1672 to 1680.
The suppression of the dangerous conspiracy above described—however
on many grounds we may sympathise with its authors—can hardly be
considered in itself other than as an event favourable to the
interests of Christian Europe. Unfortunately, however, the Austrian
Government, not satisfied with the severity exercised on the leading
conspirators, wreaked its impolitic and unjustifiable revenge upon the
kingdom of Hungary at large. It was treated as a conquered country.
The Protestant churches were closed; the preachers who declined to
subscribe to conditions incompatible with the exercise of their
functions were arrested, banished, and in some instances condemned
to the galleys. Resistance and civil war ensued, more fertile in
atrocities even than war with the Turk. The adherents of either party,
as usual in cases of intestine strife, adopted popular designations
long remembered for the misfortunes with which they were associated.
The national partisans were called Kuruzzen, probably a corruption
of Kreuzer, or cross-bearer; and the German lanzknecht was modified
into the term Labanz. Each impaled, or flayed, or roasted the other on
every opportunity. The Kuruzzen not unfrequently passed the Austrian
frontier, reviving, wherever they appeared, recollections of the
atrocities of the Sackman. The name to this day is coupled with that
of the Turks in Lower Austria. Then, as at subsequent periods, the
insurgents received aid and encouragement from France, and in 1679
they were even joined by a force levied in Poland, and officered by
Frenchmen. The young Tekeli also came forward to wreak his vengeance
upon Austria. He defeated the Imperialists in several encounters, and
even led his forces, joined by hordes of Tartar cavalry, to the walls
of Neustadt, over the March field, and far into Moravia. A pestilence
which broke out in this year could hardly persuade man to resign to
the powers of nature the task of decimating his species; and it was
not till the mortality of disease had reached an awful pitch that
the spirit of mutual destruction came to a pause. In 1681 a diet was
convened at Œdenburg with views of reconciliation, and attended by
the Emperor in person. A palatine was elected, old privileges and
institutions, the power of the Ban, and the frontier militia were
revived, the licence of arbitrary taxation restrained, a general
amnesty conceded, and the laws of the empire re-established, under
which religious freedom was to be enjoyed by the professors of the
Helvetic or Augsburg forms of Protestantism. The disruption, however,
had gone too far to allow of a speedy and solid reunion of parties.
The spirit of ambition and revenge in the bosom of Tekeli was not to
be appeased even by the concession of his marriage with the widow
of Rakoczy, which conveyed into his hands the important fortress
of Munkacs. The deputies of the Austrian Government also betrayed
unfortunate and unreasonable indications of a lurking tendency to
revengeful measures. The Hungarians, on the other hand, considered
merely as their due the concessions obtained from the Emperor. At last
the parties agreed so far as to determine upon sending an embassy to
Constantinople, with the purpose of obtaining a prolongation of the
twenty years’ truce, which was about to expire. Count Albert Caprara
was the envoy selected. He left Vienna in February, 1682, with a large
suite and rich presents, and instructions to spare no pains for the
avoidance of a Turkish war. The utter fruitlessness of his mission
was apparent to him from the date of his arrival at Constantinople.
He found the war party in that city, with the Vizier Kara Mustapha at
its head, eager to avail themselves of the distractions of Hungary,
which Tekeli’s emissaries could hardly exaggerate in their reports.
Troops were sent before his face to the assistance of the rebels,
and the conditions of peace demanded by the Porte were such as to
extinguish all hope of an accommodation. An annual tribute of 50,000
dollars was demanded in the first instance, the surrender of the
territory between the Theiss and the Waag to the Turks, and of several
places of strength to Tekeli. The latter was also to be recognized
as Prince of Upper Hungary, and of equal rank with the Prince of
Transylvania. Finally, the restitution of all the confiscated estates
of the conspirators was insisted upon. Troops poured in from Asia and
Egypt to support these pretensions, and swell the European forces
collecting under the eye of the ambassador; and the demands of the
Turks rose with the tidings they now received of the progress of the
arms of Tekeli, till at last they claimed the fortresses of Raab,
Komorn, and Szathmar, and an indemnification for their war expenses
of six million dollars. The ambassador saw the futility of further
attempts at negotiation. His firm but temperate reply to the Vizier
Kara Mustapha procured him the treatment of a prisoner of state. His
couriers were detained, and he was reduced to despatch the tidings of
Turkish insolence and preparation by secret messengers, and by the way
of Venice to Vienna. He himself was compelled to accompany the Turkish
army of invasion on its march. There was but too much ground for the
Turkish confidence. The undefended condition of the Austrian frontier,
the general inadequacy of the military preparations of that power,
were known and appreciated at Constantinople; but it also happened
that three Arabian astrologers had predicted the reduction of Vienna,
the fall of the West Romish Empire, and moreover the further advance
of the armies of the faithful to Rome and to the Rhine. Even without
