Hungarian Historical Review 2, no. 4 (2013): 695–732 Ágnes R. Várkonyi Gábor Bethlen and His European Presence This paper studies the European presence of the most important ruler of the Principality of Transylvania, Gábor Bethlen (1580–1629) in the light of predominant developments of the Early Modern Age such as the general crisis of the seventeenth century, the Thirty Years’ War, the international networks of alliances, the absolutist governments, the Habsburg and Ottoman Empires, the nation states, the modern expectations towards governments, the new science of political cultures, the explosion of information networks and the law of concluding peace. The study gives an overview on the extreme views on Gábor Bethlen in the early modern era as well as in posterity. This ruler of the Transylvanian state—a tributary of the Ottoman Empire, but also belonging to the power sphere of the Habsburgs— was on the one hand regarded as a creature of the Turks, on the other as a monarch who had profound influence upon the fate of Europe. The paper shows how Bethlen created tranquility, security and economic stability in the country which had been ruined, destroyed by Ottoman and imperial military interventions and on the verge of civil war. Having a wide range of political experience and a good knowledge of contemporary political theories, the prince managed to accommodate absolutist government and mercantilist economic policies to Transylvanian circumstances. He was nevertheless unable to compete with the propaganda campaign against him. Keywords: general crisis of the seventeenth century, the Thirty Years’ War, the international networks of alliances, the absolutist governments, the Habsburg and Ottoman Empires Prelude He is like a star, and “no astrologer can iudge of him till he bee worne out.”1 The report on Prince Gábor Bethlen of Transylvania by Sir Thomas Roe, English ambassador to Constantinople, has lost none of its validity four hundred years after his election. The 1630 London edition of Giovanni Botero’s world chronicle devotes a whole chapter, “The State of Bethlen Gábor in Transilvania,” to this brave and 1 Samuel Richardson, The Negotiations of Sir Thomas Roe in his Embassy in the Ottoman Porte, from the Year 1621 to 1628 inclusive (London: Society for the Encouragement of Learning, 1740), 178. App. H. 4 2454. See also György Kurucz, “Sir Thomas Roe és az erdélyi–lengyel viszony Bethlen Gábor fejedelemsége idején,” in Magyarhontól az Újvilágig. Emlékkönyv Urbán Aladár ötvenéves tanári jubileumára, ed. Róbert Hermann and Gábor Erdődy (Budapest: Argumentum, 2002), 55–63. http://www.hunghist.org 695 Várkonyi.indd 695 2013.11.29. 10:30:58 Hungarian Historical Review 2, no. 4 (2013): 695–732 Gábor Bethlen and His European Presence exceptionally talented prince and his deeds in defending his country against the however, were not favorable to the intentions of this Calvinist prince. Ottoman Ottomans and the House of Habsburg.2 The opinions of his detractors were forces had escorted him into Transylvania, the Diet had been called by Iskender put succinctly by the “Tacitus of Europe,” Virgilio Malvezzi, who wrote that Pasha, Beylerbey of Kanizsa, who made camp beside Torda near Kolozsvár Bethlen was inscrutable and untrustworthy.3 Samuel Richardson’s opinion was (now Turda and Cluj-Napoca, Romania). Tartar armies plundered the villages glowing: “in warfare and diplomacy, he was one of the most greatest rulers along the River Szamos, and on the western border of the country, castles were of his age.”4 Leopold Ranke wrote, “one of the most powerful figures of the being captured by Matthias II, Holy Roman emperor and king of Hungary. In world upheaval that was the Thirty Years’ War.”5 Others took up the words Vienna, the election was seen as both a Protestant and an Ottoman onslaught. of the propaganda his enemies put forth against him: a creature of the Turks, Bethlen was proclaiming a vision of peace while his country faced the threat of circumcised, Mohammedan.6 In the enormous literature on the Thirty Years’ civil war and an eruption of the Habsburg–Ottoman conflict. War, the prince of Transylvania has appeared in various lights up to the present Bethlen managed to persuade the Ottomans to leave the country after his day. 7 Through all of it, he has remained, in the words of Botero’s world chronicle, accession to the throne, but immediately found himself in an impossible position. “a man much talkt of, but little knowne.” After the storms of four hundred Kadizade Ali, Pasha of Buda, seizing control of the region in 1614, suddenly years, Hungarian historians say much the same. He has been called a “man of imprisoned Bethlen’s protector, Iskender Pasha and started to promote a claimant the Turks,” but also praised for his statesmanship, “after St Stephen and King to the princely throne, György Homonnai Drugeth.10 A Catholic, Homonnai Matthias (r. 1458–90), perhaps our finest ruler.”8 To date, however, Hungarian also secured the support of the dominant statesman of the Habsburg Empire, historians have not paid enough