Hungary and Transylvania, 1600–1660

Voivode of Wallachia, Michael had beaten Transylvania's prince in October 1599 and governed the country from Gyulafehérvár as the emperor's lieutenant. The Hungarian nobles rose against him, Basta joined them, and at Miriszló on 18 September 1600 they routed him. He went to Prague, came back with the emperor's money, helped Basta crush Sigismund Báthory at Goroszló in August 1601, and days later was killed in his camp by Basta's soldiers.

Sigismund Báthory had given up the principality more than once. With Basta's unpaid troops plundering the country, the nobles brought him back: he crossed from Moldavia with a Polish army on 24 March 1601. Michael and Basta crushed him at Goroszló on 3 August. The sultan's envoy confirmed him in October and he fought on with Ottoman and Tatar troops, but on 26 July 1602 he left Transylvania for the last time, for an estate in Bohemia.

Mózes Székely, a veteran Báthory commander, fled to Ottoman territory after the last abdication. In spring 1603 he came back with Turkish and Tatar auxiliaries, routed Basta's troops and on 8 May proclaimed himself prince, with a young Gabriel Bethlen leading his vanguard. On 17 July Radu Șerban's army stormed his camp near Brassó, and Székely was cut down as he fled.

Rudolf II, King of Hungary and Holy Roman Emperor, ran the Long Turkish War from Prague. In Transylvania he worked through two men, the Wallachian voivode Michael, who held the country in his name, and his general Giorgio Basta. When the two fell out he at first refused to see Michael in Prague; then, with the nobles calling back Sigismund Báthory, he gave him money for a new army.

Basta distrusted Michael and in September 1600 joined the rebel nobles to rout him at Miriszló. A year later the two beat Sigismund together at Goroszló, and days afterwards Basta's soldiers killed Michael. From July 1602 Basta governed alone: killings and plunder multiplied, he moved against the Protestant churches, and famine and plague followed the armies.

Georg Paradeiser commanded Kanizsa, the chief fortress of the southwestern frontier, with about a thousand men. The grand vizier's army besieged it from late August 1600, and the Duke of Mercœur's relief army could not get through. After eight weeks, on 22 October, Paradeiser handed the fortress over in return for free withdrawal. A year later he was executed for the surrender.

Archduke Ferdinand of Inner Austria, Rudolf's young cousin, was charged with defending the southern border, and the loss of Kanizsa left his Styria open to raids. In September 1601 he laid siege to it with a large imperial and papal army. The garrison held; winter closed in, and on 18 November a sortie routed his camp and took his guns. Kanizsa stayed Ottoman until 1690.

Radu Șerban took the Wallachian throne after Michael's death and, like Michael, sided with the emperor; in 1602 Basta sent him cavalry against a Tatar-backed rival. In July 1603 he crossed the mountains against Székely, joined the imperial vanguard near Brassó and on 17 July stormed Székely's camp. Basta's mercenaries returned to Transylvania. Radu Șerban would come back in 1611, against another prince.

Mehmed III, sultan since 1595, led the Ottoman side of the Long Turkish War and won at Keresztes in 1596. In 1599 he recalled Damat Ibrahim as grand vizier on condition that he campaign against Austria. He died on 22 December 1603, leaving the Hungarian war and a new war with Persia to his thirteen-year-old son, Ahmed I.

Damat Ibrahim, married to the sultan's sister, feinted toward Esztergom, wintered at Belgrade and then struck south at Kanizsa. He beat off the Duke of Mercœur's relief army and took the fortress on 22 October 1600. Kanizsa became the seat of a new Ottoman province twenty miles from Styria and a base for attacks into Habsburg lands. Ibrahim died in July 1601.

Tiryaki Hasan, a veteran frontier commander, became pasha of Kanizsa in July 1601. When Ferdinand's army came that autumn he held the fortress with a small garrison, sowing false reports among the besiegers and hiding his guns and cavalry until they counted. On 18 November his surprise sortie routed the imperial camp. He rose to higher governorships, and later stood as a father figure to Gabriel Bethlen.

With the treasury drained by a decade of war, Rudolf's government tried rich Hungarian lords for treason and confiscated their estates, and handed Protestant churches to Catholics. In spring 1604 he had an article added to the diet's decrees after it closed, confirming the old laws against Protestants and forbidding the diets to discuss religion.

Miklós Istvánffy, Rudolf's vice-palatine and a Catholic humanist historian, drafted the 1603 judgment that condemned the Lutheran magnate István Illésházy to death and the loss of his estates, a verdict historians call unlawful. It earned him the hatred of the Protestant lords. In 1606 he signed the Peace of Zsitvatorok for the emperor; his history of Hungary appeared in print in 1622.

Giacomo Belgiojoso, the emperor's captain-general at Kassa, had brought cannon into the town in January 1604 to take St Elizabeth's cathedral from the Lutherans, at Bishop Ferenc Forgách's request. That autumn he intercepted letters between Bethlen and Bocskai and sent troops against Bocskai's castles. His hajdú captains went over to the rebels, who routed one of his columns at Álmosd and beat him again near Tokaj.

Basta marched from Esztergom against the rising. On 14 November 1604 he beat Balázs Németi's hajdús and peasants at Osgyán and had Németi executed. But the hajdús held Kassa against him, Bocskai's raiders cut his supply lines, and he wintered at Eperjes. In April 1605 he fell back to Pozsony, leaving Upper Hungary to the rebels.

Rudolf's brother Archduke Matthias took the peace into his own hands. In April 1606 the archdukes declared Rudolf unfit and made Matthias head of the family. He settled with Bocskai's envoys in the Peace of Vienna of 23 June 1606, which guaranteed the estates' rights and freedom of worship, and in November made peace with the sultan at Zsitvatorok, ending a war begun in 1593.

After Székely's death Gabriel Bethlen lived among the Transylvanian exiles in Ottoman territory. In 1604, on their behalf, he wrote from Belgrade urging Stephen Bocskai to lead a rising against Rudolf and promising Ottoman support; Belgiojoso intercepted the letters. In August 1605 Bethlen married Zsuzsanna Károlyi at Szatmár, with Bocskai at the wedding.

Stephen Bocskai, Sigismund Báthory's uncle, had led Transylvania into the war on the emperor's side, yet in 1602 the Habsburgs tried him and held him in Prague for two years. Accused of treason in 1604, he hired the unpaid hajdús and won over the hajdú captains in Belgiojoso's army; on 15 October they routed an imperial column near Álmosd. He entered Kassa in November, and in 1605 the Transylvanian diet and the estates at Szerencs made him prince.

Balázs Lippai, a hajdú captain in Belgiojoso's army, was among the first to go over to Bocskai, and with Balázs Németi led the hajdús who routed Pezzen's column at Álmosd. As commander he issued fiery manifestos to the northern counties. Once the noble leadership took hold he looked dangerous: accused of secret letters to Basta, he was cut down at Kassa on 6 January 1605 on Bocskai's orders.

Balázs Németi, the other hajdú captain who changed sides, joined Lippai in a manifesto of 31 October 1604 calling the counties of Upper Hungary to arms. On 14 November he attacked Basta's army at Osgyán with hajdús and armed peasants. Basta beat him, took him prisoner and had him executed.

