In May, 1554, Malvezzi was ordered to return, but he was prevented by illness, and Busbecq was sent in his stead.[284] He arrived at Constantinople on January 20, 1555, and proceeded in March, with Verantius and Zay, to the Sultan’s headquarters at Amasia. They brought him a present of gilded cups, and 10,000 ducats as tribute for Transylvania. They complained of the numerous breaches of the armistice on the part of the Turks, but, although they promised 80,000 ducats to the Sultan and large sums to the chief viziers, they could only obtain an extension of the armistice for six months, and a letter from Solyman to Ferdinand, with which Busbecq was sent to Vienna.
On September 28, 1555, Achmet was executed, and Roostem reappointed Grand Vizier.[285]
Notwithstanding the truce of Amasia, guerilla raids on both sides continued all along the Hungarian frontiers. To check the incursions of the Heydons, Touighoun, the Pasha of Buda,[286] attacked and took Babocsa; and Ali, his successor, the victor of Fülek, with the same object, commenced the siege of Szigeth, on May 24, 1556, and assaulted the place a month later, but was repulsed with heavy loss. In the meantime the Palatine Nadasty had besieged Babocsa, and Ali hastened with a detachment to relieve it, but was defeated with great loss on the river Rinya (July 25). Babocsa was then abandoned by the Turks, and fell into the hands of the Hungarians, who burnt it, and blew up the citadel. Ali resumed the siege of Szigeth, but was so weakened by his defeat, that he was obliged to raise it, retreating to Buda, where he died soon afterwards.[287] The fall of Szigeth was thus postponed for ten years, when it was destined to be associated with the termination of a more glorious career, and the extinction of a more famous name.[288]
Meanwhile Transylvania had again passed into the possession of Isabella and her son. She had at first gone to the Silesian duchies, which Ferdinand had given in exchange for Transylvania; but she was dissatisfied with them, and returned to her brother’s court in Poland, where she entered into correspondence with her partisans in Transylvania. The current of feeling there ran strongly in her favour. The Spaniard, Castaldo, Ferdinand’s governor, was ignorant of the national laws and usages. His troops were left unpaid, and supported themselves by plundering the country. At last one corps after another mutinied for their pay, and marched out of Transylvania; and Castaldo himself, unable to check the dissolution of his army, withdrew to Vienna. For a time anarchy prevailed in Transylvania; but in June, 1556, the inhabitants resolved to recall Isabella and her son. The envoys found her at Lemberg, and invited her to return. The Voivodes of Moldavia and Wallachia entered Hungary to protect her passage, and on October 22 she and her son entered Klausenburg in triumph.[289]
Meanwhile Bebek, the representative of Queen Isabella, was using every means in his power to thwart the efforts of Busbecq and his colleagues. The latter returned home in August, 1557. Verantius was rewarded with the bishopric of Erlau. As far back as June, 1555, allusions to the prospect of his appointment may be found, and the see had been kept vacant for him for more than a year before his actual translation in November, 1557. His office was no sinecure. He was perpetually occupied in providing for the defence of his diocese, in writing to the Pasha of Buda to remonstrate against the continual invasions of the neighbouring Sanjak-beys, and in counterworking the intrigues of Zapolya’s party. His remaining time and energies were devoted to attempts to check the spread of Lutheranism in his diocese. It may be remarked here that John Sigismund was much assisted by his patronage of Lutheranism. His court was the refuge of many Lutheran, and even of Socinian, teachers. An anecdote Verantius gives in one of his letters will show what a hold Lutheranism had obtained in parts of Hungary. When a fire, supposed to be the work of an incendiary, broke out in the monastery of Jaszbereny, most of the inhabitants of the town refused to help to extinguish it, declaring that they would rather the Turks had the monastery than the monks. Zay, the other ambassador, was appointed Governor of Kaschau.[290]
In 1558 the fortress of Tata, near Komorn, eight miles from the right bank of the Danube, was surprised by Hamza, Sanjak-bey of Stuhlweissenburg.
Throughout the negotiations the Sultan insisted on the cession of Szigeth, but was induced in the winter of 1557 to grant a fresh armistice for seven months. In 1559 Ferdinand sent by Albert de Wyss[291] four projects for a treaty, the first of which demanded the restoration of Tata and Fülek, but the last omitted these conditions. The last was presented by Busbecq in the camp at Scutari to Solyman, but was not accepted by him; and the Sultan, on his return to Constantinople, placed Busbecq in a sort of confinement in his house.
In the beginning of 1559 the health of Queen Isabella began to fail, and Melchior Balassa, a great Transylvanian noble, wrote to Ferdinand proposing, on her death, to place Transylvania in his hands. This letter was intercepted, and sent to Isabella, who, having such a proof of the treachery of one of her most trusted adherents, thought it advisable to open negotiations with Ferdinand herself, and, with the Sultan’s approval, did so through her brother the King of Poland. It was proposed that one of Ferdinand’s daughters should marry John Sigismund, and that the latter should have Transylvania and Lower Hungary (the north-eastern part of Hungary, between Poland and Transylvania), but should abandon the title of King. These negotiations were broken off by her death, which took place at Karlsburg in September, and an attempt in the following year to renew them also came to nothing, as John Sigismund refused to renounce the title of King.
In the winter of 1561 Andrew Bathory persuaded his brother Nicholas and Melchior Balassa to go over to Ferdinand’s side.[292] As soon as Ferdinand had recovered the town of Munkats, Balassa was to receive it for his life, with the right of maintaining a certain number of soldiers at Ferdinand’s expense, and, in return, to give up to Ferdinand various towns immediately to the north of Transylvania Proper, which were his possession.
Roostem died in July 1561, and was succeeded by Ali, who proved much more pliant in his negotiations with Busbecq, and the latter at last succeeded in obtaining a peace for eight years. The principal stipulations of the treaty were as follows:[293]