respect to such prophecies as these, the moment was propitious for
reducing to entire subjection the long disputed kingdom of Hungary;
and the influence of Kara Mustapha, eager for war, prevailed against
the serious opposition of the Ulema, of the mother Sultana, Validè,
and even against the inclination of the unwarlike Sultan Mohammed
himself. The Vizier, while he dazzled the latter with splendid visions
of ulterior conquest, was influenced in secret by ambition on his
own account. He destined for himself the plunder of Vienna, and he
considered his own advancement to the throne of Hungary, at least
as a tributary to the Porte, a reasonable and attainable reward for
his anticipated success as leader of the army of the faithful. His
influence with the Sultan, exerted to the utmost, gained the ascendancy
over that of the Sultana. He contrived to win over the chief of his
spiritual opponents. The soldiery, including that formidable body
the Janissaries, were naturally of the faction which promised them
plunder and blood. The strong party which appealed by various methods
against the injustice of the war was silenced by harsh measures; and
by the autumn of 1682 the army was in motion under the immediate
command of the Vizier, and accompanied by the Mufti and the principal
dignitaries of the empire. It was halted, and encamped for the winter,
at Adrianople, to refresh the contingents which had marched from
the more distant Asiatic provinces, and to prepare for effective
operations in the spring. Here also it was joined by the Sultan, the
pomp and expenditure of whose progress, and especially the hundred
carriages devoted to the female portion of his retinue, moved the
soldiery to rough comparisons with the practice of Murad IV., who took
the field with one wife and two pages. The army had to contend with
those autumnal rains which more than once had impeded under Soliman
the progress of similar expeditions. The superstition of the people
interpreted these incidents of climate into omens of failure; but the
Vizier, though his own tent was swept away by an inundation which, on
the first night after the troops were halted, ravaged the camp, was
unshaken in his purpose, and the horse-tails continued planted before
the royal residence in the direction of Hungary. The tedium of winter
quarters was relieved by a royal chase, for which 30,000 peasants were
collected to drive the game. The result, if the beaters themselves are
not reckoned, was small—one wild boar, six roes, and thirty hares—but a
much larger number of the beaters perished from exhaustion. Where the
Sultan met with their corpses he observed that they had probably spoken
ill of him, and had met with their reward—a safe and satisfactory
assumption. In the following spring, while the army was mustered in
presence of the Sultan, a still more violent storm occurred, which
among other exploits of its fury carried off the turban from the head
of the sovereign. Undeterred by this omen, the Sultan accompanied the
march of his army as far as Belgrade, where on the 12th May he received
the ambassadors of Tekeli. Here, however, he also received intelligence
of an event which, could his Arabian soothsayers have predicted its
results, might still have made him pause in the prosecution of his
purpose. This was no less than the signature of an alliance between
the Emperor and John Sobieski, king of Poland. On the following day
he committed the green standard of the Prophet, and with it the chief
command, to the Vizier, who undertook the further conduct of the
campaign uncontrolled by the presence of a master who had not the taste
of his earlier ancestors for the fatigues of the march or the dangers
of the field. The strength of the regular force with which he took the
field is known with accuracy from the muster-roll which was found in
his tent in the lines at Vienna. We thus find the total strength of the
regular troops amounting to 275,000 men. The attendants on baggage,
commissariat, camels, horses, &c., were never numbered, and would be
difficult to calculate. If we add the force which afterwards joined the
Turks under Tekeli, including 12,000 Tartars, 13,000 Janissaries, and
2000 Spahis, and amounting in all to 60,000 fighting men, we cannot
estimate the numbers which poured into Hungary at less than 400,000.
The approach of the Turkish army, following upon his own successes,
excited the pride of Tekeli to the utmost. He assumed the title of Duke
of Hungary, and threatened with banishment and even with death all
who should fail to appear at a Diet which he summoned to assemble at
Kaschau. He struck coins, now become rare, with his own likeness, and
the legend, “Emericus Comes Tekly in Kaesmarki, Dux Ungariæ,” and on
the obverse a naked sword with the words “Pro Deo et Patriâ.” Several
French officers and engineers served in his forces, in pursuance of
the unworthy policy of Louis XIV., whose jealousy of the House of
Hapsburg rejected no means, however disgraceful, and no ally, however
discreditable; and overlooked all the evil consequences to Christendom
of the success of the schemes he thus supported. The last proposals
for peace conveyed from the Austrian court to Tekeli, by the Baron
Sapomara, were haughtily rejected. At Essek, where he was received with
royal honours by the Vizier, he accepted at the hands of the latter his
investiture as Prince of the kingdom of Hungary, which he acknowledged
subject to the Porte. With all his pomp, and after all his exploits, he
was but what J. Zapolya had been before him, a scourge in the hands of
Providence to a miserable country, a tool and catspaw to the Sultan and
the Sultan’s slaves.