Hungary between Two Empires 1526–1711

Géza Pálffy, David Robert Evans

• Editorial: Indiana University Press
• Año: 2021
• ISBN:
  9780253054678
• Categoría: History
• Categoría: European History

The Hungarian defeat to the Ottoman army at the pivotal Battle of Mohács in 1526 led to the division of the Kingdom of Hungary into three parts, altering both the shape and the ethnic composition of Central Europe for centuries to come. Hungary thus became a battleground between the Ottoman and Habsburg empires.

In this sweeping historical survey, Géza Pálffy takes readers through a crucial period of upheaval and revolution in Hungary, which had been the site of a flowering of economic, cultural, and intellectual progress—but battles with the Ottomans lead to over a century of war and devastation. Pálffy explores Hungary's role as both a borderland and a theater of war through the turn of the 18th century. In this way, Hungary became a crucially important field on which key debates over religion, government, law, and monarchy played out.

Reflecting 25 years of archival research and presented here in English for the first time, Hungary between Two Empires 1526–1711 offers a fresh and thorough exploration of this key moment in Hungarian history and, in turn, the creation of a modern Europe.

I

HUNGARY AFTER MOHÁCS: A CENTURY OF DIRECTION SEEKING, 1526–1606

1

ON THE FRONTIER OF TWO EMPIRES

IN THE SUMMER OF 1532, SIX YEARS AFTER the Battle of Mohács, a great encounter almost took place. The rulers of two empires both approaching their zeniths, Sultan Süleyman I of the Ottoman Empire and Holy Roman emperor Charles V of the Habsburg Empire (along with his brother, Ferdinand I, king of Hungary), had their troops stationed in Kőszeg (Güns) and Wiener Neustadt, awaiting the military clash between the two most powerful men in the world. But the battle did not ensue. The unusual standoff was nevertheless symbolic. It was the final sign that the medieval Kingdom of Hungary, which had covered the whole area of the Carpathian Basin, was a thing of the past and that Hungary had been conclusively pushed to the frontier of two empires. For both great powers, the road leading to this series of conflicts in the Danube basin had been a long one.

The empire of the Ottoman dynasty, founded by Sultan Osman I (c. 1280–1324/26), was one of the fastest-growing states in world history and also one of the longest lasting (surviving until shortly after the First World War). Tradition holds that the Ottoman Turkish principality was born in the 1280s to the southeast of Bursa, in what is today northwest Turkey, from a mere four hundred tents of a Turkmen tribe fleeing the Mongol invaders in Central Asia. Over the space of a century, the small principality grew into a more significant state, and within two centuries it would become a major power. Finally, by the early sixteenth century, it became one of the world’s greatest empires (see map 1).

The Ottomans primarily had their clever flexibility and marriage policy to thank for their quick rise to such heights, though they were assisted by good luck and sometimes cruel innovations guaranteeing the dominance of the ruling family and state power, such as fratricide. A military and bureaucratic elite emerged, drawn from the slave (Turkish kul) class, the institution of the janissaries, the promotion of Muslim religious leaders to official government posts, and other sources. In addition, they were highly effective in adopting and further refining elements of the state apparatus (tax system, public administration, etc.) of their enemies, particularly the Seljuk Turks and Byzantium, which helped the Ottoman state thrive. They also recognized that it would be more advantageous to expand into the divided Balkan peninsula, which they first set foot on in 1354, than into Asia Minor. By 1369, Osman’s descendants were already in charge of Edirne (in today’s northwest Turkey), and as auxiliary troops of the Bulgarian and Serbian princes, they soon found themselves embattled with the armies of the Hungarian kings Louis I of Anjou and Sigismund of Luxembourg, who intervened in the conflicts of the South Slav states.

Map 1. The growth of the Ottoman Empire (sixteenth–seventeenth centuries).

