Suleiman The Magnificent 1520 1566 (13 page)

8 Iorga, II, 405; Hammer, V, 102.

* Vrbunden und Actenstucke zur Geschichte der Verhaltnisse zwischen Osterreich) Ungarn und der Pforte Im XVI. und XVIL Jahrhunderte, ed. Anton von Gevay, n pts. in 3 vols. (Vienna, 1838-42), Vol. I, pt. i, pp. ii-ii.

5 Franz Bernhard, Ritter von Bucholtz, Geschichte der Regierung, Fer~ dinand des Ersten, 9 vols. (Vienna, 1831-38), II, 395-425.

was not only in the field but also already the master of the greater part of it. Even during the lifetime of King Louis, John Zapolya, the powerful voivode of Transylvania, had been accused of aspiring to the crown, and now the opportunity for which he had longed seemed at last to be within his grasp. He had been the leader of the party opposed to the Court. Most of his chief opponents had perished at Mohacs; he was now left in command of the only considerable force of Hungarian troops that still remained in the field. Above all, he could count on the deep national dislike of Germans, and could appeal to a law which had been passed in 1505 excluding all foreigners from the Hungarian throne. Against Zapolya Ferdinand had the able assistance of his sister, the widowed queen, who refused to preserve her own position by accepting his rival's proposal of marriage. He also had the support of the only official who had the legal right to summon the Diet, the Palatine Stephen Bathori, one of the few survivors of Mohacs, and an old enemy of the voivode. All this, however, counted for little against the strength of the Transylvanian opposition. A Diet met at Stuhiweis-senburg. The Palatine was not present. Zapolya was elected king and crowned on November 10; an envoy sent to protest was nearly murdered. It was in vain that in the following month a rival Diet elected Ferdinand. 6 Zapolya entered Buda in triumph. England and Venice recognized him, France seemed eager to support him, and the Pope gave him words of encouragement. He was master of nine-tenths of the kingdom; Frangipani brought him the allegiance of Slavonia, and a vigorous thrust at that moment would unquestionably have driven Ferdinand out of the country.

A year later, however, the whole situation had been reversed; for Zapolya was not the man to take advantage

e Bucholtz, III, 178-184.

of the position he had won. He was persuaded by the king of Poland to accept a six months' truce with his adversary, from which he had everything to lose and nothing to gain. All negotiations, of course, failed. The voivode disappointed his adherents by his failure to make any effective military preparations, while Ferdinand, who had plenty of the traditional Hapsburg virtue of tenacity, collected a small but efficient body of regular soldiers. When his commanders took the field, they had a bare n,ooo men, but they captured one town after another with surprising ease. Nowhere was any real resistance offered. Frangipani was killed by a stray shot, and the Hungarian nobles flocked to make their peace with the conqueror. Zapolya's forces were worsted in a battle near Tokay on September 26, 1527. He fled into Transylvania, but even there the people turned against him. Once more defeated by the Austrian commanders, he finally took refuge in Poland. On October 7, Ferdinand, in his turn, was chosen king of Hungary at Buda, and was crowned at Stuhlweissenburg on November 3 7 By the end of the year he was undisputed master of the greater part of the kingdom. The old Hapsburg dream of a great Central European state, created by the union of Austria, Bohemia, and Hungary, seemed about to be realized.

Whether Ferdinand would be able to maintain himself in his newly acquired territories was another question, for the time was ripe for the arrival of un troisieme larron. To such desperate straits had the voivode been reduced that he appealed for aid to the enemy of Christendom. Hieronymus Laski, a Polish nobleman of high rank, who had already had diplomatic experience at the Porte in the service of his own sovereign, volunteered to try to obtain it for him, and arrived at Constantinople on December 22*

