4.30 Europe: a.d. 1601 to 1700  (Page 7/30)

Austria was a Catholic world with a heavy Jesuit influence. The center of the empire was the Hofburg palace in Vienna, a structure not elegant like Versailles, but with a court of 2,000 noblemen and 30,000 servants. The Habsburg monarchy had emerged from the Treaty of Westphalia with only minor losses of territory such as Alsace, but the Holy Roman Empire, as such, had disintegrated. Ferdinand III, emperor at the end of the war, and the next four emperors, were all skilled musicians and composers. There was continued hostility from France and from the Turks who surged-up on Austria's eastern frontier 300,000 strong in 1683, just after Vienna had been hit by a plague which killed 100,000 people. France supported the Turks at that time and Vienna was surrounded on three sides, with even women manning some of the defenses and the people on the point of starvation. At the lowest ebb, Jan Sobieski, the Polish king, marched through the Vienna Woods with 50,000 Poles and Austrians and put the Turks to rout. At that point Leopold I, a typical Habsburg with a swarthy complexion and a projecting lower jaw, which was almost disfiguring, was emperor. Although almost always at war he was not a warrior and preferred theology, arts, the study of genealogy and similar pursuits. The basis of his policy was that the throne and empire had been fixed on the Habsburgs by God, but in actuality his real power came from the sword of Prince Eugene of Savoy, a frail man born in Paris and rejected by the French army, and who had turned to Leopold to become general of the cavalry at age 26 and commander of the Imperial Army of Hungary at 34. It was he who finally crushed the Sultan's main forces, 3 times larger than his own, at Zenta in September of 1697. This led to the Peace of Karlowitz in 1699 which gave all Hungary, with the exception of Croatia, to the Habsburg Empire. (Ref. 131 )

In this century Salzburg was a separate territory and was not even involved in the Thirty Years War. A University was established there in 1623. (Continue on page 954)

Hungary

As the century opened Hungary was still a partitioned country and a battered one. Besides Turkish atrocities, the Habsburg administration began to take land from the estates in eastern Hungary and forced a counter-reformation against the Protestants. Istvan (Stephen) Bocskay revolted against the Austrians with an army of wild soldier-herdsmen and drove the emperor 's General Basta out. Bocskay became the prince of an enlarged Transylvania and by the Treaty of Vienna of 1606, the Protestants were declared equal to the Catholics. In the same year a new treaty with the Ottoman Porte cancelled all tribute to the sultan, although the territories remained as before. There were then no Turkish aggressive moves for a half century. In 1608 the State Assembly had proclaimed the perpetual serfdom of peasants, and later a group of these called "Haiduks" took to the hills and lived by marauding and pillaging the Turks. (Ref. 126 , 292 )

A successor prince of Transylvania, Gabriel Bethlen (also Bethlen Gabor), developed mines, industry, and foreign trade and promoted education. He and his successor, Rakoczi I (1630-1644) were able to hold off the Habsburgs. The power and status of Transylvania ended, however, when the Turks made another great excursion and installed once again an Ottoman prince over that area. The Hungarians appealed to Leopold I in Vienna for help but he was fighting France and was also reluctant to offend the sultan and gave only token help. Hungary went into a decline and soon the Turks swept across to the walls of Vienna. As described above in the section on AUSTRIA, the tide soon turned and the Turks were beaten back across the Danube. As noted previously too, the Peace of Karlowitz in 1699 gave all of Hungary with the exception of Croatia, back to the Habsburgs. The Hungarian Diet fixed the succession of the ruler of Hungary in the male line of the Habsburgs, so that thereafter there was truly an Austro-Hungarian Empire. (Ref. 126 )