There is no way in hell that Isabella would want France when Spain is right there for her and she has Ferdinand waiting for her as well. Francis can wed Beatriz instead. With her haughty personality, they will get along like a house on fire.
Anno Obumbratio: A 16th Century Alternate History
- Thread starter DrakeRlugia
- Start date
Considering the sheer potential it started with, Charles V's reign is probably going to be regarded as one of the most disastrous in all of history ITTL.
I must say I would lol hard if Francis gets the role-reversed OTL Treaty of Madrid treatment from Charles, and the Habsburgs simply disregard TTL's Treaty of Rambouillet and renew hostilities.
Great chapter btw
I must say I would lol hard if Francis gets the role-reversed OTL Treaty of Madrid treatment from Charles, and the Habsburgs simply disregard TTL's Treaty of Rambouillet and renew hostilities.
Great chapter btw
"The king who was so awful Spain nearly started a revolution and put his more spanish brother on the throne"
Historians about the short reign of Charles I of Spain.
I think you have the wrong Isabella...the one who is betrothed to the dauphin is the daughter of Charles V and Mary Tudor, not Isabella of Portugal. Ferdinand, now that he is prince of asturias, as it were, might marry isabella of portugal though
Though isabella of portugal could do well as the future bride for francis i, perhaps
I think that Isabella Habsburg is betrothed to Dauphin François while Isabella of Austria is a possible candidate for wife nr. 2 for François I of France?
Yes, but I thought that it meant that Isabella of Portugal would be a good bride for Francis I as his second wife, as she would certainly come with a rich dowry.
There are way to many Isabella's at this moment to keep track on. 🥴
You are absolutely correct, my apologies! I also think that given the Pope's alliance (for now...) with France, that he'd be willing to give the necessary dispensation.Not always. Richard of Shrewsbury and Anne Mowbray were both well underage when they married in 1478, so I wouldn't worry too much if that's the angle you want to go down. But poor Mary must be heartbroken at having had to hand Isabella over to her natal enemy as well as having lost her son.
You're welcome! You can count on my support when it comes to the Turtledoves next year
The Empress... she is definitely in a very unhappy situation right now. The last thing she wanted to do was give up Isabella to France, and while she will understand that it must be done to ensure her husband's freedom, it doesn't mean it's an easy choice to make. It's even more gutting because it will certainly remind both her and the emperor of their loss of Philip.
That is perhaps so, but unfortunately the personal feelings of princesses very rarely factored into such discussions. She would not be the first princess married somewhere she did not necessarily wish to go. Luckily for her, John III is pretty well known for favoring a rather neutral foreign policy, and I think he would likely favor a Spanish match over a French one. There's also the fact that Francis has a dearth of children (some four daughters and three sons, all living). Better for Isabella to help sire the future line of Kings of Spain, then create extra brats and spares for Francis.
Hard to say. With Ferdinand's dithering, I imagine she eventually left Innsbruck when Mary of Austria married her brother, and has been a fixture of the Hungarian court since then. She'll now finally be free to make a marriage, but with the Turkish marauding the Hungarian borders, her marriage is not likely high on her brother's to do list. With Ferdinand out of the picture, I could see her marrying either into the House of Wettin or Wittelsbach. She may also not marry at all; I've considered the idea of her entering religious life.
Thank you!
Charles will definitely have a much different histography in this world, but it's hard to say. Francis is still one of the most popular kings remembered in France, despite his loss at Pavia, mostly because of his cultural importance. Obviously Charles isn't going to be well regarded in Spain. He'll be a footnote: an aberration between the Catholic Monarchs + Ferdinand (VI? Given that Spanish regnal numbering typically followed the Castilian crown? Or will he be Ferdinand "II" of Spain as a whole?) but he has time to change his reputation in the Low Countries and the Empire. He may also be fondly recalled assuming the Contract of Valladolid and the Treaty of Segovia hold, and keep Spain rooted in some form of limited monarchy.
