1566 to 1664.
Soliman was succeeded on the throne by Selim II., son of a favourite
slave, Roxalana. The male issue of the other inmates of the royal
harem, whether wives or concubines, had been remorselessly sacrificed
to secure the undisputed succession of one who proved the first of
his race to set an example of degeneracy from the qualities which had
made his predecessors the terror of Christendom. Under the rule of
Soliman the power and reputation of the Porte had reached a point of
elevation from which it rapidly declined under his sensual and inactive
successor, and to which it has never re-ascended. The structure,
indeed, raised by the warrior founders of the Ottoman dynasty,
survived, without suffering material injury or diminution, too long for
the peace and safety of Europe; but this permanence was due less to its
own solidity than to the jealousies and dissensions of the Christian
powers, political and religious, but more especially the latter.
Within two years of Selim’s accession, in 1568, he concluded with
the Emperor Maximilian an armistice on the basis of their respective
occupation of territory, by which the Turk remained in possession
of Lower Hungary. In 1575 this compact was renewed for eight years.
The younger Zapolya had previously agreed that after his decease the
government of Transylvania should devolve by election upon a Wayvode,
a subject of the crown of Hungary; and on his death, in 1571, Steven
von Bathory had been accordingly elected. This prince subsequently
attained the crown of Poland, and in 1589 his cousin, Sigismund, made
over Transylvania to Hungary. In 1590, in the reign of Rodolph II., son
and successor to Maximilian, war again broke out between Austria and
Turkey, and was prosecuted with much bitterness, but with alternations
of success which led to no important results. In 1595 the Turks,
after two years of discomfiture, recovered themselves so far as to
approach the Austrian frontier in force, and seriously to threaten
Vienna. The landsturm of that city was called out, and the defences
were strengthened in all haste; but the force of Turkish invasion spent
itself upon Upper Hungary. Several strong places in that district
having been surrendered, as was alleged, by treason and cowardice,
Vienna became during several years the scene of bloody executions.
Thus, in 1595, Ferdinand Count Hardegg, and several of his officers,
expiated on the scaffold the surrender of Raab. In the same year an
engineer, Francis Diano, was executed on a charge of having undertaken
to blow up the Rothenthurm bastion on the appearance of a Turkish
force. Raab, after three years and a half possession by the Turks, was
retaken by the Austrian commanders, Rodolph Schwarzenberg and Nicholas
Palfy, an important service which the Emperor Rodolph acknowledged by
the erection of columnar monuments, and by the addition of a raven to
the escutcheon of the Schwarzenbergs. One of the columns remains to
this day in the neighbourhood of Mödling. In 1600 a mutinous project
for the surrender of the fortress Papa was detected and suppressed
by summary execution, and fifteen of the leaders were reserved for a
more terrible example at Vienna, twelve of whom were quartered and
three impaled. It would be tedious and disgusting to pursue the list
of similar atrocities perpetrated both at Vienna and in the frontier
fortresses. The Austrian authorities would appear to have considered
that the devices of Oriental cruelty were the only remedies or
preventives for treason and cowardice, and to have overlooked the fact
that many of the misdemeanours so savagely punished were attributable
to their own maladministration, to the inactivity of the Emperor,
and to the maltreatment and non-payment of the soldiery. In 1609
the Archduke Mathias assumed the practical exercise of sovereignty,
and on his formal succession to the imperial throne on the death of
Rodolph in 1612, he transferred the imperial residence from Prague to
Vienna. Under his administration better measures were applied to the
existing evils than those which had, by their use and their failure,
disgraced the reign of Rodolph. Mathias found himself shortly after
his coronation compelled to prepare for a renewal of hostilities with
the Turks, who were now in possession of the whole of Hungary and
Transylvania, in addition to Moldavia and Wallachia. When, however,
he made application to the states of the empire, the Protestants, by
