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Reflecting in summer 1686 on the consequences of the domestic and external battles, Miklós Bethlen noted that 'the damage and decay are spreading day by day'.[105] After 1687, the principality's government struggled with the impossible task of collecting taxes and providing for the military. The countless damage estimates forwarded to Vienna speak of towns and villages put to the torch, of the confiscation of thousands of livestock, of destroyed orchards, of citizens and lesser nobles driven from their homes, and of villeins beaten half to death. The merchants of Kolozsvár, the people of Marosvásárhely and Abrudbánya, the Székelys and Saxons, Hungarian and Romanian villeins all tried to defend their respective interests. Threatening imprisonment and confiscation of property, the diet demanded that landowners shoulder half of the tax burden, but enforcement was no more feasible than in the case of laws prohibiting pipe smoking and catching sparrows. Commissioners were appointed to enforce the edicts, but the public interest fell victim to the disputes between councillors and inspectors. In a country gradually shorn of its sovereignty, the authority of the central government and feudal legislature was fading away.
In the last eighteen months of his long reign, Prince Mihály Apafi fought a deepening depression by escaping to his library and his collection of elaborate clocks. On 15 April 1690, he joined the 'almighty clockmaker'. Amidst the most trying of circumstances, {2-373.} Apafi had restored central authority and developed the new guiding principle of Transylvanian politics: that the best way to safeguard the principality's statehood was not war, but the diplomatic exploitation of discord among Europe's Great Powers. He repeatedly reaffirmed his commitment to a policy of husbanding Transylvania's strength: 'I wish to serve my nation and religion [and] to follow the path of virtue.' Few of his contemporaries fully understood Apafi. Many saw only emotionalism, boastful sword-rattling, and panicky or cynical shifts in his political behaviour. There was a scarcity of experienced, intelligent, realistic politicians capable of preserving what was most valuable in Transylvania's inheritance.
With Apafi gone, the Porte proceeded to name a successor. The sultan's firman nominated not Mihály Apafi II, once endorsed by both Constantinople and Vienna, and named in the sultan's firman, but Imre Thököly. However, the Porte was no longer in a position to ensure that the latter would actually occupy the princely throne.
The unexpected military successes of the Holy League changed the balance of power among the countries confronting the Turks. The capture of Belgrade in 1688 and the advance of imperial forces into Wallachia so enhanced the preeminence of the Habsburgs that both France and Poland decided to take remedial measures. Louis XIV invaded the German principalities, while King Jan Sobieski managed, at great human and material cost, to recapture Kamenic. Both monarchs looked upon Transylvania as a base from which they could counterbalance Habsburg power in eastern Europe. The Sun King believed that Thököly should become prince of Transylvania and offered financial assistance, but opinion in Poland was divided on the issue. The pro-French faction among Polish aristocrats also preferred Thököly, but alliance obligations prevented Sobieski from negotiating with a Turkish commander. To be sure, the Porte was inclined to make peace; yet Sobieski remained mistrustful of the 'Kuruc king' (Kuruc being the {2-374.} name given to Hungarian rebels) and, probably because of the Romanian principalities, he responded in noncommittal fashion to the proposals of Thököly's envoys. Thököly was waging a military campaign in Wallachia, with mixed results, but he devoted most of his energies to diplomacy. In August 1689, he met with the voivode Constantin Brîncoveanu in the latter's tent. Both men were seeking an effective anti-Habsburg strategy, and Thököly recorded that 'in many hours of confidential discussion, we exchanged all manner of information on the Porte, Transylvania, Poland, and Vienna, and [Brîncoveanu] gave assurances of his continuing good will and friendship in omni casu.'[106] Their agreement on a confoederatio suggests that, however cautiously, the two leaders were seeking ways of escaping Turkish suzerainty as well.
Thököly made several approaches to the Habsburg court, using as an intermediary Veterani, who commanded the imperial forces in Transylvania and later pursued military operations in Wallachia. Thököly promised that, if the emperor acknowledged him prince of Transylvania, he was ready to take up arms against the Turks. However, the dynastic party at court favoured a military solution to the Transylvanian problem, and the Porte, for its part, ordered a massive counterattack. The allied commander, Louis, Marquess of Baden, was driven to retreat on the Wallachian front; recognizing the strategic importance of Transylvania, he recommended in summer 1690 that the allies concentrate on defending not only Belgrade but also the principality.
That same summer, in Transylvania, Thököly had begun to issue decrees, but the population was deeply divided over the impending change in their government. The Székelyföld was on the brink of rebellion, and there were covert preparations in other areas to help Thököly sweep away the rule of mercenary armies. The aristocrats sought shelter in Kolozsvár, the councillors sent an envoy to Vienna requesting assistance, and the feudal estates adopted a cautious posture of wait-and-see.
{2-375.} General Heisler was appointed supreme commander in Transylvania after Caraffa's transfer to the western front. He moved the bulk of his army to the entrance of the Törcsvár Pass and ordered Mihály Teleki's Transylvanian forces to follow suit. For greater security, Heisler also secured the Volkány Pass with a strong contingent under Colonel Ádám Zrínyi, who had rallied to his command. His precautions proved to be ineffective. On 21 August 1690, Thököly's force of six thousand men surprised and defeated the imperial army.