I think it's probably pretty easy to see which way the wind is blowing re: the Treaty of Rambouillet. The terms are harsh, the emperor's advisors believe that his subjects will support it's repudiation, and even Francis' own chancellor took issue with it's terms and refused to sign it.
I think the focus will likely be more on his foreign origin + overuse of foreign advisors, the foreign (French) king who stuck out like a sore thumb between his Spanish grandfather and Spanish brother, who chased the vanities of an imperial crown over providing good governance. Let's hope Ferdinand can provide Spain with better rule.
His role (even if it was because of blunders) in giving the Cortes more sway over affairs could also be seen as favorable by liberal historians.
@BlueFlowwer was talking about Isabella of Portugal here. The chapter mentions her as a possible bride that Louise of Savoy would like for Francis as a second wife. Isabella of Austria, the emperor's daughter, is only a child, while the emperor's sister, also Isabella of Austria (I know...) died in 1526, mentioned in the previous chapter.
No, Isabella of Portugal as a potential wife for Francis.
The emperor's sister, Isabella of Austria died in 1526, a few months before the emperor was released. FWIW, all of the emperor's children with Empress Mary bare the appellation "of Austria" as well, since royalty don't use surnames and the Habsburgs were commonly known as the House of Austria (hence even the Spanish Habsburgs being called as such, and Spanish princesses marrying into France was known as Such-and-such d'Autriche.)
Trust me, the names cause me confusion too! There's a lot of people to keep track of.
I've been debating how to tackle the confusion, but I've not yet came up with a good idea... I've try to use English names where possible / available, but I've also debated having characters names as they are in their native language, too... it may be something to consider.
Oh, I did mean Isabella of Portugal here... I guess that really hammers the "Too many Isabellas" point down
Would Anna of Bohemia-Hungary perhaps be a fitting second wife for François I?
Bang on the money here. And since Ferdinand doesn't have the same Burgundian attachment, his eldest son can be a John III of Castile and Aragon rather than a Philip or Charles!
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Extremely unlikely match… neither side would be so interested in my opinion
What is happening in Hungary at this point? Because I can see Janos Zapolya renewing his suit to Anna now who her engagement/wedding by proxy is broken and I am not sure who Louis would be able to refute…
I'm not sure if Louis II would arrange such a marriage for her, given his own pro-Habsburg foreign policy. His finances probably can't bear to sustain a dowry at this point either. If Louis II fails to secure a match for her and goes and gets killed, she will become a ripe plum for the Hungarian magnates, especially if she remains in Hungary and isn't sent out of the kingdom. I could see Sigismund the Old taking an interest in her if Barbara Zapolya ends up dying later on (she's still alive IATL) but it's the same issue as Francis has: Sigismund already has several children, including two sons. I'm not sure if Sigismund would have much interest in trying to claim the Jagiellon inheritance in Bohemia + Hungary, either... which aren't really 'inheritances' given both kingdoms had a history of elective monarchies and choosing their monarchs.
One of the younger Polish princesses could perhaps marry one of Francis' younger sons.
Oh yes, the regnal names for the future kings will definitely be quite different. I can definitely see John / Juan being a popular name given it's connection to the Catholic Monarch's sole son, there's Ferdinand of course with it's connection to Ferdinand of Aragon. You might even see a revival of Henry / Enrique, though perhaps more focused on it's connection to Henry II of Castile, rather than Henry III and Henry IV. There's also Alfonso.
Hungary is suffering from similar issues compared to OTL. Demands of the Turks, Belgrade has fallen, and Louis II remains constrained and in poverty by the magnates who dominate the political life of the kingdom. He and Mary have recently had a daughter, named Elizabeth, born in 1525: she'll be cropping up in some of the next chapters, I'm sure. Things are heating up for a show-down, with Charles V not being in a prime position to aid his brother-in-law.
