a network of frontier fortresses had been created.
For over a century this network remained the frontier between the
Ottoman-occupied part of Hungary
and part of the country under Hapsburg rule. Consequently, the area along the
line of border fortresses became the scene of continual clashes between the
defenders and the Turkish raiders.
The eastern region of the divided country, Transylvania, fell under the rule of Zápolyai's son,
John Sigismund. Following his death, prince István Báthori (1571-1586), who
had achieved a certain degree of independence from the Hapsburg and Ottoman
Empires, came into power. Báthori imposed a strong centralized rule. He also
recognized the value of heyducks, herdsmen who had banded together into
lawless fighters and marauders in the troubled times of war, and began to
organize them. He also made it possible for the lower classes of the Székelys
living as serfs to make their way upwards through military service.
Báthori planned his foreign policy on a
Central-European axis, bases upon an anti-Hapsburg,
Transylvanian-Polish-French alliance. He put himself forward as a candidate
for the empty throne of Poland,
and, with the help of the Polish lesser nobility, was crowned in 1576,
consequently becoming one of the great Polish kings.
The degree of slaughter and devastation in Hungary
at the turn of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was equalled only by
the Thirty Years' War shortly afterwards. The Fifteen Years' War began in
hope of driving the Ottoman forces out of the country. However, it only
resulted in defeat and further gains for the Turks. Moreover, the imperial
Hapsburg mercenaries plundered and devastated the northern part of the
country and Transylvania, which had been
relatively peaceful until that time. They aggravated the situation by their
aggressive methods and murderous ways, confiscating estates and persecuting
the Protestants under Belgioso and Basta, the imperial mercenary commanders.
The Hapsburgs also employed the method of show trials for treason in order to
confiscate the estates of the landowners, and used force to take away the
Protestant churches.
General embitterment and discontent led to the
first Hungarian uprising against the Hapsburgs in 1604. The beginning and
success of the uprising are linked with the name of István Bocskai, a
landowner in Eastern Hungary. He negotiated
a secret agreement with the Ottomans, recruited the heyducks under his flag,
and after a series of victories over the Hapsburgs, became prince of Transylvania in 1605. Bocskai refused the title of king
offered to him by the Sultan, his only objective being to bring peace to the
country caught between the two great rival powers, the Hapsburg Empire and
the Ottoman Empire. As a result of his
steadfast efforts, the Treaty of Vienna was signed in 1606. In this treaty
the Emperor undertook to bring the unsuccessful war against the Turks to an immediate
end, to return the expropriated estates to their Hungarian owners, to
guarantee the freedom of religion, and to station only Hungarian soldiers in
the country. Following the Treaty of Vienna, the Emperor signed a treaty with
the Turks as well, which concluded the Fifteen Years' War. Although the
provisions of the Treaty of Vienna were not fully enforced (in the years
immediately following the signing of the Treaty of Vienna, a
Counter-Reformation movement led by Péter Pázmány, the brilliant Archbishop
of Esztergom, emerged, reconverting the majority of the Protestant magnates,
and their serfs, to Catholicism), Transylvania nevertheless continued to be
the main bastion in the struggle for independence from the Hapsburgs. Prince
Gábor Bethlen (1613-1629), under whose reign Transylvania
enjoyed a golden age of economic and cultural development, took up arms
against the Hapsburgs several times during the Thirty Years' War to help the
Protestant forces.
