I.
SKETCH OF HUNGARIAN HISTORY DURING THE REIGN OF SOLYMAN.
In order that the reader may be able to appreciate the circumstances under which Busbecq’s Turkish letters were written, and to understand many of the allusions they contain, it is necessary that he should have the power of referring easily to the leading events of Hungarian and Transylvanian history during the reign of Solyman. For Busbecq’s French letters, Motley’s ‘Dutch Republic’ and ‘United Netherlands’ may be consulted, but no such works in English upon Hungarian history exist. The narratives of Robertson and Creasy are meagre in this respect, and contain only scattered and incidental notices of Hungarian events; while Von Hammer, and the Austrian and Turkish histories in Heeren’s Series, valuable as they are, have not been translated into English, and besides are not easily accessible. None of these works give a connected narrative of Hungarian affairs, the notices of which are mixed up with the general Turkish and Austrian history, and have to be picked out from it with much time and trouble. It is hoped that this sketch will to some extent supply the deficiency, and furnish a clue to the intricate maze of Hungarian politics. Some curious facts have been gleaned from Katona’s ‘Critical History of Hungary,’ a rare book, which is mostly composed of original documents, including numerous letters written by Busbecq’s colleague, Verantius, after[268] he had returned from his embassy, and long extracts from Busbecq’s own letters.
During the sixteenth century Hungary formed the Debatable Land between Christendom and Islam. The picture which the ‘Lay of the Last Minstrel’ and the ‘Monastery’ give of the condition of the English and Scottish border, will suggest a faint notion of the state of things all along the frontier between the Turkish and the Christian dominions. Upon both sides continual forays were made, villages were plundered and burnt, castles surprised, cattle driven off, and, worst of all, prisoners were carried away into hopeless slavery.[270] Every few years these desultory hostilities broke out into open war, and, notwithstanding occasional successes of Ferdinand’s party, the tide of Turkish invasion rose steadily higher and higher. In addition, the unfortunate country was distracted by civil war, waged with varying success between Ferdinand and the House of Zapolya, the rivals for the throne, while the magnates of the kingdom went over from one side to the other, according as they thought they could thereby gain any advantage for themselves.
Solyman, the greatest Sovereign of the House of Othman, was born in 1494, and succeeded his father, Selim I., in September 1520. The first year of his reign was marked by a campaign against Hungary, and the fall of Belgrade,[271] the bulwark of that kingdom. Louis, the King of Hungary and Bohemia, was then a minor, and, in the party strife of the different factions of the nobility, the defence of the country was neglected. For several years Solyman’s attention was diverted to other enterprises, of which the most famous was the siege and capture of Rhodes in 1522, but in 1526 he again invaded Hungary. On August 29, the anniversary of the capture of Belgrade, he defeated King Louis with great slaughter at Mohacz,[272] the King himself perishing in the flight, and then advanced on Buda, which surrendered on September 10. Thence he crossed to Pesth, where he received the Hungarian nobles, and, after promising them to make John Zapolya, Count of Zips and Voivode or Viceroy of Transylvania, King of Hungary, returned laden with booty to Constantinople.
Ferdinand, the brother of Charles V. and his successor as Emperor, and Zapolya were rivals for the crown of St. Stephen. The first relied upon family compacts, and upon his connection by marriage with King Louis.[273] Zapolya, on the other hand, was supported by a strong party among the nobles, who disliked Ferdinand as a foreigner. Zapolya’s partisans took the initiative, and convened a diet at Tokay, at which he was elected King, and he was duly crowned at Stuhlweissenburg by the Archbishop of Gran. Mary, however, the widowed Queen, with the Palatine Bathory, assembled another diet at Presburg, which declared Zapolya’s election void on the ground that the diet of Tokay had not been summoned by the Palatine, and elected Ferdinand King, who, after defeating his rival at Tokay in 1527, and near Kaschau in the following year, drove him out of the country. Zapolya then threw himself on Solyman’s protection, offering to hold Hungary and Transylvania as his tributary, and a treaty of alliance was signed between them in February 1528. In the following year Solyman invaded Hungary for the third time, and took Buda on September 9. A few days afterwards Zapolya was again installed on the throne by the first lieutenant of the Aga of the Janissaries, and did homage for his kingdom. Leaving a Turkish governor in Buda, the Sultan then marched on Vienna, and besieged it on the 27th, but was obliged to abandon the siege on October 16, in consequence of the lateness of the season and the gallant resistance of the garrison and inhabitants.[274]
In the winter of 1530 Ferdinand’s troops besieged Buda unsuccessfully. In the campaign of 1532 Charles V. came with the forces of the Empire to the assistance of his brother, and Styria and Austria were the seat of war. The Sultan was detained for three weeks before the little town of Güns by the gallantry of the commander Jurischitz, who at last surrendered on honourable terms.[275] The delay, however, prevented the Sultan from accomplishing anything considerable, though his army ravaged Styria and Austria, and penetrated as far as Gratz and Linz.
In June 1533 peace was concluded between Ferdinand and Solyman on the basis of Ferdinand’s retaining what he actually held in Hungary, the Sultan reserving to himself the ratification of any arrangements that Ferdinand and Zapolya might make between themselves.
For some years afterwards Solyman’s attention was devoted to his wars with Persia, and no invasion of Hungary on a large scale occurred; but, notwithstanding the peace, the Pashas of Bosnia and the adjoining districts continued their inroads. To check these incursions Ferdinand, in 1537, assembled at Kaproncza, on the Drave, an army of 16,000 foot and 8,000 horse, under the supreme command of Katzianer. He advanced on Essek, intending to besiege it, but was surrounded by clouds of light cavalry, who cut off his supplies and forced him to retreat. After losing his siege-guns at the passage of the Vouka, he encountered the enemy on December 1, and, after an unsuccessful engagement, fled in the night with some of the other generals. The troops that were left were cut to pieces the next day with their gallant commander, Lodron.[276] Katzianer was accused of causing the disaster by his cowardice, and was thrown into prison at Vienna. He escaped by bribing his gaolers, and fled to one of his castles in Croatia, where he entered into negotiations with the Turks, promising to betray the strong fortress of Kosthanitza. However, his treasonable designs were cut short; Count Nicholas Zriny, during an interview with him at one of his castles, treacherously stabbed him, and despatched him with the assistance of his servants. His body was flung from a window into the castle ditch, and his head was sent to Vienna.
In 1538, under the mediation of Charles V., the treaty of Gross Wardein was concluded between Zapolya and Ferdinand. Zapolya was to retain the title of King during his life with Transylvania and the part of Hungary which was then in his actual possession, on his death his male issue was to succeed to Transylvania only, and by the same treaty both parties united in a league for mutual defence against the Turks.
Zapolya had then neither wife nor child; but he immediately afterwards married Isabella, the King of Poland’s daughter, and, dying in July 1540, left by her a son—John Sigismund—who was born a fortnight before his father’s death.