Bálint Drugeth of Homonna, a great magnate of Upper Hungary, took Érsekújvár for Bocskai, and in April 1605 the diet at Szerencs elected him commander-in-chief of the rising. Bocskai named him his heir in Transylvania. The Transylvanian estates later passed him over; he made his peace with the court and became judge royal in 1608, a year before his death.

István Illésházy, a Lutheran and one of the richest lords of the kingdom, had fled to Poland in 1603 and lost his castles; his nephew, the young Catholic convert Nicholas Esterházy, went with him. In summer 1605 Bocskai's chancellor persuaded him home, and he joined the rising. He led its peace party and, as chief negotiator, worked out the Peace of Vienna with Matthias, which gave him back his estates.

János Rimay, a poet and the young friend of Bálint Balassi, entered Bocskai's service in 1605 as his confidant and secretary, drafting part of his diplomatic letters. He leaned toward Illésházy's peace policy, and in 1608, on Illésházy's instructions, went to Constantinople with the embassy sent to ratify the Peace of Zsitvatorok.

Johannes Bocatius, a German-born humanist poet, ran the schools of Kassa and was its chief magistrate. In January 1604 he had gone to Prague to protest the seizure of the cathedral, but Rudolf would not receive him. He welcomed Bocskai into the town, rode with him to meet the grand vizier at Rákos, and was then sent to win over the German Protestant princes; the Duke of Brunswick arrested him and handed him to the emperor's men.

Ahmed I came to the throne at thirteen in December 1603, with the Hungarian war still running and a war with Persia beginning. Bocskai asked the Porte for help and was promised it; in April 1605 the Crimean khan was ordered to assist him. At Zsitvatorok in 1606 Ahmed's government gave up Austria's yearly tribute and accepted the emperor as the sultan's equal.

Lala Mehmed became grand vizier and commander in the west in 1604, after his predecessor died at Belgrade. He retook Pest and Vác that year, and on 4 November 1605, with Bocskai's men among his troops, captured Esztergom. A week later, on the field of Rákos, he handed Bocskai a jewelled crown. Recalled for the war against Persia, he died at Constantinople in 1606.

Bocskai spent his last year holding the settlement together. In September 1606 he jailed his chancellor, Mihály Káthay, after Illésházy accused him on the strength of a letter that was never produced. In his will he named Bálint Drugeth his heir. He died at Kassa on 29 December 1606; he had long suffered from dropsy, but his followers cried poison.

Mihály Káthay, captain of Kálló, had joined Bocskai among the first and became his chancellor, leading the radical anti-Habsburg party against Illésházy's peace party and favouring Gabriel Báthory as heir. He was still in prison when Bocskai died. On 12 January 1607 hajdús hacked him to pieces at Kassa as the prince's poisoner. Modern historians doubt the poisoning, and who ordered the killing is disputed.

Sigismund Rákóczi, an elderly lord of Upper Hungary who had served under Basta and then joined Bocskai, governed Transylvania for him. While Bálint Drugeth and Gabriel Báthory rode with Bocskai's funeral procession, the diet at Gyulafehérvár elected Rákóczi prince on 11 February 1607. He would not break with the king over the hajdús, and on 5 March 1608 he resigned in return for two great estates.

András Nagy led the hajdús when they took up arms in 1607, unpaid since Bocskai's death and fighting to have the privileges he had granted them renewed. Gabriel Báthory promised to settle their case, and on 8 February 1608 he and the hajdús agreed on a pact: land in the Partium in return for their support in taking Transylvania.

Gabriel Báthory, eighteen and one of the richest landowners in Transylvania and Royal Hungary, was elected prince on 7 March 1608; with the strongest army in the country behind him, he met no resistance. That August Matthias's commissioners recognised him, and during his reign he settled some 30,000 hajdús on land in the Partium.

Bethlen backed Báthory from the start: in January 1607 Rákóczi had him jailed for canvassing for Báthory among the Székelys. In 1608 Báthory sent him to Istanbul, and he came back in late November with the sultan's envoys and the charter confirming the election.

Matthias used the peace against his brother. In 1608 he joined the rebellious Hungarian diet and the Austrian estates at Pozsony, marched on Prague in April and in June forced Rudolf to hand him Hungary, Austria and Moravia; Rudolf kept Bohemia. On 19 November 1608 Archbishop Ferenc Forgách crowned Matthias King of Hungary at Pozsony.

Illésházy was Matthias's chief helper in taking the crown. At the coronation diet the office of palatine, empty since 1562, was filled again: on 20 November 1608 Illésházy was elected, the first Protestant to hold it, and the verdict against him was set aside. He died on 5 May 1609.

Báthory ruled with hajdú arms and ignored the Saxon towns' privileges. In December 1610 he seized Szeben, the richest Saxon town, without a fight and made it his capital; days later he invaded Wallachia and styled himself its prince. The sultan gave Wallachia to Radu Mihnea instead, and in July 1611 Radu Șerban routed Báthory near Brassó. His treaties with Matthias in 1612–1613 cost him the Porte's support.

János Imreffy, husband of the prince's aunt, had helped make Báthory prince and became his chief adviser, negotiating with Illésházy and Thurzó for the court's recognition; in 1610 he was made chancellor. In late June 1611 Báthory sent him to Brassó with two hundred horsemen, but the burghers shut the gates. He was killed in the battle outside the town on 9 July 1611.

Michael Weiss, chief magistrate of Brassó, saw Báthory as a new Nero after the seizure of Szeben. In 1611 he raised the burghers, bribed the hajdú general András Nagy to lift his siege of the town, and welcomed Radu Șerban's invasion. He then backed András Ghiczy as prince; in October 1612 Báthory destroyed his army at Földvár, and Weiss was beheaded on the field.

András Nagy stayed Báthory's hajdú general, but in 1611, sent to besiege Brassó, he took Weiss's bribe and lifted the siege, and his hajdús joined Forgách's invasion before deserting it in September. In 1612 he offered Ghiczy to kill the prince; Báthory found out and had him beheaded on 12 August 1612. The hajdús did not forget.

András Ghiczy, a hajdú leader and the prince's favourite, was sent to Istanbul in late 1611 to thank the Porte. On the way he struck a deal with the rebels at Brassó, and in Istanbul he persuaded the Porte that Báthory was going over to the Habsburgs, offering Lippa, Jenő and a higher tribute; in May 1612 the sultan named him prince. Beaten at Földvár, he was pardoned in 1613 and then helped plot Báthory's murder.

Bethlen, captain of the Székelys since 1610 and the leading voice for the Ottoman connection, fled on 12 September 1612, fearing for his life. He visited the pashas of Temesvár, Kanizsa, Buda and Belgrade, reached Edirne in February 1613 and won the sultan over; on 1 May he had the decision in writing. The diet elected him prince on 23 October 1613, and four days later hajdús killed Báthory outside Várad.

György Thurzó, a Lutheran magnate of Upper Hungary, had stayed loyal through Bocskai's rising and served as Rudolf's peace commissioner. After Illésházy's death he was elected palatine on 7 December 1609. He defended Protestant interests within the settlement, and in March 1610 called a synod at Zsolna to organise the Lutheran church.