Why did the Hungarian fight against the
Hapsburgs when it was the Turks who held a substantial part of their country
under occupation? The answer to this question lies in the Hapsburgs' refusal
to take as strong a stand against the Turks as their power and resources
would have permitted in their use of Hungary as a buffer-state, and in
their compromise solutions - negotiated both openly and in secret - which
seriously conflicted with fundamental Hungarian interests. A flagrant example
was the tragic fate of Miklós Zrínyi, the Hungarian writer, statesman and
military leader. Zrínyi, who was the bán (viceroy) of Croatia
and a landowner in the south, strove for the expulsion of the Turks both in
his writings and on the battlefield, and his extremely fast and victorious
campaign proved that his policy of saving the nation was realistic and
feasible. Nevertheless, the imperial general Montecuccoli, and not Zrínyi,
was appointed commander-in-chief of the army against the Ottoman forces. The
attitude of this "procrastinating general" is summed up by his often-quoted
saying, "Three things are required for war: money, money, and
money." Following the victory which Montecuccoli finally managed to
secure, the imperial court signed a treaty which was tantamount to defeat in
return for certain Ottoman trade concessions to Austrian trading capital.
Zrínyi died amidst mysterious circumstances while hunting, and even today the
suspicion remains that he was murdered. In any case, it is a historical fact
that the nobles who led the anti-Hapsburg movement were captured and executed
after Zrínyi's death, and their estates were confiscated. The Hapsburgs
utilized this event to abolish Hungarian self-government and to undertake a
campaign of repression against the Hungarian Protestants. The country was
overrun by mercenaries who plundered at will.
In the second half of the seventeenth century,
armed clashes became increasingly frequent between Hapsburg mercenaries and
the ever growing number of outlaws. These men, known as Kuruc, were forced to
leave their homes as a result of the tyranny of the imperial authorities. At
the same time, the embittered serfs deeply sympathized with them. The early
Kuruc attacks on the Imperial troops ended in failure. Resistance
strengthened when a young landowner, Count Imre Thököly, took over the
leadership of their uprising in 1678, and having organized a strong army,
successfully occupied the northeastern parts of the country. Thököly was
consequently made prince of Upper Hungary,
and a short-lived Upper Hungarian principality was established. Hungary
thus became divided into four parts.
Because of its ware with France, the Hapsburg government
had few forces available to deal with the Kuruc threat and was forced to make
concessions to the Hungarian barons. The Diet convened in 1681,
re-established baronial government, took measures to end the outrages of the
German soldiers, announced an amnesty, and made concessions with regard to
freedom and religion. As the result of these concessions, the majority of the
Hungarian ruling class abandoned Thököly and decided to reach an agreement
with the Hapsburgs. Thököly and a faction of the Kuruc fighters nonetheless
were determined to continue their resistance.
Thököly's position was greatly weakened in the
eyes of the public, because his strategy was based on Ottoman support despite
tha changing balance of power in Europe. In
light of the events at the end of the century, it became increasingly clear
that the time for the expulsion of the Turks from Hungary had come. After the grand
vizier Kara Mustapha's unsuccessful siege of Vienna in 1683 by an army of two hundred
thousand, Emperor Leopold I, realizing the seriousness of the situation,
finally ceased his passsive strategy towards the Turks. Under continued
encouragement from Pope Innocent XI, the "Holy League" of Austria, Poland
and Venice
was established for the struggle against the Turks. A peace treaty, valid for
twenty years, was signed by Austria
and France,
and the allied forces - in which a great number of Hungarian soldiers also
fought - began their campaign. In the summer of 1686, after fierce fighting,
they captured Buda, and the following year they reoccupied Transylvania.
Under the leadership of Charles of Lotharingia and later of Eugene of Savoy,
they drove the Turks from Hungary.
The final victory of the war, the battle of Zenta in 1697, was followed by
the Treaty of Karlovitz [Karlóca] in 1699, which, with the exception of a
small region, freed all of Hungary
from Turkish occupation.
