The Struggle over Hungary: Plans for a Bethlen-Habsburg Alliance

In August 1622, Bethlen sent emissaries both to the Porte, to discuss a new Hungarian campaign, and to Frederick, the ex-king of the Czechs, to explore the possibility joint action. Then he turned to the Hungarians: in February 1623, he convoked the estates of the seven counties.

{2-83.} At the Porte, which was once again riven by a power struggle, he obtained a promise of support. Frederick, for his part, was quickly seduced by the promise of victory. On the other hand, the feudal estates in royal Hungary kept their distance. The representatives from the seven counties, assembled at Kassa, insisted on the validity of the laws they had passed at Sopron; they had no grievance against the annulment of Bethlen's grants of property, and thus no wish to take up arms in reprisal. Although Bethlen was not able to mobilize the Hungarians, he refused to abort a plan that had drawn international attention. On 14 August 1623, he set out from Kolozsvár.

Bethlen made another attempt to win support from the seven counties, but their assembly on 10 September produced disappointment: 'Although it would be in their interest, they would not join me', he observed bitterly.[54]54. Sz 1868, p. 234. Even György Rákóczi rallied to his side only after the end of the grape harvest. Of the aristocrats beyond the seven counties, only Gáspár Illésházy sided with Bethlen, and he kept urging the latter to halt the campaign. As for Szaniszló Thurzó, although he would quarrel over personal matters with Miklós Esterházy and harass Péter Pázmány with petty complaints, he formed a firm alliance with them to urge firm measures against Bethlen.

At first, when Bethlen pressed into Hungary, Vienna tried to initiate negotiations. Only when the talks were suspended did the imperial forces, led by the elderly General Montenegro, begin to move. For some six weeks, Bethlen's army forged ahead; then, in late October 1623, it found itself surrounded at the Moravian town of Hodonin. On 21 November, an armistice was concluded. Bethlen exploited his military successes to retain control over the conquered Hungarian territories, including the mining towns, for a period of ten months.

These gains did not give Bethlen a sound base from which to pursue a new war, for he could arouse little support in Hungary. The {2-84.} few who showed up at the meeting of the diet on November 19 presumably came from the ranks of his sympathizers, yet they called for the restoration of peace. After preliminary discussions in December 1623, formal negotiations were inaugurated the following February 1624. On 2 April 1624, the prince signed what became known as the Second Peace Treaty of Vienna — a reference not to Bocskai's movement but simply to the site of the negotiations. The terms closely followed those of the Nikolsburg agreement.

Bethlen had erred in launching this second campaign. Although the circumstances that compelled him to sue for peace could not have been foreseen, the most important negative factors were evident from the start, for the political situation in Hungary had not altered since Nikolsburg.

However, at the time of Bethlen's third campaign, the circumstances were more favorable. For one thing, he was now part of powerful alliance. Although the second expedition brought no tangible gains, it made western rulers take note of Bethlen. He had already impressed the French mediators, who, in 1620, had expected the Porte's chosen satrap to be some sort of barbarian. Their positive assessment foreshadowed a growing western interest in the prince.

Still, concrete political developments owed less to this subjective factor than to the fact that new war coalitions were being formed in western Europe, and that Bethlen was their only potential ally in the east. The coalitions, which arose in reaction against the gains made by the empire in the German lands, encompassed France, England, Denmark, and Holland. The first feelers came in early 1625, when the allied countries' ambassadors to the Porte inquired jointly about Bethlen's foreign policy intentions. That spring, the French sent an envoy to Transylvania while England and Denmark made contact through Frederick of the Palatinate. At the time, Bethlen was seeking friends in the German empire. In spring {2-85.} 1625, a few years after the death of his first wife, he asked to marry the daughter of the prince-elector of Brandenburg; the wedding was celebrated a year later at Kassa.

Bethlen thus adhered to an alliance network that had originally been formed around the Palatinate's Frederick, and which, so far, had failed to assist him against the emperor. However, in spring 1625, change was in the air. The king of Sweden, Gustavus Adolphus, joined the circle of allies while England's new king, Charles I, enjoyed a favorable reputation and seemed intent on pursuing a more active foreign policy.