Zsigmond Forgách, the archbishop's brother and husband of Thurzó's sister, had turned Catholic under Pázmány's influence in 1603. As captain-general of Upper Hungary he invaded Transylvania in June 1611 and besieged Szeben with Radu Șerban. Most Transylvanian nobles stayed away and his hajdús deserted; when Ottoman troops came to Báthory's aid he withdrew, and his retreating troops were cut up.

Elias Láni, a Slovak Lutheran pastor and poet, became Thurzó's court chaplain at Bicske in 1608. At the synod of Zsolna, 28–30 March 1610, called by Thurzó and Láni, the Lutherans of ten northwestern counties got their first church government: three superintendencies, with Láni elected first superintendent of his district.

Ferenc Forgách, Archbishop of Esztergom and a cardinal from 1607, led the Catholic revival in Royal Hungary. He had asked Belgiojoso to seize the Kassa cathedral, and in 1611 he held a synod at Nagyszombat that ordered seminaries and parish schools on the Tridentine model. He paid large sums toward printing Péter Pázmány's books.

Péter Pázmány, a Jesuit, preached in Upper Hungary from 1601 and brought magnates back to the Catholic Church, among them Zsigmond Forgách and Nicholas Esterházy. From 1607 he worked at Forgách's court. His Guide to Divine Truth of 1613 became the great Catholic work in Hungarian, and in 1616 he succeeded Forgách as archbishop.

Radu Șerban had made a treaty with Báthory in 1608, but in December 1610 Báthory's army crossed the snowy Carpathians and he fled to Moldavia. In June 1611 he came back with Cossack and Moldavian mercenaries, drove out the sultan's man Radu Mihnea, and with Polish hussars routed Báthory near Brassó. A Turkish and Tatar army then forced him out for good; he died in Vienna in 1620.

Radu Mihnea, the Porte's candidate, was granted Wallachia by Ahmed I in March 1611 in place of both Báthory and Radu Șerban. Ousted by Radu Șerban that June, he was restored by Ottoman and Tatar troops in September. In early September 1613 he invaded Transylvania from Wallachia to put Bethlen in Báthory's place.

Ahmed's government had confirmed Báthory in 1608, but his attack on Wallachia and his dealings with Matthias outraged the Porte, where he was called the Mad King. In 1612 the sultan first named Ghiczy prince; on 1 May 1613, after Báthory's treaty with Matthias, he decided to replace him with Bethlen.

Skender, the pasha of Kanizsa, left Istanbul with Bethlen in August 1613 at the head of the Ottoman force, while Radu Mihnea's Wallachians and the Crimean khan's Tatars invaded from the east. Skender summoned the delegates of the Three Nations, who deposed Báthory on 21 October and two days later elected Bethlen.

Bethlen ruled under the sultan's protection, and in 1615, after the Peace of Nagyszombat, Matthias recognised him. Ottoman protection had its price: in 1616 he handed the fortress of Lippa to the Turks. Ghiczy, who had arranged Báthory's murder, was arrested on his orders and executed in 1614 with his knowledge.

Zsuzsanna Károlyi had married Bethlen in 1605, in Bocskai's presence. As princess she managed their estates and stepped into treasury business, and once persuaded him to lower a ransom he had set. With him she paid for Reformed students to study at German universities. Their children died young; she died at Kolozsvár on 13 May 1622.

Simon Péchi, a Székely of humble birth who had learned Hebrew on his travels, had run the chancery as secretary after Káthay's arrest. Bethlen made him chancellor in 1613, and he led the principality's business until May 1621, when Bethlen, told that Péchi had designs on the throne, had him arrested. He was also the leading patron of the Székely Sabbatarians.

George Rákóczi, son of the former prince, had been a page at Bocskai's court with Báthory and Bethlen. Lord-lieutenant of Borsod from 1615, he married the heiress Zsuzsanna Lorántffy in April 1616 and gained the Sárospatak estate. When George Drugeth was preparing to invade Transylvania that year, Rákóczi went to Bethlen.

George Drugeth, nephew of Bocskai's commander Bálint Drugeth, had followed Bocskai until Pázmány converted him in 1610; he became the Habsburgs' candidate for Transylvania. He joined Forgách's 1611 invasion, and in 1616, with imperial backing, made his own armed attempt on the principality, which failed. In 1618 he became judge royal.

Melchior Khlesl, Bishop of Vienna and a cardinal, directed Matthias's policy as emperor. He negotiated the 1615 treaty with the Ottomans and sought a compromise between the confessional leagues. Archduke Maximilian and Ferdinand saw him as an obstacle to Ferdinand's succession, and on 20 July 1618 they arrested him and carried him off to Tyrol.

Ferdinand of Inner Austria, an uncompromising Catholic, was chosen as the childless Matthias's heir: King of Bohemia in 1617, then crowned King of Hungary on 1 July 1618. With Khlesl gone, the Habsburg court went into the Bohemian war on the hard line of Ferdinand and Archduke Maximilian.

Count Thurn, a leader of the Bohemian Protestant estates, incited the defenestration of Ferdinand's governors in Prague in May 1618 and took command of the estates' army. He helped depose Ferdinand as King of Bohemia and elect Frederick of the Palatinate. In November 1619 his army joined Bethlen's in laying siege to Vienna.

Frederick, the Calvinist Elector Palatine, accepted the Bohemian crown in August 1619, giving the revolt a king and Bethlen an ally. His reign ended on 8 November 1620, when the armies of the emperor and the Catholic League crushed the Bohemians on the White Mountain outside Prague; he fled the kingdom the next day.

Count Tilly, commanding the forces of the Catholic League, won the battle of the White Mountain together with the emperor's army under Bucquoy. Two years later, on 19 September 1622, he took Heidelberg, Frederick's capital, after an eleven-week siege.

Crowned King of Hungary in 1618, Ferdinand succeeded Matthias as emperor in August 1619, by which time Bohemia had deposed him. With Bethlen before Vienna in November, he asked his brother-in-law Sigismund III of Poland to cut Bethlen's communications. After the White Mountain his generals turned on Hungary.

Zsigmond Forgách was elected palatine on 16 May 1618. When Bethlen took Pozsony in October 1619, the palatine ceded the Holy Crown to him; Forgách made a show of siding with the prince while keeping in touch with Ferdinand, and soon went openly back to the king. He died in June 1621.

Drugeth, now judge royal, was sent by Ferdinand against Bethlen's rear. With King Sigismund's leave he hired some 8,000 irregular horsemen in Poland, mostly Cossacks, broke into Zemplén on 21 November 1619 and two days later routed George Rákóczi near Homonna. Bethlen had to break off the siege of Vienna. Drugeth fled back to Poland and died there in June 1620.

Count Bucquoy, the emperor's commander at the White Mountain, invaded Upper Hungary and forced Bethlen back as far as Kassa in the first half of 1621. On 10 July 1621 he was killed besieging Érsekújvár. The war in Hungary dragged on, and both sides turned to negotiation.