The question now poses itself, how was it
possible that barely four years after the long-awaited liberation from a
century and a half of Turkish repression, there followed an all-out war of
independence against the Hapsburgs? Why did the people of this impoverished
country rise in arms and fight for eight long years against the superior
forces of the powerful Hapsburg Empire? The answer is not simple, for the
problems are manifold. But one reason for the revolt was that the Hapsburgs
violated the interests of the Hungarian landowners when they did not return
their estates in the areas formerly under Turkish control. Instead, they were
distributed among the Austrian aristocracy, officers of the Imperial Army,
and high-ranking court officials. The peasants and serfs were severely
affected by the state tax and the so-called portio imposed on them. In
addition they were forced to provide quarters and food for the imperial
troops. Townspeople also suffered under the burden of ruthless taxation. The
Hungarian troops who formerly manned the frontier fortresses were returned to
serfdom. The ruined peasants and the thousands of soldiers condemned to new
serfdom fled the villages and took refuge as outlaws and bandits in the
forests and mountains. The world of the wandering and fleeing poor was once
more revived.
In the northern section of the discontented
country, a few serfs and a handful of the former officers of the Thököly
movement began to organize another anti-Hapsburg movement. Accepting their call
to assume command, one of the greatest leaders of the independence movements
in Europe, Prince Ferenc Rákóczi II, enters
the stage of Hungarian history. Rákóczi's father had been Prince of
Transylvania, and his stepfather was Imre Thököly, the leader of the Kuruc
uprising. His mother, Ilona Zrínyi, was herself a descendant of military
leaders who fought and defended their country against the Turks; she made a
heroic defence of the fortress of Munkács against the siege of the Hapsburg
army during the final days of the Thököly uprising. Afterwards, she followed
her husband into exile.
The young Ferenc Rákóczi, the wealthiest
landowner in the country, had learnt the oppressive methods of the Viennese
court through personal experience. The Hapsburgs separated him from his
family in his youth and deprived him of his freedom, but Rákóczi escaped from
the prison at Wiener Neustadt and managed to reach Poland before his threatened
trial for treason. In 1703, accepting the offer of leadership from his
supporters, Rákóczi returned to Hungary, where great masses of
peasants assembled under his banner. In a short time, he had an army of
seventy thousand which soon swelled to one hundred thousand. With this army
at his disposal, he quickly occupied the greater part of the country. By this
time the war of independence - which began as a popular uprising - was joined
by large numbers of the nobility. In 1705 the Diet elected Rákóczi as the
ruling prince of the confederation of insurgent Hungarian nobles, announced
the dethronement of the Hapsburgs, and in 1707 proclaimed the independence of
Hungary.
On Ádám Mányoki's contemporary portrait,
Rákóczi looks at the world with a natural and spontaneous expression. His
heavy dark hair falls to his shoulders from the plumed fur cap that he is
wearing. His finely cut and slightly sensuous lips show a man who is fond of
life, but the pondering and searching look of his brownish grey eyes reveal a
thinker of profound insight. Rákóczi was a highly educated and open-minded
man. He conducted his correspondence with his unreliable ally, Louis XIV, in
French. During the bitter years of exile, he wrote his Confessions -
philosophical and anguished pieces of writing - in fine classical Latin. The
manifestoes and decrees which he issued in Hungarian, dictating and revising
them himself, were the shining examples of faultless and concise Hungarian
prose. He was an excellent organizer whose concerns ranged from providing for
the needs of the army to solving increasingly serious economic problems. His
foreign policy was broad-minded, yet realistic. He established relations with
France and Poland,
and sought Russian support.
Yet in the end, the Kuruc war of independence
was defeated. After the victory of the Hapsburg forces at Höchstadt, the opportunity
was lost for a joint French-Hungarian offensive, and Hapsburg military
pressure mounted. The internal contradictions in Hungary continued, and discontent
grew among the peasants because they had been waiting in vain for the measure
that would free the serfs. The nobility abandoned the struggle that had
entailed heavy material sacrifices and deserted to the Hapsburg camp in
growing numbers. There was a shortage of money and the soldiers began to
leave their units. And while Rákóczi was in Russia at the court of Peter the
Great to seek aid, Sándor Károlyi, the commander-in-chief of the Kuruc
forces, capitulated (1711). Rákóczi spent the rest of his life in exile,
first in France, then in Turkey.