That victory in the battle of Zernyest was a remarkable military feat. Thököly had surreptitiously led his army of Hungarian, Wallachian, Turkish, and Tartar soldiers over bleak alpine paths to attack the enemy from the rear. Mihály Cserei, who was a servant to Mihály Teleki at the time, fled from the battlefield, and later recorded that 'taking a route where no man, mounted or on foot, had ever passed, [Thököly's men] crawled on all fours, with branches fixed to their horses' tails, and silently descended into the broad valleys'.[107] Many of the imperial army's senior officers fell in battle, and Heissler himself was taken prisoner. Teleki's horse stumbled, throwing its rider, and the bloody, despoiled corpse of the principality's military leader was discovered on the morrow of the battle by Thököly's men.
Thököly, for all his military experience, proved incapable of exploiting this great victory. He lacked the equipment necessary for laying a siege, and it would have been too risky to divide up his small army in an attempt to conquer all of Transylvania. He wanted to consolidate his power by relying on internal and external support. Brassó gave him a joyful welcome, the Saxons readily offered their assistance, and masses of Székelys swore allegiance to him. The three 'nations' sent delegates to a diet that was convened on 25 September at Kereszténysziget. Noting that Thököly maintained order and discipline among his troops, and judging that, on balance, Turkish suzerainty was gentler than imperial rule, the delegates {2-376.} unanimously elected him their prince. The act of appointment stressed that Thököly — with Turkish assistance — 'restored the liberties we enjoyed at the time of our gracious lord, Gabriel Bethlen, Prince of Transylvania', and he proved worthy of that illustrious predecessor.[108] He reduced the tax to an almost token 10,000 thalers and confirmed the freedom of the four recognized religions, the libera vox, the privileges of the three 'nations', and feudal rights. He also agreed share power with a council composed of representatives from the three 'nations', although, in practice, he would govern in a sovereign manner.
The diet would have preferred to start by settling Transylvania's relationship with the Porte. Thököly chose instead to concentrate on the Habsburg nexus and sent General Heissler to Vienna with an offer of compromise: if the emperor recognized him as prince of Transylvania and granted him the title of imperial prince, and if the agreement was guaranteed by Venice and Poland, he would join the battle against the Turks. The proposal revealed that Thököly had drawn some lessons from Apafi's diplomatic manoeuvring, but not enough, for it placed more emphasis on his personal interests than on those of his country.
Miklós Bethlen was more successful in exploiting the new circumstances. Vienna had just learned of the battle of Zernyest when he reached that capital. The court, already in a panic over the Turkish siege of Belgrade, was much exercised by the situation in Transylvania. Caraffa drafted a plan that ran counter to Thököly's proposal. Transylvania was a storehouse for the war effort, 'Hungary's citadel', a bastion against 'disloyal' Poland, and the key to Habsburg influence over Wallachia and Moldavia; thus it could not be given up by the Habsburg government. However, many believed that there were more sensible and purposeful solutions that the application of military power. In his memoir, Caraffa urged that instead of resorting to brute force, the Austrians should manipulate civil government so as to exacerbate social and ethnic conflicts and, {2-377.} stripping Transylvania of all constitutional autonomy, turn it into a hereditary province of the Habsburgs.
In contrast, Bethlen advocated a status in which Transylvania, though attached to the Habsburg empire, would remain self-governing with respect to the economy, culture, and local administration. Bethlen won the endorsement of the ambassadors of Brandenburg, Holland, and England for the 18-point plan that he submitted to the Kinsky and Strattmann factions at court. In the meantime, Belgrade fell, and wild rumours spread that the main imperial force had been annihilated. Eight days after the fall of Belgrade, Bethlen received a Diploma, signed by the emperor, which turned out to be almost identical to his submission. He reflected: 'It is amazing that neither Caraffa nor anyone else at court made any reference to the [Fogaras Declaration of 1688], just as if it never existed.'[109]
By the time Miklós Bethlen returned home, Thököly had withdrawn to Wallachia to avoid a clash with the superior forces of Louis of Baden, which had set off from the neighbourhood of Belgrade to subdue Transylvania. It seems that Bethlen had managed to exploit a brief and propitious interlude to extract the Diploma from Emperor Leopold. The Diploma Leopoldinum sealed a compromise between the Habsburg dynasty and Transylvania's aristocrats, and preserved Transylvania's autonomy in internal affairs. It laid down that the country had to pay a tax of 50,000 forints in peacetime, and of 400,000 forints in times of war; the emperor undertook not to increase this levy. The Habsburg government would not impose restrictions on commerce. Until the prince came of age, Transylvania would be administered by a governor who, along with other civil officials and the commander of the Transylvanian army, would have to be appointed from among members of the 'three nations' by the feudal estates and endorsed by the emperor. A fixed, small number of imperial guards would be stationed in the country, under the command of a German general who would not have the right to interfere in domestic affairs.
{2-378.} Emperor Leopold's Diploma, both in its original form, and in the slightly modified version that was ceremonially reaffirmed on 4 December 1694, provided a clearer and more favourable definition of Transylvania's status in the Habsburg empire than did the law concerning Hungary, which was enacted by the diet in 1687. In principle, at least, it provided for political autonomy in domestic affairs and the restoration of order after many years of war and anarchy. Thanks to religious freedom and access to education and culture in the mother tongue, Transylvania's national groups — Hungarians, Romanians, and Saxons — were given an opportunity for autonomous cultural development.
| The Balázsfalva Agreement and the Fogaras Declaration | 4. UNDER THE PROTECTION OF THE HABSBURG EMPEROR | The Gubernium |