Suleiman The Magnificent 1520 1566 (33 page)

18 Bechet, pp. 172-189; Hammer, V, 333~337> 539~54°*

Danube and the Theiss was placed under the control of Turkish officers, 10 and other measures were taken, farther south and west, to widen, at the expense of his Christian neighbors, the comparatively narrow strip which he had hitherto held, and which up to the present had not extended far to either side of the Turkish line of march, One sanjak bey after another was set up, as the process went on, until their number finally reached twenty-five; but a considerable amount of local autonomy was left, in accordance with Turkish custom, to the Magyars. The two races and the two religions kept for the most part to themselves, and we are told that if a Christian ventured, even in jest, to don a turban, he was forced to go over to Islam. 20 Such were the foundations of the Turkish Hungary of the next century and a half.

The obvious intention of the Ottomans to establish themselves at Buda caused the Austrians to tremble for the safety of Vienna, and, as usual, ambassadors were despatched to try to stay the progress of the invader. Their gifts included a great clock, which, besides telling the hours, the days, and the months, also showed the movements of the sun, moon, and planets. It was carried in by twelve men, accompanied by a clockmaker to show how to wind it, while a book gave a full explanation of its mechanism. 21 Suleiman, who was versed in astronomy and cosmography, received it with evident pleasure. All this, however, had no influence on the result of the negotiations. The envoys had come with the same old demand: the whole of Hungary for their master, who would be willing in return to make an annual payment of 100,000 ducats. When they had kissed the Sultan's hand and begun their speech, he interrupted it with the exclamation,

19 Bucholtz, V, 160.

20 Lavisse and Rambaud, IV, 624.

21 Hammer, V, 341; Bechet, p. 191.

"What do they say? What do they want?" and then, turning to his vizirs, "If they have nothing more to say, let them go." "Do yon think," said Rustem Pasha, who was charged with the negotiations on the Turkish side, "that the Padishah is out of his mind, that he should give away what he has won for the third time with his sword?" Between the proposals of the ambassadors and the demands of the vizir, who insisted that Ferdinand should yield all the places in Hungary he had taken, no agreement was possible, and after a few days, during which Rustem took care that they should be suitably impressed with the irresistible power of the Turkish arms, the envoys were permitted to return to Vienna. In view of the Ottoman tradition in regard to the treatment of representatives of hostile powers, they were fortunate to have escaped imprisonment. 22

The failure of these negotiations made Ferdinand think of a fresh appeal to arms, the more so as his military prospects seemed brighter than ever before. The Empire was much alarmed by the establishment of the Turks at Buda, and in 1542 the Diet of Spires voted him twice the usual contingent. Some of the Hungarian nobles also, who had hitherto adhered to the House of Zapolya, now rallied to his standard. Even Martinuzzi began negotiations for a treaty with him, according to which John Sigismund, in return for a money indemnity, was to abandon all claim to the Hungarian throne; he was careful, however, not to sign it till he should see what Ferdinand's forces could do. But Ferdinand was as unfortunate as ever on the battlefield. In August, 1542, his motley army of 50,000 men laid siege to Pesth, but six weeks later it was obliged to retreat ingloriously, and in the ensuing winter his forces

22 Bucholtz, V, 160-161; Hammer, V, 343-344; cf. autobiography of the ambassador SIgmund, Freiherr von Herberstein, in Fontes Rerum Austria-carum Scriptores, I (1855), 331-336.

melted away. 23 His futile aggression, moreover, had the effect of bringing Suleiman into the field once more. In 1543 the Sultan reappeared with a great army and took and garrisoned Gran, Stuhlweissenburg, and other fortresses, thereby considerably enlarging his own dominions, while Ferdinand remained immobile at Presburg with a force of 40,000 men. When Suleiman retired, Ferdinand's troops refused to pursue. In the following year the war was continued by the pashas on the frontier, with the Turks almost invariably victorious. 24

Obviously the only way for Ferdinand to preserve the scant portion of Western Hungary that still remained to him was once more to sue for peace. His hopes of military support were now far less bright than in 1542. The Hungarian nobles were disgusted by his failures; his brother was now intent on defeating the Lutherans in the Empire, and wrote that he could send him no aid. The result was the despatch of a new embassy to Constantinople in the end of the year 1544. Its most permanently important member was to be a Bolognese named Giovanni Maria Malvezzi, who had originally accompanied it in the character of secretary. In 1545 it was joined at the Porte by Gerard Veltwyck, the ambassador of Charles V; for the moment, at least, the heads of both branches of the House of Hapsburg were convinced that it was essential to come to terms with the Turk. 25 The ensuing negotiations lasted for over two years, but as the months rolled by the attitude of the Sultan became steadily less and less intransigent, because of the increasing imminence of his second campaign against Persia. On the Mediterranean, as we have already seen, Suleiman would yield nothing; he preferred to leave everything there in