In August 1619 Bethlen invaded Royal Hungary as the Bohemians' ally. He took Pozsony in October, where the palatine surrendered the Holy Crown, and by late November his troops were in the suburbs of Vienna, besieging it with Thurn. News of the defeat at Homonna made him turn back. In August 1620 the diet at Besztercebánya deposed Ferdinand and elected Bethlen King of Hungary.

Rákóczi urged Bethlen to answer the Bohemians' call, took Kassa for him on 5 September 1619, and was elected commander of Upper Hungary on 21 September. On 23 November Drugeth's horsemen routed him at Homonna, and Bethlen blamed him as young and inexperienced. He held Pozsony against Ferdinand's army in October 1620 and stayed loyal when most lords made their peace.

Ferenc Batthyány, a Calvinist magnate of western Hungary, royal master of the horse and lord-lieutenant of Sopron, had been one of Rudolf's commissioners at Zsitvatorok. In 1620 he joined Bethlen and, as commander of the insurgents beyond the Danube, took Kőszeg. He fought on after Nikolsburg before going back to the king's side in 1622.

Imre Thurzó, son of the palatine György and lord-lieutenant of Árva, made a secret league with Rákóczi and others in 1620 to support Bethlen. He signed the alliance with Frederick of Bohemia and backed Bethlen's election at Besztercebánya, and in 1621 he led Bethlen's commissioners in the peace talks at Nikolsburg.

Sigismund III, King of Poland and Ferdinand's brother-in-law, kept the Commonwealth out of the war but answered the emperor's appeal by letting George Drugeth recruit mercenaries in Poland. Their victory at Homonna in November 1619 drew Bethlen away from Vienna; it was the Commonwealth's only battle of the Thirty Years' War.

Péter Alvinczi, once Bocskai's court preacher, was Reformed minister at Kassa from 1606 and Pázmány's fiercest opponent in print. In 1618 he married Imre Thurzó to Krisztina Nyáry; in 1620, with Kassa in Bethlen's hands, he published there, anonymously, the political tract Machiavellizatio; and in 1622 he preached at the funeral of Bethlen's wife.

With the counties falling away and no Ottoman help coming, Bethlen negotiated. By the Peace of Nikolsburg, concluded on 31 December 1621, he gave up the royal title and the Holy Crown; Ferdinand made him a prince of the Empire, gave him Oppeln and Ratibor in Silesia and, for his lifetime, seven counties on the upper Tisza. In 1622 he founded a college at Gyulafehérvár. He fought again in 1623, and the Peace of Vienna of 1624 confirmed Nikolsburg.

Imre Thurzó led Bethlen's commissioners, having opened the way through Cardinal Dietrichstein, Ferdinand's confidant. On 19 October 1621, a week after the talks began, he died suddenly at Nikolsburg, aged twenty-three, the last of his branch of the family. His widow, Krisztina Nyáry, was left heiress to a great fortune.

Szaniszló Thurzó, of the Szepes branch of the family, presided over Bethlen's commissioners after Imre's death and saw the treaty concluded. In March 1621 he had been one of three in Nyitra county to refuse the oath to Ferdinand; in 1622 the diet at Sopron elected him palatine. In autumn 1623 he negotiated with Bethlen again, at Hodolin.

István Kovacsóczy, son of a chancellor whom Sigismund Báthory had executed, served Bethlen as secretary and envoy to Prague. After Péchi's arrest in 1621 he ran the chancery, and in 1622 he was made chancellor. In 1624 he went to Vienna to carry out the Nikolsburg terms, and in 1625 he travelled with Ferenc Mikó to Berlin to seek Catherine of Brandenburg's hand for Bethlen.

Nicholas Esterházy, Illésházy's nephew, had turned Catholic as a youth against his family's wishes. Through a rich marriage and royal favour he rose fast, and he secured Pázmány's appointment as archbishop. He took part in making the Nikolsburg peace, became judge royal in 1622 and captain of Érsekújvár and the mining-town frontier, and in 1623 won a celebrated action on the Nyitra river.

Krisztina Nyáry, Imre Thurzó's widow, inherited great wealth. She became a Catholic, and on 21 July 1624 married Esterházy at Szucsány, with Pázmány conducting the wedding; her first wedding, in 1618, had been taken by the Calvinist Alvinczi. Their sons included László, killed at Vezekény in 1652, and Pál, the future palatine.

Albert Szenczi Molnár, Reformed pastor, lexicographer and translator of the Psalms, had been court preacher to Ferenc Batthyány and taught briefly at Gyulafehérvár. Living in Heidelberg when Tilly's troops took it in 1622, he was plundered and tortured, and fled to Hanau. There he published his Hungarian translation of Calvin's Institutes, commissioned by Bethlen; in 1624 he came home at Bethlen's invitation.

After Szaniszló Thurzó died on 1 May 1625, the diet at Sopron, Protestant in majority, elected the Catholic Esterházy palatine on 25 October with five-sixths of the votes. He held that a separate Transylvania was the Turks' forward bastion and opposed Bethlen's policy, yet he also defended the estates' constitution. In 1626 Ferdinand made him hereditary count of Fraknó.

Albrecht von Wallenstein, a Bohemian Catholic who had served under Basta in Hungary in 1604–1606, raised a great army for Ferdinand on his own credit and took the command in July 1625. On 25 April 1626 he crushed Mansfeld at the Dessau bridge and followed him toward Hungary. That autumn Bethlen pushed his army out of Hungary.

George William, the Calvinist Elector of Brandenburg, was Catherine's brother. When Bethlen sought a Protestant bride in 1625, after failing to win a Habsburg archduchess, Brandenburg welcomed the suit. The marriage tied Transylvania to Brandenburg, Sweden and the exiled Palatine house; Ferdinand and Sigismund III tried to prevent it.

Gustavus Adolphus, King of Sweden, was married to Catherine's sister Maria Eleonora, so the wedding made Bethlen his brother-in-law. Sweden's own war was with Poland, and the connection brought Bethlen diplomatic weight rather than Swedish troops.

Ernst von Mansfeld, a Catholic mercenary general fighting for the Protestant side, was crushed by Wallenstein at the Dessau bridge on 25 April 1626. He raised another army and pressed on through Silesia toward Hungary, hoping to strike the Habsburg lands with Bethlen. When Bethlen made peace he had to disband; he died near Sarajevo on 29 November 1626.

Bethlen first sought a Habsburg bride, Ferdinand's daughter Cecilia Renata, and when that failed turned to Brandenburg. In 1626 he joined the Protestant powers' alliance and took the field again. He pushed Wallenstein's army out of Hungary, but with no help from abroad he made the Peace of Pozsony on 30 December 1626, which confirmed Nikolsburg and bound him not to fight the emperor again or ally with the Turks.

Catherine was married to Bethlen by proxy in Berlin on 22 January 1626, George Rákóczi standing for the groom, and the wedding was celebrated at Kassa on 2 March. In 1626 the diet accepted her as his successor, on condition that she rule under the governor and council. The marriage was childless.

György Káldi, a Jesuit preacher, had translated the whole Bible into Hungarian in 1605–1607. In July 1621 he carried peace proposals for Bethlen to Ferdinand. His Bible appeared in Vienna in 1626 with Pázmány's approval and money; sources also record a gift from Bethlen toward it, though they differ on its purpose and size.