In the spring of 1625, much of Europe appeared to be joining forces against the overweening power of the two Habsburg emperors. England and Holland managed to overcome their commercial rivalry to form an alliance along with Denmark. On the other hand, a contest for hegemony over the Baltic region had gone on for close to a hundred years between Sweden and Denmark, and Gustavus Adolphus did not join the Anglo–Dutch–Danish alliance. And France momentarily remained uncommitted: Cardinal Richelieu, Europe's most talented politician, exploited all opportunities to pursue France's exclusive interests.

The several political approaches aiming to weaken the Habsburgs' power in the German lands came to focus on Bethlen. Perhaps nowhere did the European monarchs' envoys confer as much as in Constantinople, where they joined forces to manipulate the relationship between Bethlen and the Porte in favor of a new military campaign. Their task was comparatively easy, for the party that backed Bethlen's policies was momentarily in the saddle. By December 1625, when steps were taken to formally link the prince to the Anglo–Dutch–Danish alliance, Bethlen had become a prominent actor in the international politics of Europe, and one who enjoyed multilateral support.

Bethlen's first move in aid of his allies came in August 1626, when he went into battle to avenge a heavy defeat inflicted on the {2-86.} Protestant powers' military commander, Count Karl Mansfeld. The entire campaign was to follow this pattern, one that ran counter to Bethlen' interests: he aided others instead of obtaining help for his own cause in Hungary. Thanks to his participation, the Thirty Years' War spilled over into Hungary for a few months. When Mansfeld fled to Hungary, and army led by the most successful imperial general, Count Albrecht Wallenstein, followed in hot pursuit. Even in the absence of a major pitched battle, the foreign armies wrought immense destruction.

The politics of Hungary had little effect on Bethlen's third campaign, although the prince would grumble about the Hungarians' reluctance to participate. They were not even represented at the peace conference; the prince complained that 'against our wish, the orders all headed home, and there was no one left to talk to'. Bethlen explained that he was driven to seek peace by the weakness of his allies and, perhaps in greater measure, by the 'tedious lack of enthusiasm and timorousness' of the feudal orders.[55]55. Bethlen Gábor kiadatlan politikai levelei, pp. 426-27. He was obviously exaggerating, for the outcome of the campaign was decided not by Hungarians but by the western powers' professional military commanders.

The peace treaty, signed on December 20 at Pozsony, was yet another reformulation of the Nikolsburg terms. Although it had no immediate consequences, it did forestall even greater damage by allowing Bethlen to abandon his allies' sinking ship. He pragmatically accommodated the charge that he had broken his word. There was indignation in Europe's capitals at his disloyalty: at Pozsony, he had concluded a separate peace with Ferdinand II. His action did preserve Hungary from the devastation wrought in the German principalities by the imperial armies, which at the end of 1626 launched a successful offensive that stretched over three years.

Bethlen drew much blame for having dragged the country into this perilous situation. Yet the failure of his enterprise was not preordained: he had been allied with the empire's most powerful enemies, {2-87.} and, what is perhaps more important, Europe was in such a state of flux that its political leaders entertained the possibility of radical changes.

Through his alliance with the western powers, Bethlen came into contact with historic figures and new political phenomena. James, the father of Charles I, had been king of both Scotland and England, in succession to his mother, Mary Stuart, and to Elizabeth I, who had the latter murdered. Henri IV, the father of Louis XIII, had led the Huguenots before a sensational conversion to Catholicism that allowed him to become king of France until he was assassinated. The forefather of Gustavus Adolphus had waged a successful struggle against Denmark to win Sweden's independence. And although the Habsburgs' brutal suppression of the nearby Czechs served as a cautionary example, Bethlen and his contemporaries were deeply impressed — and inspired — by the political example of Holland, which through hard struggle had obtained its independence from the Spanish Habsburgs.

Hungary's political elite was not prepared to follow the lead of the Dutch and wage a protracted war for an independent, national kingdom. Maybe it was their passivity that induced Bethlen to try a different approach, negotiation. Bethlen's tactic can only be understood in the context of the political mores of his times: he proposed to marry one of Ferdinand II's daughters.