23 Utiesenovic, pp. 59-61.

24 Utiesenovic, pp. 61-62.

25 R. B. M, HI, 340, with note 2.

the hands of Barbarossa and Dragut, who could not possibly be of any use to him in his campaign against the Shah. But his Janissaries on the Danube were another matter, and on June 19, 1547, ^ e granted Ferdinand a peace, or rather a truce for five years, on the basis of uti possi-detis. The Emperor, the Pope, the republic of Venice, and France were also included in the arrangement. Save for the corsairs, there was apparently to be a general suspension of hostilities between the Cross and the Crescent. In return for it Ferdinand agreed to pay the Sultan the sum of 30,000 ducats a year, part of which was the equivalent of the estates of certain Hungarian nobles who had recently deserted the Turks and gone over to the House of Hapsburg, while the rest of it was termed "a pension" by the Austrians, but was more justifiably regarded by the Turks as a tribute. 28 There could be no doubt that the Sultan had come out on top. In a very real sense the peace of 1547 marks the climax of his victories on the Danube,

The truce of 1547 was not suffered to run its full five-years' course, for the machinations of Martinuzzi obliged the Turks to intervene in Hungary again before its term had expired. This wily prelate now professed to be convinced that it was essential, at all costs, to get the Ottomans out of the land, and that the only hope of doing so was to bring about a permanent union of Christian Austrians and Hungarians. On the other hand, he continued to cherish personal ambitions of his own, and he was far too practical a politician to embark on any line of conduct which did not promise assured success. Isabella was very jealous of the power he wielded in her dominions, and constantly complained of him to Suleiman, who is said to have demanded in 1550 that either the traitor himself

26 Hammer, V, 394-398, 554-555-

or his head be sent to Constantinople. 27 But Martinuzzi was more than a match for all his foes. By force, by threats, and by cajolery, he persuaded Isabella to exchange the portion of Hungary that still remained to her for certain territories in Silesia, and to install Ferdinand in her place; it was a masterpiece of statecraft, and was formally confirmed in August, 1551, by the Diet of Kolosvar. 28 Ferdinand, for the moment, was of course delighted, and rewarded Martinuzzi by getting him a cardinal's hat; * Suleiman, equally of course, was furious when he heard the news, and vented his rage on the Austrian ambassador Malvezzi, who was imprisoned in the Black Tower of the Castle of Anatolia. 30 This measure, and the mustering of fresh Turkish troops for a new invasion in the following year, convinced Martinuzzi that he could not possibly hope to carry through the program which he had laid out; he was also deeply discouraged by the dilatoriness of Ferdinand, who in turn began to suspect him of designs to secure Hungary for himself. Martinuzzi was now persuaded that at all costs Suleiman must be placated, at least for the time being. When the imperialist generals found him privately endeavoring to mediate between their master and the Turks, they represented him to Ferdinand as a traitor, and asked permission to kill him. He was murdered on December 18, i55i. 31 After a searching examination of the facts of the case, which lasted till February, 1555, Pope Julius III finally pronounced Ferdinand guiltless of all blame. 82 The whole episode is typical of the

27 Hammer, VI, 18, Andrew Bathori to Thomas Nadasdy, September 30, 1550, in Gyorgy Pray, Epistolae Procerum Regni Hungariae, 3 vols. (Posonii, 1806), II, 208.

28 Utiesenovic, pp. 69-97, an< i *& Urkundenbuch, pp. 36-39; Osterreichhche Staatsvertrage. Furstentum Siebenburgen (zptf-rypo), pp. 114-136.

29 Utiesenovic, pp. 100-101, and Urkundenbuch, j>p. 41-42. ^Hammer, VI, 21-22. 8X Utiesenovic, pp, 64-137. 82 Pastor, History of the Popes, XIII, 172, note 3.

kaleidoscopic shifts of the political scene which are the dominant feature of tripartite Hungary.