I think Janos Zapolya could definitely be a potential candidate for Anna's hand, given his prominent position and popularity. Would the other magnates support such a marriage? I know Zapolya was pretty popular amongst the lower aristocracy, but most of the other great magnates had their suspicions of him. I could imagine their jealousies might prevent such a marriage... but if Louis II dies and there ends up being a power vacuum, Zapolya will be the perfect person to become Hungary's new savior king: complete with a queen connected to the old Jagiellon dynasty. He'll have no issue snapping up Anna in such a situation. He married Isabella Jagiellon IOTL, so I don't think such a marriage would be out of line. I have my doubts of Louis II being able to arrange a marriage for Anna in 1526 when he's dealing with other issues, so she will likely be unattached if Louis still goes and gets killed, and Zapolya would have fairly universal support in claiming the crown.
I agree. And as others have suggested, if Beatrice has remained unattached, she could be a good bride for Francis too...
Some of the other magnates could support Zapolya‘s suit and some would doubtless oppose to it but in the end the question is if Zapolya could force Louis to agree to such wedding or better how much Louis need Zapolya‘s support/help/good will? He can refute him the hand of his sister or he would do better to agree to the match?
And yes, if things go as OTL with Louis, a wedding between Anna and Janos Zapolya is pretty much guanteed
We are in 1526 right? No way who Beatrice is still free at this point, specially as she OTL married the Duke of Savoy in 1521…
It's hard to say if Zapolya would be in a position to 'force' anything. While he had a lot of political influence following the crushing of the peasant revolt in 1514 and was able to put supporters into political office, his support declined after his defeat at Belgrade in 1515. George Szatmari regained a lot of influence in this period before his death. Most of Zapolya's renewed influence came after Mohacs, when he was in a prime position precisely because he hadn't committed his armies into battle, whereas other rivals, such as Stephen Bathory and Istvan Weboczy did.
That is correct, but our POD dates back to 1513. There are any number of things from 1513 to 1521 that could change and prevent such a marriage, butterfly effect and all. It's not as if such a marriage was prestigious or useful to Portuguese interests anyways.
Still is unlikely who Beatrice at 22 years old is still unmarried…
Chapter 17. The Hungarian Conflagration
Wowza, I am sorry guys! This chapter is huge: almost a whopping 6k words, but I really couldn't find a good cut off point until the very end. I tried editing what I could, but in some cases it just got longer. We're going to take a break from our scheduled show, Francis vs. Charles, and take a look at what is going on in Hungary instead....
Chapter 17. The Hungarian Conflagration
1525-1528; Germany & Hungary
“I came indeed in arms against him; but it was not my wish that he should be thus cut off before he scarcely tasted the sweets of life and royalty.”
— Suleiman the Magnificent
Music Accompaniment: Branle de la Siutte du Constraint Leiger
Battle of Nicopolis, unknown artist.
While the King of France and the Holy Roman Emperor continued their struggles over Italy, Hungary was dealing with an enemy that they had now been dealing with for nearly two centuries—the Ottoman Turks. Having spread forth out of Anatolia, the Ottoman Empire was now one of the largest in Europe—comprising of not only its holdings in the Balkans but also its newest conquests in the Middle East: the Levant and Egypt, picked from the moldering corpse of the Mameluk Sultunate. The Ottoman Sultans—Padishah and Kayser-i Rum—were able to add yet another title to their growing list: that of Caliph, with the Ottoman Sultans being named defenders of the holiest cities in Islam—Mecca and Medina. Sultan Selim, the conqueror of Egypt, died in 1520 and was soon succeeded by his ambitious son, named Suleiman. Suleiman soon turned his focus towards Europe—the citadel of Belgrade fell into his hands after a token siege, while he used an army of 70,000 men to evict the Knights Hospitaller from Rhodes in 1522 at great loss. Now, three years later, his sights began to look further into Hungary—the road that would lead him into Europe.