After the battle for the throne in the early fifteenth century (1402–1413), the burgeoning state became a local great power—or southeastern European middling power—by occupying Constantinople in 1453. From here, after the acquisition of the Balkans (Serbia in 1459 and part of Bosnia in 1464), there was but a single last step to world power status. Sultan Selim I took this step in the 1510s by occupying the lion’s share of the Middle Eastern Islamic world (Iran in 1514, Syria in 1516, and Egypt in 1517). Thus, in 1520, his son, Süleyman I (the Magnificent), inherited an empire of 1.5 million km² with a population of 12–13 million, an annual income of 4–5 million florins, and the world’s only standing army (of about 100,000–120,000 men). Indeed, unlike other armies in Europe at the time, this army had reserve divisions. In addition, the sultan had a growing Mediterranean fleet at his disposal. By this time, the Ottoman Empire had become a decisive factor in European politics.

In 1521, those at the Istanbul court proposing war in Asia and at sea were overruled by those demanding campaigns in Europe; thus, it soon transpired that the Kingdom of Hungary, lying in the line of northern expansion, would be the next enemy to be defeated. The kingdom’s territory (including Croatia, which it had been in a union with since 1102) was a mere 325,000 km², its population was 3.3 million, and its income was just 400,000–500,000 florins a year. The fall of Nándorfehérvár (known today as Belgrade) and the southern system of border defense built in the fifteenth century was now just a question of time. Hungary’s opportunities to resist the Ottoman Empire—which was five times its size and four times its population and had enormous economic and military superiority—were very limited indeed. Furthermore, Sultan Süleyman’s army was qualitatively different from the armed forces of Hungarian-Bohemian king Louis II of Jagiello (see fig. 1), as a permanent, well-trained, and fully employed mercenary force facing an army that was quite numerous but difficult to muster. The telling saying of a later grand vizier was pertinent for the Hungary of the 1520s, too: “A fly cannot harm an elephant.”¹

A defeat such as that at Mohács in 1526 was inevitable in the long term (see fig. 2). After this, Hungary’s fate would be largely at the mercy of external factors: primarily the decisions of the Ottoman leadership but also, to a lesser extent, Hungarian domestic circumstances and the steps taken by the political and military leadership of the Kingdom of Hungary’s western neighbor, Austrian archduke Ferdinand of Habsburg.

In this crisis situation, Hungary was nevertheless distinctly lucky that it would soon be on the border of two empires. After 1521, Archduke Ferdinand was already providing significant financial and military aid to his brother-in-law, Louis II, to help defend the Croatian and Slavonian territories—not out of charity but rather from carefully considered interests, namely the defense of his southern territories (Carniola, Styria, etc.). This assistance was, of course, in line with the Habsburg dynasty’s old intention to obtain the Hungarian throne. Ever since the start of their ambitions to build a Central European empire, the Habsburgs had paid great attention to the Hungarian areas to the east of the Leitha (Hungarian Lajta) River.

Like that of the Ottomans, the empire of the Habsburgs, originating at Habichtsburg in the later Swiss canton of Aargau, was one of the fastest to grow and longest to survive (right until 1918) in world history. Although they had already lost their Swiss territories in the early fourteenth century (the battle of Morgarten in 1315), they had meanwhile, with Hungarian help (the battle of Dürnkrut in the Marchfeld in 1278), acquired the legacy of the extinct Babenberg dynasty: Austria and Styria. Although their continued rise could often be put down to good fortune, their territories gradually increased (Carinthia and Carniola in 1335; Tyrol, Friuli, and Gorizia in 1363) and circumscribed what was by now a Central European middle power.

Fig. 2. The Battle of Mohács, August 29, 1526. Gyula Tury’s copy (1896) of an Ottoman miniature from 1575 (Hungarian National Museum, Budapest).

This finally came about in 1437, when German king Albert II came to power—the first Habsburg to come to the Hungarian throne, as Albert I (1437–1439). From this time until 1806, with one brief interruption (1742–1745), the Habsburgs ran the Holy Roman Empire, governing their growing number of territories. Within a century, with the rise to the imperial throne of Charles V (1519), they would be in control of one of the world’s most prestigious empires—one on which, as the saying goes, the sun never set. Even when Emperor Charles abdicated in 1556 and the world power was split into its Spanish and Austrian parts, the Habsburgs’ Central European monarchy, which included Hungary, remained a crucial force on the European political scene.