Murad IV had become sultan in 1623 as a boy of eleven. His government made peace with Ferdinand at Szőny on 12 September 1627, confirming Zsitvatorok and the frontier treaties that followed it. The Porte still protected Transylvania, but the peace left Bethlen less room to wage war on the emperor with Ottoman help.

Murtaza, formerly pasha of Bosnia, had become pasha of Buda at the end of August 1626. At Szőny the treaty was signed by lesser men, but contemporaries saw the real contest as Bethlen and Murtaza on one side and Esterházy and Pázmány on the other. He left Buda in 1630.

Esterházy and Pázmány stood behind the king's commissioners at Szőny. After Wallenstein's campaign and the peaces of Pozsony and Szőny, the King of Spain gave Esterházy the Order of the Golden Fleece in 1628.

Bethlen's last plans looked north: with Swedish and Russian alliances he aimed at the Polish crown. He died at Gyulafehérvár on 15 November 1629 before he could act on them, leaving his widow as elected successor and the seven counties due to return to the king.

Gáspár Bojti Veres studied at Heidelberg at Bethlen's expense, tutored the prince's nephew István, and in 1623 was made teacher and court historian at Gyulafehérvár. His Latin history of Bethlen's deeds, written from the documents and in the prince's defence, carried the story to early 1614.

Johann Heinrich Alsted, professor at Herborn and the leading encyclopedist of his age, left war-torn Germany in 1629 at Bethlen's invitation to teach at the Gyulafehérvár college, together with Bisterfeld and Ludwig Piscator. His great Encyclopaedia appeared in 1630. He taught there until his death in 1638; János Apáczai Csere was among his students.

Johann Heinrich Bisterfeld, Alsted's pupil, had just become a professor at Herborn when he followed Alsted to Gyulafehérvár in 1629. He married Alsted's daughter and taught theology and philosophy, with a reputation in the natural sciences too, and later served George I Rákóczi as an envoy.

Catherine took the throne on 15 November 1629 and that day informed Ferdinand that the seven counties would go back to the Hungarian crown. The diet bound her to the governor and council; she leaned on a favourite and toward the Habsburg court. In August 1630, with troops she had paid for ready to invade, the governor turned to Rákóczi; on 28 September the estates forced her to abdicate.

István Csáky, a young Catholic lord of Hungary married to the palatine Zsigmond Forgách's daughter, became Catherine's favourite and led her party, with the Catholics of Transylvania, against the governor's. The diet of June 1630 ruled that he could enter the country only with the council's consent. His troops, paid by Catherine, were poised to invade when the estates removed her.

Stephen Bethlen, Gabriel's brother, was governor under Catherine and led the party against her. When her favourite's troops stood ready, he asked George Rákóczi for help and offered him the throne. Elected prince himself in September 1630, he found the hajdús and Székelys declaring for Rákóczi and the sultan sending letters for both; with no army to match, he gave way.

The younger István Bethlen, the governor's son, had been brought up by his uncle Gabriel, who meant him as heir before his second marriage. Captain-general of Várad and general of the hajdús from 1626, he did much to have Rákóczi elected in 1630. He married Mária Széchy and died in December 1632.

Dávid Zólyomi, a Bihar landowner who had fought for Gabriel Bethlen and married the governor's daughter in 1629, stood against Catherine in 1630 and did much to win the throne for Rákóczi.

George Rákóczi, rich from his own estates and his wife's, set out at the head of the hajdús when the governor appealed to him. On 1 December 1630 the diet at Segesvár elected him prince.

Zsuzsanna Lorántffy, heiress of Sárospatak, had married Rákóczi in 1616 and brought him that estate. With his election she became princess, and their Reformed piety would mark the principality's church and schools.

Rákóczi had to win the estates, the Porte and a workable peace with the king. The palatine's troops tried to unseat him in 1631 and were driven back. He then turned on his own champion, Zólyomi. In 1636 the pasha of Buda backed Stephen Bethlen against him; Rákóczi's army crushed the Ottoman force at Szalonta on 6 October, and the Porte made peace with him.

Zólyomi, with a Bethlen brother-in-law beside him, routed the palatine's army at Rakamaz on 15 March 1631, and in 1632 put down Péter Császár's peasant rising. But he had his own power and his wife's family behind him, and in 1632 he opened letters to the pasha of Buda. On 4 April 1633 Rákóczi had him arrested; condemned for treason, he was kept in Kővár until his death in 1649.

Stephen Bethlen, Zólyomi's father-in-law, felt the blow to his family. In January 1636 he won over Husein, pasha of Buda, to back him for the throne. The estates rallied to Rákóczi, and on 6 October 1636 Rákóczi's army routed the pasha's force at Szalonta; the Porte then made peace with the prince.

John Kemény, who had first come close to politics at Gabriel Bethlen's court, became one of Rákóczi's most trusted men: lord-lieutenant of Fehér, treasurer and in time commander of the army. In 1637 Rákóczi sent him with Székely troops to help Matei Basarab of Wallachia drive back the Moldavian prince Vasile Lupu.

Esterházy saw a separate Transylvania as the Turks' forward bastion, and in 1631 his troops set out to unseat the new prince; they were beaten at Rakamaz. He went on working to join Transylvania to the kingdom under the king, while defending the estates' constitution and bringing magnates such as Ádám Batthyány and Ferenc Nádasdy into the Catholic Church.

Péter Császár, a serf of the Fáncsy family, led a peasant rising against the soldiers' abuses that broke out in Torna and Borsod in 1631 and spread through Upper Hungary. When he opened talks with the pasha of Eger, the palatine ordered the counties to crush it. Captain Mihály Forgách had him seized, and on 4 March 1632 he was executed and quartered at Kassa.

Pázmány, a cardinal since 1629, kept up a long correspondence with Rákóczi. In 1635 he founded a university at Nagyszombat with 100,000 florins, with faculties of theology and philosophy. He died at Pozsony on 19 March 1637.

Ferdinand III had been crowned King of Hungary on 8 December 1625, in his father's lifetime, and became emperor on his father's death in February 1637. He inherited the last decade of the European war, with his armies losing ground to the Swedes, just as Rákóczi began to negotiate with France and Sweden.

Imre Lósy, born a Lutheran and Pázmány's deputy since 1620, became Archbishop of Esztergom in May 1637. He held a provincial synod in 1638, founded the Emericanum seminary at Pozsony in 1642, and left money for a law faculty at Nagyszombat. He died on 7 November 1642.

György Lippay, chancellor of Hungary since 1635 and Bishop of Eger, became Archbishop of Esztergom in 1642. A founder of the Nagyszombat law faculty and a committed Habsburg loyalist, he would lead the Catholic hierarchy through Rákóczi's war and the crisis of 1660.

Ádám Batthyány, son of the Ferenc Batthyány who had joined Bethlen, was raised a Calvinist but became a Catholic under the influence of Pázmány, his lifelong friend. In 1633 he was made commander for Transdanubia and the frontier facing Kanizsa, guarding the whole border south of Lake Balaton.

