19

CHAP. XXVII.] WAR BETWEEN THE EMPEROR AND TURKS. the practice of the Venetians, who in treating with the Porte had learned from experience that it was necessary to assume an air of dignity. Nevertheless, the advantages of trade, the interests of policy, and above all a common hatred of the Pope and the King of Spain, soon cemented the alliance between England and the Turks; though Harburn in vain tried to persuade them to attack the Spanish coasts at the time of the Armada.

Edward Burton was an able successor of Harburn as English ambassador to the Porte, and till his death, in 1598, very much increased the influence of England in Turkey. He found a powerful friend in Seadeddin, the celebrated Turkish historian, minister, and general, whom during the Hungarian war he accompanied on the expedition against Erlau in 1596. The counsels of England now began to have weight even in the Divan. After the accession of Henry IV. to the throne of France, a rivalry had ensued between him and Elizabeth for the precedence of their flags in the Levant, in which Burton gradually prevailed; and at length the English flag instead of the French became the covering ensign of foreign vessels in that quarter. Henry IV. resumed the traditional policy of France to break the power of Spain with the assistance of the Osmanlis; but he could never obtain from them any effectual help. His abjuration of Protestantism filled the Porte with suspicion ; and after the peace of Vervins he no longer wanted its aid. Henry, however, always maintained an honourable and dignified attitude towards the Sultan; he became the special guardian of the rights and liberties of the Christians in the East, as Francis I. had been before him; and he procured the restoration of the privileges of the monks of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem.

Of the Turkish relations at this period, however, the most important were those with Austria and Hungary. The truce concluded between Austria and Selim II. had been frequently renewed; yet the border warfare grew every year more bloody, and the relations with the Porte daily more precarious. In 1592, the Grand-Vizier Sinan Pasha was highly offended by an intercepted letter of Kreckwitz the Imperial ambassador, in which the Vizier was denounced as the cause of the misunderstanding which had so long prevailed. While he was in this temper an event occurred which afforded a pretence to declare open war. Hassan, the Turkish Governor of Bosnia, having, in June, 1593, crossed the Culpa with 30,000 men, was defeated near Sissek with great slaughter and the loss of all his baggage and guns by only 5,000 Germans and Hungarians. Amurath could now no longer resist

20

PROGRESS OF THE WAR.

[CHAP. XXVII. the counsels of his Vizier and the importunities of Hassan, and of two Sultanas who had lost their sons at Sissek, to wipe out this disgrace to his arms. War was declared against the Emperor at Constantinople, and Kreckwitz and his suite were thrown into prison. Sinan Pasha left Constantinople with an army in August, 1593, amid the tricks and howlings of dervishes, carrying with him Kreckwitz in chains, who died upon the march. Crossing the Drave at Essek and passing Stuhlweissenburg, Sinan appeared before Veszprém, which surrendered October 13th. On the other hand, after the Turkish army had retired into winter quarters, the Imperialists gained a signal victory over the Pasha of Buda, November 23rd, which struck the Turks with consternation. During the winter the Archduke Matthias, who commanded the Imperial troops in the northern part of Hungary, received considerable reinforcements, and laid siege in the spring of 1594 to Gran, which, however, he was obliged to abandon. The Archduke Maximilian was not more successful in the south, while Sinan, after taking Tata and Raab, was repulsed at Komorn.