In the following year the Turks came on again. This time the Sultan was not with them, but under the leadership of the second vizir, Achmet Pasha, they were at first uniformly successful. In February they won a great victory at Szegedin; in April Weissprim fell, and in July Temesvar. The rest of the Banat soon followed, and the territories in Ottoman control were thereby greatly increased. In the autumn, however, the Turks were repulsed at Erlau to the northeast of Buda. The heroism of its defenders was beyond all praise, and after a siege of thirty-eight days the Ottomans withdrew. 33 This check, and still more the necessities of the impending campaign against Persia, made the Sultan willing to grant a six-months' truce, which the Christian envoys to the Porte endeavored to have converted into a five-years' peace; but the representatives of Ferdinand and of Queen Isabella did their best to thwart each other's efforts, and little was accomplished. 34 Meantime the war of raids continued with unabated fury in Hungary. Success was more nearly evenly divided than before; particularly was the Sultan mortified by the failure of his forces in 1556 to take Sziget, between the Danube and the Drave—a minor fortress, though difficult of access because of the then adjacent swamps. 35 Suleiman never forgot this reverse, and vowed that when the moment came he would avenge it.

From that time onward there is little of importance to record about Hungarian affairs down to the great Sultan's final invasion and death. A peace, on the usual terms, was arranged by Busbecq between Austria and the Porte in 1561, but as important differences were found to exist

38 Hammer, VI, 35-52.

^lorga, IH, 44-49.

45 Hammer, VI, 105-115.

between its Latin and Turkish versions, it availed nothing to check the incessant border warfare. 36 The diplomatic thrust and parry between the Hapsburgs and the House of Zapolya continued unabated, though the dramatis per-sonae had changed. Queen Isabella died in September, 1559, leaving John Sigismund in full control; in 1564 Ferdinand was succeeded by his son Maximilian IL—It is interesting, incidentally, to note how much the existing political confusion was increased by the rapid advance of the Reformed faith in the Hungary of this period. Maximilian was the least intolerant of all the Hapsburg Emperors, and John Sigismund "was the patron and protector of Lutherans, Calvinists, and even of Socinians, all of whose numbers increased apace. Not only did the Ottomans exercise a powerful influence on the course of the Protestant Reformation. They also derived great profit from it.

36 Busbecq, II, appendix, 279-281.

c** XI 1

Malta and Szsget

Inr e have already observed that the death of Khaireddin Barbarossa in 1546 marks the end of an epoch in Suleiman's Mediterranean wars. None of his successors combined all his qualities. There were plenty of efficient corsairs left, but none of them seemed to the Sultan to be quite the man to be safely intrusted with the task of representing him in North Africa. That office was finally conferred on an Egyptian named Salah Reis, who remained for the most part at Algiers and effectively upheld the Ottoman power in the interior and on the adjacent coasts. 1 But in the meantime the campaign against the Christians on the sea was vigorously continued by independent corsairs.

Of these the most active was Dragut, whose four years as a galley-slave in the service of Doria made him burn for revenge on his Christian captors. 2 After being ransomed by Barbarossa in 1544, he devoted all his energies to the collection of a fleet which should enable him to attain his end. He carried neither the banner of the Sultan nor of any of the North African states, but flew a red and white flag with a blue crescent on it, emblematic of his resolve to fight for his own hand. 3 At first he was not very successful. With the idea of gaining a base from which he could ravage the coasts of Sicily and Naples, he

1 Mercier, Histoire de FAfrique Septentrionale, in, 73. 2 R. B. M., Ill, 329-330. 8 R. B. M., IE, 341.

managed to possess himself of Monastir and El Mehedia, on the North African coast to the southeast of Tunis; but Doria soon ousted him from them, and early in 1551 he sought refuge in the island of Gerba. Thither Doria pursued him, and blockaded the mouth of the narrow inlet in which his fleet had taken refuge; the Christians were convinced that they had their enemy bottled up. But Dra-gut was more than equal to the occasion. Distracting Doria's attention by a heavy fire from the shore, he had all his ships dragged overland on greased ways—like Mohammed II before Constantinople in 145 3—to the other side of the island, whence he got away without his opponents being any the wiser. Suleiman took note of the performance; the next time that Dragut appeared, he bore an official title as commander of the Sultan's galleys, and was supported by another strong fleet under "Sinan the Jew.'* This time his objective was the strongholds of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem. At Malta he was repulsed, but he defeated his foes on the neighboring island of Gozzo; then, turning back to the North African coast, he took Tripoli (August 16, 1551) where the Order had maintained a subsidiary establishment since 1528. El Mehedia would doubtless have shared the same fate, had not its garrison been permitted, three years later, to abandon and dismantle it. 4