Rákóczi governed as a strict Reformed prince. In 1638 he launched the trial at Dés against the Sabbatarians and radical Unitarians, punishing those who would not convert. On 19 February 1642 the diet elected his elder son George as successor.

István Kassai, a protonotary, ran the princely chancery without the title of chancellor from Kovacsóczy's death in 1634 until 1644, at the centre of Rákóczi's government.

Péchi, freed in 1624 on a surety of 83,500 florins, had retired to Székelyszenterzsébet to write and translate for the Sabbatarians. In the Dés trial of 1638 he and his daughters were condemned as Judaisers and their estates seized. He was released in May 1639 after turning Reformed.

George II, the prince's elder son and captain of Várad from 1640, was elected successor on 19 February 1642. On 3 February 1643 he married Sophia Báthory at Gyulafehérvár.

Sophia Báthory, niece of the murdered Prince Gabriel Báthory and raised a Catholic, brought the prestige of the old princely house to the marriage. At her father-in-law's wish she soon turned Reformed. Her son Francis would be elected heir in 1652.

István Geleji Katona, who had studied at Heidelberg with Gabriel Bethlen's help and served as his court preacher, became Reformed bishop of Transylvania in 1633. A strict Calvinist and grammarian, he edited the Old Gradual that Rákóczi published in 1636 and persecuted Unitarians and Sabbatarians. He paid for students to study abroad, János Apáczai Csere among them.

János Tolnai Dali came home in autumn 1638 from five years in England, a founder of the Puritan London league, and Rákóczi made him rector of the Sárospatak college. The local clergy blocked him until he promised to keep Puritanism out of his teaching; his reforms soon cost him the post, and from 1644 he was chaplain to the prince's younger son, Sigismund.

Pál Medgyesi, who had studied at Leiden and in England, published in 1636 his Hungarian translation of Lewis Bayly's Praxis pietatis, the handbook of Puritan devotion. From December 1638 he was Rákóczi's court preacher, a critic of Geleji's style of preaching and a supporter of presbyterian reform.

Bisterfeld stayed on at Gyulafehérvár under Rákóczi, writing logic for the college and serving the prince as envoy. His favourite pupil was the prince's younger son Sigismund, who joined him in diplomatic negotiations.

Axel Oxenstierna, Chancellor of Sweden and regent for the young Queen Christina, steered the Swedish war in Germany with which Rákóczi was negotiating. In May 1643 the Swedish council, at his urging, decided to attack Denmark, and Torstensson's army was pulled north to Jutland by December, just as Rákóczi prepared to march.

Allied with Sweden, Rákóczi invaded Royal Hungary in February 1644 in the name of its Protestants and took Kassa in March and much of the north. In 1645 he took Nagyszombat, made a separate alliance with France at Munkács, and in June joined the Swedes before Brünn. When the sultan ordered him to stop, he signed an armistice on 22 August.

Sigismund Rákóczi, the prince's younger son and Bisterfeld's favourite pupil, became general of the Székelys in 1643 and commanded one of the army's corps in the campaign of 1644.

Ferdinand answered the invasion by sending the generals Götz and Puchheim to Hungary, where Esterházy joined them with the king's Hungarians. He took part himself in the campaign against the Swedes that ended in defeat at Jankau in March 1645. In December he signed the Peace of Linz with Rákóczi.

Johann von Götz, an imperial field marshal, was sent to Hungary in 1644 to fight Rákóczi's army. Recalled to Bohemia against the Swedish invasion, he was killed commanding the imperial cavalry at Jankau on 5 March 1645.

Ádám Forgách, son of the palatine Zsigmond Forgách and of Thurzó's sister, fought Rákóczi in Upper Hungary in 1643–1644 and fared badly: the town he held went over to the prince, the northern counties would not take up arms, and the troops under him deserted.

Miklós Zrínyi, a descendant of the defender of Szigetvár, routed part of Rákóczi's army on the upper Tisza in 1644, though he disliked fighting fellow Hungarians, and the emperor made him captain of Croatia.

Ferenc Wesselényi, captain of Fülek, fought for the king against Rákóczi. In 1644 he took the stronghold of Murány with the help of Mária Széchy, whom he married; the king gave him the castle as his reward.

Mária Széchy, granddaughter of George Drugeth, had married the younger István Bethlen in 1627 and, widowed, a second husband whom she divorced in 1637. Co-heir of Murány with her sisters, she let Wesselényi into the castle in 1644 and married him.

Torstensson, the Swedish commander in Germany, came back from Denmark and on 6 March 1645 destroyed an imperial army at Jankau in Bohemia. He besieged Brünn from 3 May, and in June Rákóczi joined him there for a projected march on Vienna.

Jean-Louis Raduit de Souches held Brünn with about 500 soldiers and the townspeople against Torstensson's army of some 28,000 from May to 23 August 1645. The Swedes withdrew with heavy losses, and the march on Vienna never came.

Cardinal Mazarin, who had succeeded Richelieu as first minister in 1642 and governed for the child Louis XIV, kept up French diplomacy with Rákóczi. In 1645 the prince concluded a formal alliance with the French king at Munkács.

Sultan Ibrahim, on the throne since 1640, was the overlord Rákóczi could not ignore. In 1645, with the prince campaigning beside the Swedes, the Porte ordered him to end the war, and Rákóczi turned to a separate peace with Ferdinand.

By the Peace of Linz, signed by Ferdinand on 16 December 1645, Hungary's Protestants were to have their churches back and serfs gained freedom of worship; Rákóczi received five counties for life and Szabolcs and Szatmár for his sons. He had meant the Polish crown for his son Sigismund. He died at Gyulafehérvár on 11 October 1648.

Kemény, commander of the Transylvanian army, was one of those who drew up the Linz terms. Under George II he stayed on as councillor and head of the chancery.

Tolnai, made dean of Abaúj-Torna in 1645, went on preaching Puritanism. The synod of Tokaj suspended him in February 1646, and in June the synod of Szatmár removed him from office. He found refuge at Sigismund Rákóczi's court for three years.

After her husband's death in 1648 Zsuzsanna Lorántffy moved to Sárospatak with her younger son and made it a centre of Reformed schooling. In 1649 she had Tolnai reappointed rector of the college there, and the court preacher Medgyesi followed her into her service.

Ivan Drašković, a grandson of Miklós Istvánffy, had been Ban of Croatia since 1640. After Esterházy died in September 1645, the diet elected Drašković palatine in 1646; he died in August 1648.

Zrínyi fought the Ottomans with distinction in 1646, carried the sword of state at Ferdinand IV's coronation in 1647 and was made Ban of Croatia. In the winter of 1648–1649 he wrote The Peril of Sziget, an epic of his ancestor's last stand, published in Vienna in 1651.

Petar Zrinski, Miklós's younger brother, captained the Žumberak Uskoks and fought with them in the last phase of the German war. In 1660 he published a Croatian version of his brother's poems, The Siren of the Adriatic Sea.

Pál Pálffy, president of the Hungarian Chamber since 1625, became judge royal in 1646 and, after Drašković's death, palatine in 1649. He held the office until his death in November 1653.