Following the end of the Kuruc war of
independence, the first decades of the eighteenth century marked a period of
accommodation and compromise between the Hapsburg administrators and the
Hungarian barons. The repopulation of areas devastated under Ottoman rule was
rapidly taking place. Masses of serfs flowed from Northern
Hungary - which had not been occupied - to the depopulated
southern areas, and they in turn were replaced by Slovak, Southern Slav and
German settlers. Due to large-scale immigration, the population doubled in
seventy years, reaching over eight million. At the same time, however, the
number of the non-Hungarian population was greater that the Hungarian.
The idyllic state of affairs between the
dynasty and the Hungarian nobility began to deteriorate around the middle of
the century. At first the Hungarian part of the compromise involved the
maintenance of the county system, and nobles who pledged allegiance to the
Hapsburgs were allowed to retain their estates. The authority of the baron-controlled
Hungarian Diet was also maintained. In return, the Hungarian ruling class
again recognized the Hapsburg dynasty as the monarchs of Hungary. In 1723 Charles III
(1711-1740) induced the Hungarian barons to accept the Pragmatic Sanction,
which recognized the rights of inheritance of the female offspring of the
Hapsburg dynasty and the indivisibility of the Hapsburg Empire.
The Hungarian estates enthusiastically
supported Maria Theresa (1740-1780). Perhaps the most blatant example of
their enthusiasm is the well-known engraving of the young queen holding her
baby son (later King Joseph II) as the members of the nobility zealously
declare that they will sacrifice their "life and blood" to save the
throne from the Prussian rival. Naturally, they shouted in Latin and,
according to contemporary gossip, they added very quietly: "sed
avenam non", that is, they would be willing to sacrifice their
blood, but unwilling to supply oats to feed the army horses. Naturally,
reluctance was not confined to the oats, and in the course of time, the
conflict deepened between the Hungarian nobility, who insisted on the
retention of their feudal prerogatives - i.e., the outdated serf system and
exemption from taxation - and the Hapsburg administration. When Joseph II
(1780-1790), the most interesting and impressive personality of all the
Hapsburgs, tried to implement reforms based on the ideals of enlightened
absolutism, the resistance of the nobility grew stronger. The decrees easing
the oppression of the serfs were only successfully enforced after the
repression of a peasant uprising in Transylvania
which frightened landowners sufficiently for them to tolerate the
implementation of these measures. In the end, Joseph II was enforced to
cancel nearly all of his reforms on his death-bed.
A positive feature of the resistance against
the policies of Joseph II was the political programme designed to safeguard
the Hungarian language against Germanisation. Consequently, Hungarian
literature was given a new impetus. In the final decade of the century, under
the reign of Francis I (1792-1835) who considered that his principal task was
"to put the brakes on the demon of revolution," there emerged a
section of the lesser nobility and the intelligentsia which followed the events
in France
with active interest. It was from their ranks that a small group of very high
intellectual calibre was formed whose main political objective, besides the
independence of the country, was its transformation to a bourgeois society.
Their leader was the lawyer József Hajnóczy, and the group included the poet
János Batsányi, the writer Ferenc Kazinczy, and the economist Gergely
Berzeviczky. When Ignác Martinovics took over leadership in 1794, the group
was transformed into a revolutionary Jacobin organization. The organization
was shortlived, and the membership must have still been only a few hundred
when the imperial police arrested the leaders, who were executed in Buda in
1795.
© Zoltán Halász
English translation by Zsuzsa Béres
Translation revised by J.E. Sollosy
Bibliographic data:
Title: Hungary
(4th edition)
Authors: Zoltán Halász / András Balla (photo) / Zsuzsa Béres
(translation)
Published by Corvina, in 1998
159 pages
ISBN: 963-13-4129-1, 963-13-4727-3
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