far the majority, excused themselves on the allegation that no powers
had been delegated to them to furnish aid to a Turkish war, and they
recommended forbearance and delay in dealing with the hereditary enemy
of Christendom. Mathias had no resource but to conclude an armistice
for twenty years, which the Turks, on their part, exhausted by the long
previous struggle, and no longer led by such a ruler as Soliman, were
not reluctant to accept. They retained, however, their conquests. This
truce was observed with scrupulous and unshaken fidelity by the Turks
under five feeble successors of Selim II., (Murad III., Mohammed III.,
Achmet I., Mustapha I., Osman II.) By this honourable forbearance,
practised under strong temptation of advantage from its infraction
and in resistance to the allurements of Christian powers, especially
of France, Austria during the thirty years’ war enjoyed immunity from
attack on the most assailable portion of her frontier. Even Amurath
IV., who ascended the throne in 1623, and was the first of Soliman’s
successors who showed symptoms of a warlike spirit, concluded a fresh
truce with Austria, and thus the Turks remained tranquil through the
first half of the seventeenth century. In fact, the moral energy of
their race had declined while civilization and attendant power had
progressed in Christian Europe, and no exertion could have raised
them to their former elevation. Amurath’s son and successor Ibrahim,
notorious for his vices and cruel actions, was strangled in 1648.
He was succeeded by Mohammed IV., a boy seven years of age, during
whose minority confusion reigned supreme. His grandmother and mother
contended for power, and Janissaries and Spahis fought over the
dead bodies of viziers, murdered in rapid succession for the spoil,
till they met, A. D. 1656, with a master in the energetic Mohammed
Kinperli. Under his administration internal licence was repressed by
measures of salutary severity, and when foreign war again broke out
it was conducted by him in a manner which revived the terror of the
Turkish name. This war had its origin in the troubles of Hungary and
Transylvania. The Transylvanians, on the death of their sovereign
George Rakoczy, second of that name, elected as his successor a
distinguished leader of his army, John Kemeni, who entered into an
alliance with the Emperor Leopold I. At the instigation, however,
of the Turkish Vizier, a faction of Hungarian nobles set up a rival
candidate, Michael Apafi. Kemeni was defeated and slain in the battle
of Nagy Szollos, fought against a Turkish force in 1662. Apafi seized
on the government, cancelled all the measures adopted by Kemeni, and
in an assembly of the States outlawed the adherents of Austria. He
failed, however, in all his attempts upon the places occupied by German
garrisons, and the presence of a so-called auxiliary Turkish force
was a scourge rather than a protection to the exhausted country. In
1663 Apafi was compelled to lead his forces in the train of the Vizier
Achmed Kinperli, son of Mohammed, who was marching upon Hungary with
the intention and expectation of annihilating the power of Austria.
The advance of the Turks was so rapid and unimpeded that Vienna once
more trembled at the prospect of a siege. The measures for defence,
of destruction, and repair were, as usual in the moment of danger,
commenced in haste, and prosecuted with more confusion than real
despatch.
The progress of the Turks was favoured by disputes between the civil
and military authorities of Austria, and the Vizier was thus allowed,
without opposition, to secure the open country of Transylvania, and
to reduce the important fortress of Neuhaüsel. After these successes
he marched with his main army on Raab, with the project of exciting
alarm for the safety of Styria, and then of suddenly flinging himself
upon Vienna. It was, however, the good fortune of the Emperor Leopold
to possess at this period the services of the only great commander of
the moment, Raymond, Count of Montecuculi, as general of his forces in
Hungary. On the 1st of August, 1669, this leader overthrew the Turks,
in numbers fourfold greater than his own, with the loss of 17,000 men
and all their artillery, in the memorable battle of St. Gothard. The
armistice of Basvar followed close upon this victory. Twenty years were
specified for its duration, but the civil and religious troubles of
Hungary, and the severities by which Leopold sought to suppress them,
led to its earlier infraction.