His emissaries broached the matter on several occasions between 1623 and 1625, and Ferdinand II's representatives sought the advice of his Spanish relatives and of the Pope. The question was of far-reaching importance, for Bethlen linked the proposed marriage to an international political strategy. If the proposal was accepted, he, as the king's son-in-law and prince of Transylvania, would seek the governorship of royal Hungary; and once he was assured of the protection of his father-in-law and the latter's allies, he would turn against the Turks. He assured Vienna that no one understood the workings of the Porte better than he did. If they followed {2-88.} his counsel, Hungary could be freed of the Turks within four to five years. After his death, the children of his marriage to the archduchess would inherit the Hungarian governorship together with the Transylvanian principality; while if he died without issue, Transylvania would devolve on Ferdinand II and his successors.

The king's entourage pondered the matter at length. The Spanish relatives urged them to weigh the pros and cons carefully; and since the scheme might entail Bethlen's conversion to Catholicism, the Pope was not opposed. Yet if the Hungarian nobility had considered Gabriel Bethlen too low-born to be their ruler, how could the emperor accept him as a son-in-law? Moreover, Bethlen was in his forties, old enough to be the father of the thirteen-year-old girl whose hand he was seeking. If Vienna rejected the proposal, it was not for these subjective reasons; after all, more than one odd couple had been united for reasons of state. The basic reason was that such a link with Bethlen did not clearly serve the emperor's interests. Hungary's politicians, for their part, did their best to dissuade Ferdinand II from accepting Bethlen's proposition.

There was one aspect of Bethlen's scheme that did arouse interest: his apparent readiness to ally himself with the west against the Porte. The long-dismissed possibility of expelling the Turks gained new life in Hungary. In 1627 and 1628, Archbishop Péter Pázmány and the new palatine, Miklós Esterházy, sent out feelers to Bethlen about joint military action against the Turks. But the moment had passed, for the prince was no longer interested in Hungarian scenarios. He was understandably disappointed by the failure of his three military campaigns and of his marriage and alliance scheme; he may also have been inhibited by the growing preponderance of the Habsburgs. For Hungary's politicians, Ferdinand II's successes within the empire brought the promise that after repelling his western enemies, the emperor would be able to prevail over the eastern enemy as well. But Bethlen now saw little profit in allying himself with an all-powerful emperor.

{2-89.} When a definitive victory appeared to be within the reach of Ferdinand II, Bethlen's attention — and that of the Habsburgs' western enemies — turned to Gustavus Adolphus. Sweden's gifted and energetic king had limited his involvement in the Thirty Years' War to the exercise of diplomacy, but the Habsburgs' foes all hoped that he would intervene militarily. The politically astute Bethlen calculated that a move by Gustavus Adolphus against Ferdinand II would not only change the balance of power in the west but also open up new political options. He could, in alliance with the Swedish king, intervene in Poland, and if Gustavus Adolphus's army then turned against the German parts of the empire, he, Bethlen, might be left as the defender of Swedish and other anti-Habsburg interests in eastern Europe. As Poland's king, he could exercise a decisive influence over the reconfiguration of relations in the region around Transylvania.

From 1627 onwards, Bethlen would actively pursue his goal of obtaining the Polish crown. He nurtured contacts with Polish politicians; then, in mid-1628, he sounded out Russia's Czar Mikhail — by way of diplomats at Constantinople — on the prospects of an alliance against Poland. Bethlen's scheme would never get beyond the stage of diplomatic consultations. For years, he had been plagued by fainting spells, fever, and gout, common ills that reduced the life expectancy of military leaders in the 17th century. Bethlen also suffered from circulatory problems. He tried a variety of cures, consulted the best physicians, but to no avail; by the spring of 1629, he could barely ingest food. In October, he travelled from Gyulafehérvár to Várad, where he discussed with György Rákóczi the tasks that would await his successors. The return journey drained Bethlen's last reserves of energy; he died on the morrow of his arrival, at 10 a.m. on Thursday, 15 November 1629.