Ferdinand III secured the succession by having his eldest son crowned King of Hungary at Pozsony on 16 June 1647. Ferdinand IV died of smallpox on 9 July 1654, before his father, and the succession passed to his brother Leopold.

Sultan Ibrahim was deposed in 1648, and his son Mehmed IV came to the throne at six. Palace factions and the viziers governed for the boy; from 1651 his mother, Turhan, ruled as regent.

Bohdan Khmelnytsky, hetman of the Zaporozhian Host, led the Cossacks in a great rising against the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth from 1648. In early 1649 George II Rákóczi allied with him and with the princes of Moldavia and Wallachia, though for years nothing came of it.

John Casimir, son of Sigismund III, succeeded his half-brother as King of Poland, elected in 1648. He would face Khmelnytsky's rising, then the Swedish invasion and Rákóczi's attack.

George II succeeded in October 1648 and turned at once to his father's Polish ambitions, allying in 1649 with Khmelnytsky and the two Danubian princes. On 18 February 1652 the diet elected his young son Francis as successor. In 1653 he joined Matei Basarab against Vasile Lupu of Moldavia and sent Kemény with the army.

Sigismund, governor of the seven counties from 1647, chose an alliance with the Protestant West over his father's Polish plans. On 4 April 1651 at Sárospatak he married Henrietta, daughter of Frederick V, the former King of Bohemia, with Comenius conducting the wedding. That autumn he received Queen Christina's envoy. He died of smallpox on 4 February 1652.

Henrietta of the Palatinate, daughter of Frederick V and Elizabeth Stuart, came to Sárospatak as Sigismund's bride in 1651, linking the Rákóczis to the great Protestant houses of the West. She died that September, five months before her husband, and the marriage was childless.

Francis, the only son of George II and Sophia Báthory, born in 1645, was elected heir by the diet at Gyulafehérvár on 18 February 1652, in his father's lifetime. When his father fell, the election was never made good, and he never ruled Transylvania.

Comenius, the celebrated Czech educator and bishop of the exiled Bohemian Brethren, came to Sárospatak in 1650 at the invitation of Zsuzsanna Lorántffy and her son Sigismund, on Tolnai's suggestion. With Tolnai he reorganised the college's teaching, and in 1651 he married Sigismund to Henrietta.

Vasile Lupu, Voivode of Moldavia since 1634, had long fought Matei Basarab to put his own son on the Wallachian throne. He bound himself to the Cossacks by marrying his daughter Ruxandra to Khmelnytsky's son Tymish. In April 1653 a coalition of Transylvania, Wallachia and Moldavian rebels drove him out.

Tymish, the hetman's eldest son, married Ruxandra Lupu to seal the Cossack-Moldavian alliance. He restored his father-in-law in May 1653, was beaten by Matei Basarab at Finta, and was then besieged in Suceava by Gheorghe Ștefan's coalition; he died there of his wounds on 15 September 1653.

Matei Basarab, Voivode of Wallachia since 1632 and an ally of the Rákóczis, had beaten off Lupu's invasions in 1637 and 1639 with Transylvanian help. The Cossack marriage alarmed him, and in 1653 he joined George II against Lupu, defeating Lupu and Tymish at Finta. He died in April 1654.

Gheorghe Ștefan, Lupu's own chancellor, allied with Matei Basarab and George II and drove Lupu out in April 1653. Thrown out again by Tymish, he returned in July and besieged Suceava. As voivode he stayed in the Rákóczi camp, helping crush the Wallachian seimeni in 1655 and backing the Polish campaign, until the sultan deposed him in 1658.

Ádám Forgách, now captain of Érsekújvár, led about 1,200 men against an Ottoman raiding force three times their number at Vezekény in August 1652 and scattered it. Four Esterházys died in the fight.

László Esterházy, son of the palatine Nicholas and Krisztina Nyáry, had headed the main branch of the family since his father's death. He fought on the right wing at Vezekény and was killed there, aged twenty-five, with three kinsmen; they were buried with great pomp at Nagyszombat that November.

László's death made his seventeen-year-old brother Pál head of the family and heir to its great estates. He kept a detailed account of the battle in his diary, though he had not been there, and would one day be palatine himself.

Constantin Șerban, an illegitimate son of Radu Șerban, became Voivode of Wallachia in 1654. When the seimeni mercenaries rebelled in 1655 and terrorised Bucharest, he called in George II and Gheorghe Ștefan; Rákóczi beat the rebels on the Teleajen on 26 June 1655, and Constantin joined the prince's plans to break free of the Porte.

The victory over the seimeni confirmed George II as master of the Danubian princes. When Charles X Gustav of Sweden invaded Poland and sought his help, he concluded the Treaty of Radnót on 6 December 1656 and was promised Lesser Poland and Mazovia. The Porte protested.

János Apáczai Csere, a pupil of Bisterfeld sent to the Netherlands on Bishop Geleji's scholarship, came home in 1653 a doctor of theology with a programme of Cartesian learning and teaching in Hungarian. His Hungarian Encyclopaedia, dated 1653 on its title page, was printed at Utrecht in 1655. George II appointed him to the Gyulafehérvár college.

Isaac Basire, chaplain to the executed Charles I of England, held the divinity chair at Gyulafehérvár for George II for seven years. After Bisterfeld's death in February 1655 the prince put him at the head of the college. At a public disputation on 24 September 1655 he condemned the presbyterians as a danger to the state; Apáczai alone answered him, and the angry prince barred Apáczai from teaching.

Ferdinand IV's death in July 1654 made his brother Leopold heir. Leopold was elected King of Hungary in 1655, and after Ferdinand III's death in April 1657 he was elected emperor in July 1658, against French opposition. In 1657 he widened his father's alliance with Poland, sending Austrian troops that helped defeat the Transylvanian army.

Wesselényi, Captain-General of Hungary since 1647 and lord of Murány, was elected palatine at Pozsony on 15 March 1655 and was present at Leopold's coronation. He would speak for the estates through the crisis of 1660.

Ferenc Nádasdy, a grandson of Elizabeth Báthory, had become a Catholic for his wife, Esterházy's daughter. Close to George II in 1650–1655, he became judge royal in 1655 and was a great patron of the arts at his castle of Sárvár.

Christina, Queen of Sweden since 1632, sent an envoy to Sigismund Rákóczi at Sárospatak in autumn 1651, when a new anti-Habsburg league seemed possible. Having turned Catholic and refused to marry, she abdicated in 1654 in favour of her cousin Charles X Gustav.

Charles X Gustav invaded the Commonwealth in 1655. As Polish resistance grew he looked for allies, and by the Treaty of Radnót of 6 December 1656 promised George II Lesser Poland and Mazovia in a partition of the kingdom.

Turhan, mother of the boy sultan Mehmed IV, had been regent since 1651. In September 1656, with the fleet beaten at the Dardanelles and plots in the capital, she accepted Köprülü Mehmed's terms for taking office: extraordinary powers and rule without interference.

Köprülü Mehmed became grand vizier on 14 September 1656 with a free hand. He purged the army and the provinces to restore the Porte's authority, and when George II marched on Poland against the Porte's protest, the prince's punishment became Köprülü's business.