7 Buchohz, III, 187-212.

8 Heinrich Kretschmayr, "Ludovico Gritti," in Archiv fur osterreichische GesMchte, vol. LXXXffl, i (1896), p. 14.

Laski's first interviews with the lesser vizirs were not encouraging.^The Sultan's ministers, like their master, were riding ^the high horse, and took pains to let the envoy know it. "You have come," he was told, "too late; if you wished to be pleasing in our eyes, you should have come before the coronation of your king. How did your lord dare enter Buda, a place where the horse-hoofs of our Emperor have trod? ... It is our law that where once the head of his horse has entered, that place by perpetual title is to be regarded as belonging to our master. . . , Brother, you have come as if from a servant; if you have not brought tribute, there is no use in talking any longer." 9 Clearly another means of approach must be found, and Laski obtained it by bribing a brilliant Venetian named Ludovico Gritti. 10 The latter was the bastard son of a former bailo at the Porte who had been made Doge of Venice in 1523. Born in Constantinople in 1480, Ludovico had been taken back by his father to Venice in 1496, and had been given an excellent education in the Italy of the High Renaissance. Since his illegitimate birth debarred him from employment by the Venetian government, he returned in 1507 to his native city, where he speedily made a great name for himself in the world of commerce. At the time of Suleiman's accession he occupied a unique position. He had a magnificent establishment, and gave sumptuous entertainments; he was one of the few whom distinguished visitors at Constantinople "had got to see." He also kept a foot in the Venetian as well as in the Turkish world, and was a principal means of communication between them. Most important of all, he had won the friendship and confidence of the Grand Vizir, and Laski knew it. Laski also knew that the Venetians had been much alarmed by the most recent extension of the power of the House of Hapsburg as a result of the battle of

9 Hammer, V, 104-105.

10 On Gritti see Kretschmayr's monograph (as above).

Pavia, and that Gritti, like the rest of his compatriots, was eager to put an end to it. He approached the magnate at the psychological moment. In return for an annual pension of three or four thousand ducats and the income of a rich Hungarian bishopric, Gritti obtained for Laski an interview with Ibrahim on December zS. 11

From that moment onward LaskFs prospects grew rapidly brighter. Ibrahim, indeed, did not spare him certain unpleasant truths. "We killed King Louis," he said. "We occupied his royal residence: we ate in it; we slept in it. That kingdom is ours. How foolish are they who say that kings are kings because of their crowns. Not gold nor gems command; but iron—the sword—by which obedience is assured." But in the end, Laski's own diplomatic skill and Gritti's support turned the scale in favor of the envoy. The friendship of Zapolya might well be advantageous to the Turks, and they realized it; and so it was finally arranged that Suleiman should concede the title of king of Hungary to the voivode. From the Ottoman point or view he was simply bestowing on Zapolya the lands that he himself had conquered in 1526. All demand for tribute was dropped. The Sultan granted Laski two audiences, in which he showed himself most gracious, and when the envoy departed (February 29, 1528) Gritti was left in charge of the voivode's interests at Constantinople. 12

News of Laski's success soon reached Ferdinand, who realized at once that he could not hope to retain his recent conquests from Zapolya if the latter should be supported by the Turks. There was only one thing to do: namely, to send a Hapsburg embassy to Suleiman to treat for peace or at least a truce. In May, 1528, after some difficulty in obtaining a safe-conduct, John Hoberdanacz and Sigis-mund Weichselberger presented themselves at the Porte.

11 lorga, II, 406; Kretschmayr, pp. 14-15, 15 Kretschmayr, pp. 15-16.

Though they came in fact as suppliants, they had apparently been instructed to speak and act as If they were masters of the situation, and they irritated Ibrahim profoundly by demanding that the Turks at once give back all the places they had occupied in Hungary. "I am surprised/ 7 was the scornful retort of the Grand Vizir, "that your master has not also asked for Constantinople!" Thenceforth the cause of the envoys was hopeless. Gritti did everything possible to hamper them, and the Sultan grew more and more unfriendly. In a final audience, he menacingly declared, "Your lord has not yet experienced our friendship and our proximity, but he shall feel them soon. Tell your lord plainly that I myself with all my power am coming to give back to him in person the strong places he has demanded of me. Warn him, therefore, to have everything ready to receive me well." It was the most hostile of dismissals; and a little later, when the envoys were preparing to depart, they were cast into prison on the advice of Gritti, who assured Ibrahim that they had only come as spies. It was several months before they regained their liberty, and they were so frequently delayed on their journey homeward that even in January, 1529, Kong Ferdinand was ignorant of the result of their

mission. 18

By midsummer of 1528, then, it must have been reasonably clear that Suleiman soon intended to launch a third great expedition up the Danube, this time as the ally, or perhaps better the protector, of Zapolya, against Ferdinand and the power of the House of Hapsburg. There is no reason to be surprised that he delayed his departure until the following year. The season was already too late to embark on an enterprise whose ultimate goal, Vienna, was so remote. Moreover the Sultan fully realized that in