attention to his European presence. Bishop of Vienna and President of the Geheimrat Melchior Khlesl.11 At the very I will discuss here the concept of “presence” in the period of European moment of Bethlen’s election, Khlesl launched a well-organized propaganda change, the qualifications required for statesmanship, and Bethlen’s part in the campaign against the new prince. Accusations made in terms like “Türkischer Bohemian–Hungarian Confederation and the Hague Alliance. Bethlehem” and “Mohamedanischer Gábor” fed the flames of public opinion which had been ignited by tales of Tartar soldiers’ brutality and Ottoman plans Options for Presence to conquer the world.12 The accusations were not yet widely disseminated in German-speaking areas, but the tone was set for future developments.13 Upon his election as prince by the Diet of Kolozsvár on October 23, 1613, Gábor Bethlen announced the essence of his program: only peace could save a 10 Balázs Sudár, “Iskender and Gábor Bethlen: The Pasha and the Prince,” in Europe and the Ottoman nation so reduced and ruined by wars from utter destruction.9 Circumstances, World: Exchanges and Conflicts (Sixteenth-Seventeenth Centuries), ed. Gábor Kármán and Radu G. Păun (Istanbul: Isis, 2013), 143–52. 11 See Oborni’s paper in this issue; Zsuzsanna Cziráki, “Erdély szerepe Melchior Khlesl fennmaradt 2 Giovanni Botero, Relations of the most famous kingdomes and commonwealths through the world enlarged with an írásos véleményeiben 1611–1616 között,” in Bethlen Gábor és Európa, ed. Gábor Kármán and Kees addition of the estates of Saxony, Germany, Geneva, Hungary and the East Indies, trans. Robert Johnson (London: Teszelszky (Budapest: ELTE BTK Középkori és Kora Újkori Magyar Történeti Tanszék–Transylvania n.p., 1630); see also István Gál, “Maksai Péter angol nyelvű Bethlen életrajza 1629-ből,” Irodalomtörténeti Emlékeiért Tudományos Egyesület, 2013), 77–102; Péter Tusor, Egy „epizód” Magyarország és a Szentszék Közlemények 80, no. 2 (1976): 223–37. történeti kapcsolataiból. Pázmány Péter esztergomi érseki kinevezése (Mikropolitikai tanulmány). (Diss. for doctorate 3 Virgilio Malvezzi, Introduttione al racconto De’ principali successi accaduti sotto il comando del potentissimo Ré of the Academy, manuscript, 2012), 148–49. Filippo quarto (Rome: per gl’Heredi del Corbelletti, 1651), 59, 63. 12 National Széchényi Library (OSZK) Apponyi Collection, M 347; Nóra G. Etényi, “Der Frieden von 4 Richardson, The Negotiations of Sir Thomas Roe. Zsitvatorok in der zeitgenössischen Propaganda,” in ‘Einigkeit und Frieden sollen auf Seiten jeder Partei sein’: 5 Leopold Ranke, Sämtliche Werke, vol. 23 (Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, 1982), 40. Die Friedensschlüsse von Wien (23. 06. 1606) und Zsitvatorok (15. 11. 1606) (Zum 400. Jahrestag des Bocskai- 6 Golo Mann, Wallenstein. Sein Leben erzählt von ~ (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1971), 225. Freiheitskampfes IX), ed. János Barta, Manfred Jatzlauk, and Klára Papp (Debrecen: Institut für Geschichte 7 Kurucz, Sir Thomas Roe és az erdélyi–lengyel viszony, 55–57. der Univ. Debrecen–Selbstverwaldung des Komitats Hajdú-Bihar, 2007), 267–79. 8 Gyula Szekfű, Bethlen Gábor. Történelmi tanulmány (Budapest: Magyar Szemle, [1929], 2nd edn 1983), 17; 13 Krisztina Varsányi, Bethlen Gábor fejedelem a Német-római Birodalom korabeli nyilvánossága előtt német nyelvű Csaba Csörge and László Töll, Bethlen Gábor. Erdély aranya. Észak oroszlánja (Budapest: MTA, 2004). nyomtatványok tükrében (PhD diss., ELTE, Budapest 2012); Gábor Almási, “Bethlen és a törökösség kérdése 9 Bethlen to Ferenc Batthyány, Captain of Transdanubia. Kolozsvár, 19 November 1613. Magyar a korabeli propagandában és a politikában,” in Bethlen Gábor és Európa, ed. Kármán and Teszelszky, 311–66; Nemzeti Levéltár Országos Levéltára, P 1314 Batthyány family archives, Missiles No. 6610. David Jayne Hill, A History of Diplomacy in the International Development of Europe, vol. 2 (New York: Longmans 696 697 Várkonyi.indd 696-697 2013.11.29. 10:30:58 Hungarian Historical Review 2, no. 4 (2013): 695–732 Gábor Bethlen and His European Presence It was following the cataclysms which befell the kingdom in the sixteenth estates the family had held since the fourteenth century, together with the family century—the Battle of Mohács in 1526 and Sultan Süleyman’s occupation seat of Iktár, lay in the two-thirds of the kingdom occupied by the Ottomans. of its capital, Buda, in 1541—that the eastern part of medieval Hungary His father Farkas Bethlen, after defending the castle of Gyula on behalf of the was involuntarily and violently shaped into the Principality of Transylvania king against an Ottoman siege, resettled in Transylvania. (Principatus Transylvaniae).14 Transylvania’s geopolitical position constrained Gábor Bethlen was born in the family’s castle of Marosillye in Hunyad the ambitions of its princes, although neither the Ottoman nor the Habsburg county on November 15, 1580, in one of Transylvania’s last years of tranquility Empires succeeded in annexing its territory.