In January 1657, ignoring the Porte, George II crossed the Carpathians with some 25,000 men and Moldavian and Wallachian troops. He took Kraków and in June, with the Swedes, Warsaw. Then Denmark attacked Sweden and Charles Gustav turned away. Left alone, Rákóczi retreated, and on 23 July at Międzybóż he surrendered to Lubomirski. He rode home and left the army to Kemény.

Kemény, the prince's chief adviser, had objected to the Polish venture once the Porte forbade it, but took command of the retreating army. A week after the surrender the Crimean Tatars surrounded it near Trembowla and carried some 11,000 men into captivity, Kemény among them. Held in the Crimea, he wrote his autobiography, one of the masterpieces of Transylvanian memoir.

János Bethlen, lord-lieutenant of Torda and Küküllő and a trusted man of both Rákóczis, was one of the army's commanders in Poland. In the struggle that followed he sided first with Rhédey and then with Barcsay, and judged the Rákóczis' policy harshly.

Francis Rhédey, stepson of the former prince Stephen Bethlen and one of Rákóczi's lieutenants since January 1657, was elected prince on 2 November 1657, when the diet deposed Rákóczi on the sultan's orders. He had agreed to hand power back if Rákóczi made his peace with the Porte; in January 1658 the diet swore to Rákóczi again, and Rhédey stood down.

Jerzy Sebastian Lubomirski, Grand Marshal of the Polish Crown, crushed Rákóczi's invading army and raided Transylvania. On 23 July 1657 at Międzybóż he took the prince's surrender.

Mehmed IV Giray, Khan of the Crimea and an ally of Poland against the Russians and Cossacks, sent his Tatars after the retreating Transylvanians. Near the frontier the army fell into the khan's hands, and its men faced years of captivity and ransom.

In 1657 Austrian troops joined the Polish side. De Souches commanded the infantry of the army sent under Hatzfeldt, which helped retake Kraków for Poland in August 1657.

Back on the throne in January 1658, Rákóczi defied the Porte. The grand vizier came in person: on 3 September he took the border fortress of Jenő, and two days later the Tatars burned Gyulafehérvár with its college and the princely library. Rákóczi refused to give way and fought on against the prince the vizier set up.

Ákos Barcsay, Ban of Lugos and Karánsebes since 1644 and one of Rákóczi's lieutenants in 1657, was among the envoys the estates sent to Köprülü. The vizier made him prince in autumn 1658. He bought peace by surrendering Lugos and Karánsebes and promising a tribute of 40,000 gold pieces a year, and spent his reign at war with Rákóczi.

János Bethlen became Barcsay's chancellor in 1659. He had pleaded with George II for Apáczai in 1656, and he and Barcsay received Apáczai's plan for an academy favourably.

Kemény was released from Tatar captivity in August 1659 for a huge ransom. He came home to a country torn between Rákóczi, Barcsay and the Porte, and came to believe that only Habsburg help could save its autonomy.

In 1658 George II turned to Vienna, sending a Jesuit to Archbishop Lippay and envoys to Leopold. Talks went on that summer, but the court would not risk its peace with the sultan by joining the war in Transylvania.

Köprülü treated Rákóczi's return as open rebellion. In 1658 he led the main army into Transylvania, took Jenő and had the estates elect Barcsay. He then entrusted Rákóczi's punishment to the new pasha of Buda, Seydi Ahmed.

Seydi Ahmed, a Circassian freedman risen to vizier, was made pasha of Buda in March 1659. In November he invaded Transylvania with 17,000 Turks and Tatars and twice beat Rákóczi's forces before wintering at Temesvár.

Barred from Gyulafehérvár, Apáczai was made head of the Kolozsvár school in summer 1656 through the pleas of Lorántffy and János Bethlen. After the Gyulafehérvár college burned in 1658 he laid before Barcsay a plan for a Hungarian academy, which the prince and his chancellor received favourably. He died at Kolozsvár on 31 December 1659, aged thirty-four.

Zsuzsanna Lorántffy, who had backed the Várad Bible and made Sárospatak a centre of Reformed schooling, died on 18 April 1660, weeks before her son's last battle.

In spring 1660 Rákóczi besieged Barcsay in Szeben. On 22 May Seydi Ahmed and Ali routed him at Szászfenes; mortally wounded, he was carried to Várad and died there on 7 June. His son's election as heir could not save the dynasty: his widow, Sophia Báthory, returned to the Catholic Church with Francis and left Transylvania for their Hungarian estates.

Barcsay spent the summer of 1660 as a virtual hostage in the Ottoman camp. He could send only 300 soldiers to Várad and was made to order its surrender, while confirming to the defenders that the order had been forced from him. After the fall the estates abandoned him, and he gave up the throne at the end of 1660.

Máté Balogh commanded Várad's garrison of about 850, few of them seasoned soldiers, with townsmen and even women helping on the walls. After the assault of 24 August only 300 were left, and on 27 August Balogh surrendered on terms that let the defenders and their families go.

Called on by the court and by part of the estates, Kemény declared war on Barcsay on 22 November 1660, and his army won at Örményes, where Barcsay's brother Gáspár was killed. Barcsay gave way, and on 1 January 1661 the diet elected Kemény prince.

In February 1660 Leopold decided to send troops to Upper Hungary to take the Rákóczis' counties of Szabolcs and Szatmár. When Várad was threatened, he ordered on 29 June that it be helped only in ways that avoided any clash with the Turks.

Johann Ferdinand von Porcia, Leopold's chief steward since 1652 and the guide of his education, became imperial chief steward and head of the Privy Council after the 1658 election, which made him first minister. He headed the government that chose to keep the peace with the sultan while Várad was besieged.

De Souches's imperial army reached Rakamaz and the Tisza line in summer 1660, within reach of Várad. Palatine Wesselényi, with the county levies, promised help if the town would submit to Leopold, but neither could move without the king's order, and none came.

In spring 1660 Seydi Ahmed returned with Ali, and on 22 May they routed Rákóczi at Szászfenes. He then held Barcsay in honourable captivity, and at Várad he would not join the siege lines, raiding the Partium instead. He was executed at Temesvár in June 1661.

Ali, the pasha of Temesvár, whom the grand vizier named commander-in-chief, laid siege to Várad on 14 July 1660 from three camps around the fortress. The garrison held out for 44 days; on 27 August the last 300 marched out under terms, and Várad became the seat of an Ottoman province.

Evliya Çelebi, the Ottoman traveller who spent decades recording the empire in his Book of Travels, wrote the Ottoman account of Várad's fall; with Szalárdi's chronicle on the Christian side, it is how the surrender and its aftermath are known.

János Szalárdi, once a secretary in the princely chancery and keeper of the archive at Gyulafehérvár, worked in the Várad chapter's archive until the town fell. His Sorrowful Hungarian Chronicle, left in manuscript, is the chief account of the years after the Polish disaster, the siege included.

Ábrahám Szenczi Kertész had run a press at Várad since 1640 and in 1657 began printing a new Hungarian Bible there. Many sheets were lost in the siege, but the defenders made removal of the press a condition of surrender; it went to Kolozsvár, where the Várad Bible was finished in 1661.