18 Bucholtz, ffl, 229-243; Kretschmayr, p. 17; Gevay, vol. I, pt. 2, pp. 36-52.

challenging Ferdinand he was also indirectly bidding defiance to the Emperor Charles V. On May 10, 1529, however, he left Constantinople, at the head of a much larger army than that of 1526. The Christian chroniclers talk vaguely of 250,000 to 300,000, though it is doubtful if there were more than 75,000 fighting men, and it seems clear that four-fifths of them were cavalry. Ibrahim was again seraskier, and the artillery is given, as before, at 300 guns. The rains, which in the preceding campaign had been a nuisance, were this year so continuous and torrential that they seriously affected the outcome of the campaign. Suleiman did not reach Vienna till a month later than he expected, and that month may well have made just the difference between failure and success. The Sultan's comments on the bad weather in his diary are constant and bitter. 14 At Mohacs, on August 18, he had been joined by Zapolya, whose prospects had speedily revived when it became known that he had won the favor of Suleiman. 15 He brought with him 6,000 men. The Sultan received him with great pomp, and presented him with four robes of honor and three horses caparisoned with gold. But Suleiman, in his diary, takes great pains to point out that he regarded him merely as a vassal. He explains that the gifts were only bestowed in recognition of the voivode's homage; and he emphasizes the fact that Zapolya twice kissed his hand. 16 At Buda a feeble resistance was offered by a few hundred Austrian mercenaries; but they soon surrendered after a promise of good treatment, which was shamefully violated by the Janissaries. Zapolya was permitted to make a royal entrance there on September 14; but he was obviously dominated and controlled by the Turkish soldiers and officials who escorted him, and Lu-

14 Suleiman, Tagebuch, ed. and tr. W. F. A. Behrnauer (Vienna, 1858), pp. 15-18.

15 Hammer, V, 112-116. ™Tagebuch, pp. 16-17 (Aug. 18-19).

dovico Gritti was left behind as the Sultan's representative. 17 Gran, Dotis, Komorn, and Raab either surrendered or were evacuated. Pressburg, which alone seemed likely to offer serious resistance, was by-passed. On September 18 the akinji swarmed across the Austrian frontier, and swept like a hurricane through the open country. On the twenty-seventh the Sultan himself arrived before Vienna. 18 Two days later the investment was complete.

Ferdinand had had plenty of time to prepare, but it proved difficult to find means. His ancestral lands granted grudging subsidies, but he could do nothing without help from outside. His brother Charles was anxious to aid him, but was unable to gain peace with Francis I till August 5, too late to set free the imperial troops in Italy. Ferdinand's best hope was the princes of the Empire, then assembled at the Diet of Spires, and thither he at once repaired, to assure them that if Austria were conquered it would be Germany's turn next. But the Diet hesitated. The problem that occupied its chief attention at the time was that of the Lutherans. The Saxon Reformer had recently come out with a pamphlet, "On the War against the Turks," in which he sought to correct any misconstruction of his earlier words on the subject by exhorting all princes to stand by the Emperor for the defence of Christendom. The tract was somewhat halfhearted: one could not help feeling that Luther still regarded Rome as a more serious menace than the Ottoman; 19 nevertheless it ultimately served to help persuade Catholics and Protestants to unite

17 Hammer, V, 116-118.

18 Tagebuchy p. 23.

19 Luther's views on the Turks may be readily consulted in the collection Geist aus Luther's Schriften, 4 vols. (Darmstadt, 1828-31), "Turken," IV, 486-490, nos. 9262-9275. His analysis of the nature and extent of the Turkish peril is excellent. His ideas may well be compared with those of Erasmus as expressed in his Conwltatio de Bella Turds inferendo (Basileae, 1530). Neither had any doubt that the Christians were endangered more by their own sins and corruptions than by the arms of the Ottomans.

in voting a Reichshilfe or quota for the defence of the Empire. 20 The collection of the troops took many weeks. Had not the Sultan been delayed by the rains, they could scarcely have arrived on time; but three days before Suleiman reached Vienna, sufficient reinforcements had appeared on the scene to raise the numbers of the garrison from about 12,000 to nearly 20,000 men. 21 The greater part of them moreover were professional soldiers, veterans who loved war. Count Nicholas von Salm, who had already fought the Turks, and had recently distinguished himself at the battle of Pavia, was in chief command. Ferdinand was at Prague during the crucial weeks of the campaign.