1539 to 1566.
In 1539, Zapolya, advanced in age, but anxious to bequeath his powers
of mischief to a lineal descendant, contracted a marriage with Isabella
of Poland. His wishes were gratified in the following year by the
birth of a son; an event which he himself survived only twenty-four
days. The ambitious mother, setting at defiance the terms of the
treaty of Grosswaradin, asserted the claim of her child to the throne
of Hungary, and invoked the protection of the Sultan. The secrecy
with which the treaty of Grosswaradin had been concluded between
Ferdinand and Zapolya had excited the deep indignation of the Sultan;
and though, as might be supposed, fully determined to prevent its
fulfilment in favour of Ferdinand, he was little inclined to allow
the widow and race of Zapolya to profit by its infraction. In June,
1541, he for the ninth time took the field in person; and in August
he appeared before Pesth, from which a besieging army of Ferdinand
had lately been repulsed with loss. On the 29th August, the fifteenth
anniversary of the battle of Mohacs, the infant Zapolya was brought
into his camp, and Pesth admitted a Turkish garrison. Much negotiation
passed with the widowed queen; presents and civil speeches abounded
on both sides; and finally she received, and counted probably at its
real value, the solemn assurance of the Sultan that the capital should
be restored to her son on the attainment of his majority. Meanwhile
the young Zapolya was acknowledged as Wayvode of Transylvania; but a
purely Turkish administration was organised and placed in authority
over the whole extent of that portion of the kingdom of Hungary which
had been under the real or nominal sovereignty of Zapolya. In a small
part of it the House of Austria had all along maintained itself; nor
did that power submit to the summary appropriation of the remainder
by the enemy of Christendom. For many a year, and through many a
reign, Hungary continued the field of a struggle of race and religion,
which the temporary exhaustion of either or both parties could but
occasionally interrupt, and in which, during the lifetime of Ferdinand,
the Turks had generally the advantage. In 1547, an armistice of five
years was purchased by humiliating concessions on the part of Austria.
_Punctually_ at the expiration of the period hostilities were resumed,
and continued without cessation or decisive result to the death of
Ferdinand in 1564, and into the reign of his successor Maximilian
II. In the prosecution of the struggle, this wise sovereign reaped
advantage from the system of toleration which he extended to the
powerful Protestant party in Hungary.
The Hungarian campaign of 1566 was distinguished by the famous
siege of the small fortress of Szigeth, and the self-immolation of
its defender, the Hungarian Leonidas, Nicholas, Count of Zriny. In
early life he had distinguished himself at the siege of Vienna; and
having pursued a successful career in arms, held under the present
Emperor the chief command on the right bank of the Danube. Soliman
had undertaken the siege of Erlau; and the Pacha of Bosnia was on
the march with reinforcements, when he was attacked near Siklos by
Zriny, completely defeated, and slain. The Sultan, furious at this
disaster, raised the siege of Erlau and marched with 100,000 men upon
Zriny, who, with scarcely 2500, flung himself into Szigeth, with the
resolution never to surrender it; a resolution to which his followers
cheerfully bound themselves by an oath. To the utmost exertion of his
vast military means of attack, Soliman added not only the seduction
of brilliant promises, but the more cogent threat of putting to death
the son of Zriny, who had fallen into his hands. All was in vain.
The Sultan’s letter was used by Zriny as wadding for his own musket;
and for seventeen days the town held out against repeated assaults.
The enfeebled garrison were then driven to the lower castle, and at
last to the upper one. No hope remained of repelling another general
assault, for which the Turkish preparations were carried forward with
the utmost vigour under the eye of the Sultan, who, however, was not
destined to witness their issue. On the 6th of September he was found
dead in his tent, having thus closed, at the age of seventy-six, by
a tranquil and natural death, a reign of forty-five years, which for
activity and variety of military enterprise, for expenditure of human
life, and for the diffusion of the miseries of warfare, unmitigated by
the conventional usages and inventions of later times, could scarcely
find its parallel. His decease afforded no respite to the besieged.
The event was kept a rigid secret from the soldiery by the Vizier
Ibrahim, who adopted the Oriental precaution of putting to death the
physicians in attendance. Zriny did not wait for the final assault. On
the 8th September the Turks were pressing forward along a narrow bridge
to the castle, when the gate was suddenly flung open, a large mortar
loaded with broken iron was discharged into their ranks, according to
their own historians killing 600 of them, and close upon its discharge
Zriny and his faithful band sallied forth to die. His resolution was
evinced by some characteristic preparations. From four swords he chose
a favourite weapon which he had worn in the first campaigns of his
youth, and, determined not to fall alive into the hands of his enemies,
he wore no defensive armour. He fastened to his person the keys of the
castle and a purse of a hundred ducats, carefully counted and selected,
of the coinage of Hungary. “The man who lays me out,” he said, “shall
not complain that he found nothing upon me. When I am dead, let him
who may take the keys and the ducats. No Turk shall point at me while
alive with his finger.” The banner of the Empire was borne before him
by Laurence Juranitsch. In this guise, followed by his 600 remaining
comrades, he rushed upon the enemy, and by two musket-shots through
the body and an arrow in the head obtained the release he sought. With
some of his followers the instinct of self-preservation prevailed so
far that they retired from the massacre which followed into the castle,
where some few were captured alive. It is said also that some were
spared in the conflict by the Janissaries, who, admiring their courage,
placed their own caps on their heads for the purpose of saving them.
Three Pachas, 7000 Janissaries, and the scarcely credible number of
28,000 other soldiers, are said to have perished before this place.
The Vizier Ibrahim’s life was saved by one of Zriny’s household, who
was taken in the castle, which the Vizier had entered with his troops.
This man, to the Vizier’s inquiry after treasure, replied that it
had been long expended, but that 3000 lbs. of powder were then under
their feet, to which a slow match had been attached. The Vizier and
his mounted officers had just time to escape, but 3000 Turks perished
in the explosion which shortly followed. Zriny’s head was sent to the
Emperor; his body was honourably buried, as some accounts state, by the
hands of a Turk who had been his prisoner, and well treated by him.
Szigeth never recovered from its destruction, and some inconsiderable
ruins alone mark the scene of Zriny’s glory.