First and foremost, it was emperors Frederick III and Maximilian I who played a key role in establishing a superpower. While the former distinguished himself with hard politicking, miserliness, and surviving his every opponent, the latter, alongside his military reforms (the organization of the landsknecht army and the construction of arsenals), began the series of fantastic Habsburg marriages that brought many territories to the dynasty. It was no accident that the following dictum was immortalized: Bella gerant alii; tu, felix Austria, nube! (“Let others wage war; you, happy Austria, marry!”) The marriage of Maximilian to Mary, the daughter of Charles the Brave, prince of Burgundy, had in 1477 provided the Habsburgs with the inheritance of a good part of one of Europe’s most economically advanced provinces, the principality of Burgundy (including the Netherlands). An even bigger dowry was brought by the marriage in 1496 of Maximilian’s son, Philip of Castile (called the Fair), to Johanna, the daughter of Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon. After the death of the Spanish heirs to the throne, this marriage would bring Spain, Sardinia, Sicily, and the kingdom of Naples under the control of the Habsburg dynasty, not to mention their enormous colonies brought by the discovery of the New World (see map 2).

After a number of unsuccessful attempts to acquire the Hungarian throne (in 1463, 1491, and 1506), it was ultimately the marriage contract signed in Vienna in the summer of 1515 that laid the foundation for what would be realized in 1521–1522. On this occasion, Archduke Ferdinand married Anna of Jagiello, daughter of Hungarian king Władysław (Vladislav) II, while Władysław’s son Louis would marry Maximilian’s granddaughter, Mary of Habsburg. So, after the death of Louis II in the Battle of Mohács in 1526, Ferdinand could submit his demand for the Hungarian throne. Hungarian custom decreed that the throne could be granted only by an election, however, which eventually took place on December 16, 1526, in Pozsony. His ascension to the throne was finally established by a legally fully binding coronation ceremony in Székesfehérvár on November 3, 1527. The road to this point was a long one, as we detail in a separate chapter (part 1, chap. 3).

Map 2. Europe, circa 1520.

Although it did not affect the course of events, it is worth noting that if Maximilian of Habsburg had acquired the Hungarian throne in 1490/91 or in 1506, the history of early modern Hungary would probably have developed very differently—that is, much more beneficially. For in this instance a Habsburg Monarchy centered on Buda—as had very briefly existed under the rule of Albert of Habsburg in 1437–1439—might have come into being. But at the end of 1526, it was only amid the greatest of difficulties that Archduke Ferdinand set about the task of establishing order in Hungary while also having to deal with serious problems in his Austrian territories. That the Kingdom of Hungary did not all fall victim to the Ottoman conquest, by which it was distinctly imperiled, was due in part to errors made by the sultan’s military high command and in part to Central Europe’s difficult but ultimately successful cooperation.

Note

1. Josip Žontar, “Michael Černović, Geheimagent Ferdinands I. und Maximilians II., und seine Berichterstattung,” Mitteilungen des Österreichischen Staatsarchivs 24 (1971): 210.

Fig. 3. Sultan Süleyman the Magnificent (1520–1566). Engraving by Agostino Veneziano, 1535 (Hungarian National Museum, Budapest).

2

ROADS FROM ISTANBUL TO VIENNA

The Ottomans in Hungary

THE OTTOMANS USED THE SAME TECHNIQUES OF CONQUEST against Hungary as they had employed in Asia Minor and in the Balkans in general. In line with this strategy, their first step was to largely occupy the Serbian and Bosnian buffer states that had previously acted as a defense for Hungary, which they accomplished by the 1460s. Next, they weakened Hungary’s border defenses with constant incursions into southern Hungary and into the Croatian and Slavonian territories, fully quashing these defenses in the years after 1521. While it may well have been the domestic state of affairs in and the political leadership of his empire that forced the young Süleyman (see fig. 3) to attack Hungary again in 1526, the Battle of Mohács was a resounding defeat for the army of the Kingdom of Hungary. Despite this significant victory, the sultan was only briefly able to occupy the Hungarian capital, Buda, and at the end of 1526, he left occupying forces only in the Syrmium region between the Drava and Sava Rivers (see map 3). For his main objective was to occupy not a region but the whole of Hungary!

One movement in Hungarian and international military historiography—one not adequately aware of international interdependencies—holds that the sultan wished not to conquer Hungary but rather to turn it into a vassal state merely with a sultan’s promise, as he had rationally concluded that it was beyond the operational radius of his army;¹ recent research work into Ottoman studies h...