The ensuing campaign seemed to open under better auspices for the Emperor. The Diet, assembled at Ratisbon in 1594, had voted Rodolph large succours of men and money. His hereditary dominions, as well as Bohemia and Hungary, came forward with assistance; from other parts of Europe he received promises which were not fulfilled. But what principally alarmed the Sultan was the revolt from him of the three tributary provinces of Moldavia, Wallachia, and Transylvania, the Voyvodes of which, after either slaying or driving out the Turks, entered into an alliance with the Emperor. In Transylvania the young Prince Sigismund himself, influenced by the Jesuits and the Catholic party, was for Austria, while the greater part of the Protestants preferred the Turks for their masters; and, as since the breaking out of open war it became necessary that the province should declare for one side or the other, a coup d'état was resolved on. At a Diet held at Klausenburg, in August, 1594, some of the principal leaders of the Protestant party were seized and put to death, and a treaty was entered into with Rodolph, which was ratified at Prague, January 28th, 1595, and confirmed by the Hungarian Diet. The chief conditions were, mutual aid against the Turks, and the reversion of Transylvania to Austria in case Sigismund died without male heirs. The Jesuits now returned into the land, and ruled the weak-minded Sigismund more absolutely than ever. He even thought of entering a convent, and proceeded to Prague to entreat

CHAP. XXVII.]

DEATH OF AMURATH III.

21

the Emperor to procure him a cardinal's hat. Rodolph, however, dissuaded him from these projects, and prevailed on him to return into Transylvania. The indifferent success of the campaign of 1594, and above all the revolt of the three provinces, filled Amurath with consternation, and, for the first time, he sent for the holy standard from Damascus, the palladium of the faithful in their contests with the infidels. Death, however, released him from his anxieties. Amurath III. died January 16th, 1595, and was succeeded by his son, Mahomet III. The death of the Sultan was concealed, as usual, till Mahomet could arrive from his government of Magnesia. He was the last heir of the Turkish throne who enjoyed before his accession an independent government; in future all the Sultan's children were educated exclusively in the Seraglio. The funeral of Amurath was immediately followed by the murder of nineteen of his still living sons, and of seven pregnant female slaves. The Janissaries had to be conciliated with a donative of 660,000 ducats, and it was also necessary to pacify a revolt of the discontented sipahis.

In spite of the holy standard, the campaign of 1595 was highly unfavourable to the Turks. Sinan, in attempting to gain possession of Wallachia, was driven back with great slaughter by Prince Michael the Voyvode. The Turkish arms were not more fortunate in Hungary. The Imperialists had now received some of the German contingents, the Pope and other Italian Princes had forwarded contributions in money, and a more able general, Count Mansfeld, who had been despatched from the Netherlands by Philip II., commanded the forces of Rodolph. In September, Mansfeld took the important town of Gran. Shortly after Vissegrad and Waitzen also yielded to the Imperialists, and the Turks lost several places on the Danube. So great was the alarm at Constantinople that prayers were offered up in the mosques for the success of the arms of the faithful, a step never resorted to except in cases of the utmost danger; and the unwarlike Mahomet III. felt himself compelled to revive the spirits of his troops by heading them in person. His departure was delayed by the death of his Grand-Vizier Sinan; but in April, 1596, he commenced with great pomp his expedition against Erlau, accompanied by his newly-appointed Grand-Vizier Ibrahim Pasha, and by Seadeddin, who occupied a conspicuous place in the council of war. The Imperialists did not attempt to arrest his march, which was directed by Belgrade, Peterwardein, and Szegedin on Erlau. A week sufficed for the capture of Erlau, when, in spite of the

22

DEATH OF MAHOMET III.

[CHAP. XXVII. capitulation, the garrison of 5,000 men was cut down by the Janissaries. The Archduke Maximilian, and Sigismund, Prince of Transylvania, now hastened with their forces to recover Erlau, and in October they met the Turks on the plain of Keresztes, where a bloody battle was fought which lasted three days. Victory seemed at first to favour the Christians. Emboldened by their success, they ventured, on the third day (October 26th), to attack the Turkish camp; but they were repulsed with great loss, and, being seized with a panic, took to a disorderly flight, in which 50,000 men are said to have been killed, and 100 guns and the military chest were captured by the Turks. Maximilian, who was one of the first to fly, escaped to Kaschau, and Sigismund with his forces retreated through Tokay into Transylvania. Mahomet then marched back to Constantinople, which he entered in triumph. This signal defeat occasioned the greatest alarm and anxiety at Vienna, and, indeed, throughout Europe.1

The Sultan, however, did not derive that advantage from his success which might have been expected. In the campaign of 1597 nothing decisive was achieved, while that of 1598 was highly adverse to the Turkish arms: Raab, Tata, Veszprem, Tschambock, besides several fortresses, were taken by the Imperialists, and the operations of the Turkish Seraskier Saturdschi were so unfortunate as to cost him his dismissal and his life. Both sides were now exhausted, and eager to conclude a peace if satisfactory terms could be obtained. In 1599 the Grand-Vizier, Ibrahim Pasha, who commanded the Turkish forces in Hungary, made proposals to the Imperial general, Nicholas Palfy; but nothing was effected: the demands on both sides were too high, and the war was continued six years longer. We shall not, however, enter into the details of a struggle which was feebly carried on with varying success, and which gave birth to no events of decisive importance. Even the death of Mahomet III., December 22nd, 1603, had little effect on the war, except that it served still further to exhaust the resources of the Porte by the payment of the accustomed donative to the Janissaries. Mahomet was quietly succeeded by his son Achmet I., then hardly fourteen years of age. The renewal of the war between the Sultan and the Shah of Persia in 1603 tended still further to dispose the Porte to close the struggle in Hungary; and the negotiations were facilitated by a revolution in Transylvania.

The weak and simple-minded Sigismund Bathory was per

'Katona, t. xxvii. p. 324 sqq.

CHAP. XXVII.] STEPHEN BOCSKAI KING OF HUNGARY.

23

suaded in 1597 by the Jesuits, as well as by his wife-Maria Christina, daughter of Charles, Duke of Styria-who wanted to get rid of him, to cede Transylvania to Rodolph II., in exchange for the Silesian principalities of Oppeln and Ratibor, and a large pension. In the spring of 1598 Sigismund proceeded into Silesia, where he soon found that he had been deceived in the bargain which he had made; and before the end of August he returned to Klausenburg at the invitation of Stephen Bocskai, a Hungarian noble, and one of the leaders of the liberal and Protestant party in that country. A counter-revolution now took place. The Austrian commissaries who had been sent to take possession of Transylvania were seized and imprisoned; Sigismund took a new oath to the States that he would make no innovations in religion, and the Jesuits were again sent into banishment. But they soon recovered their influence. Sigismund was induced to relinquish his authority to his fanatical kinsman, Cardinal Andrew Bathory, and retired into Poland to live in a private station. At the same

time his wife entered a convent at Hall in Tyrol, where she passed twenty-two years, the remainder of her existence. Cardinal Andrew Bathory having been recognized by the States as Prince of Transylvania, in 1599, the Emperor Rodolph commissioned his general, Basta, as well as Michael, Voyvode of Wallachia, to overthrow him, and the Cardinal was soon after killed by Michael's troops. Sigismund now regained for a short time possession of Transylvania, but in 1602 was once more compelled to abdicate, and never again appeared on the political scene. About eight years afterwards, having incurred the suspicion of the Emperor, he was summoned to Prague, where he soon after died in his fortyfirst year.

Stephen Bocskai now set up pretensions of his own, not only to the Principality of Transylvania, but even to the Crown of Hungary. In June, 1605, he entered into an alliance with the Grand-Vizier Lala Mohammed, commander of the Turkish army in Hungary, and assisted him in the campaign of that year, in which Gran, Vissegrad, Veszprém, and other places were taken by their united forces. Bocskai had already been invested with Transylvania, and on November 11th, Lala Mohammed solemnly crowned him King of Hungary on the field of Rakosch, presenting him at the same time with a Turkish sword and colours, in token that he was the Sultan's vassal. It would seem, however, that Bocskai had only been set up as a man of straw by the Turks, in order to obtain better conditions in the treaty of peace which