Hungary, meanwhile, suffered from its own set of problems. Though Louis II had attained his majority, Hungary remained in a perilous position as the great magnates dominated the political life of the kingdom. The crown’s authority remained weakened, and royal finances were in a terrible state—the king was kept in poverty and was forced to borrow to pay for his household expenses, while his queen, Mary of Austria, despite being given a generous endowment of 40,000 ducats per annum, was forced to use her annual allowance to repay loans that had been taken out by Vladislaus II, with the queen only having access to her income onward from 1525. The state of the kingdom’s finances also extended beyond the royal household—fortresses were allowed to fall into disarray while the salaries of border troops went into arrears. All attempts to increase taxation to pay for the defense of the country were frustrated by the jealous magnates, eager to keep their hands on the wealth that had been readily poured into their hands by Vladislaus II. Politically, the kingdom remained divided between the lower gentry, who wished to see a national regeneration, and many of the great magnates, who were more favorable to a pro-Imperial foreign policy. The queen herself was the head of the pro-Imperial faction, and she had attained a great position of influence and authority for herself. She also had a base of power outside the kingdom, with the emperor having named Mary as Governor of Austria in 1523 to manage the Habsburg territories of Austria. Mary did not reside within Austria and governed these territories for her brother, largely from Hungary—Wilhelm, the Freiherr von Roggendorf, and Christoph Frankopan were appointed by the queen as her representatives in Austria.
Another fixture of the Hungarian court was Louis II’s sister—Anne. Anne had been raised alongside Mary and had been betrothed to Ferdinand of Austria at a young age. When Ferdinand was kept behind in Spain, their engagement entered a nebulous phase—when Mary was finally wed to Louis II, Anne accompanied her now sister-in-law to Hungary; the diet bestowed upon Anne a small annuity of 3000 ducats—with hope that her marriage to Ferdinand might come to fruition. When Ferdinand was named Prince of Asturias in 1526—and beseeched to seek out a marriage more amiable to Spanish interests, Ferdinand finally took the step of terminating his engagement. Louis II was incensed at what he viewed as a betrayal by his Habsburg relatives, writing to the Empress Mary: “This is an affront to the dignity of the Holy Crown of Hungary—as well as the honor of my sister. The betrothal was signed nearly a decade ago, and she has languished—waiting to be summoned by her husband. It is only now that we discover that Ferdinand is not prepared to follow through with the promises made by his grandfather. It is a great disappointment, and I do hope that the emperor is prepared to rectify the situation…” Despite additional pleas from Queen Mary of Hungary, the king’s plea fell on death ears—though the Empress Mary did deign to discharge a small sum of ƒ10,000 from her privy purse to assuage the King of Hungary’s hurt feelings. The broken betrothal left Princess Anne free to marry, though her brother’s concerns lay in other areas.
Louis II, King of Bohemia and Hungary, c. 1526.
The King and Queen of Hungary had a tender relationship—it was a relationship built on mutual affection and love. Though the king had a mistress prior to his marriage named Angelitha Wass, he was faithful to the queen following their marriage. They spent a great deal of time together, with a Hungarian courtier of the period writing in his journal that, “The king has eyes only for the queen, and the queen only has eyes for the king. They are a pretty pair, like two little dolls—they go about each day, spending nearly every waking moment together. Even when the king meets with the council, she is often present—sitting to the side and sewing or reading. Once business is finished, they spend their days hunting, feasting, and riding. She is the king’s heart and dearest advisor—if only she were a man, the things she might accomplish!” Despite their mutual attraction, the early years of the marriage were plagued by childlessness—with the queen even visiting local shrines in hopes that she might conceive a son. The king and queen’s prayers were answered when the queen discovered she was pregnant; in November of 1525, the queen gave birth—not to a son, but to a daughter. Born on the feast day of Saint Elizabeth of Hungary, the little princess was named Elizabeth. Mary doted upon her daughter and soon spent vast amounts of time in the royal nursery with one of her favored Dutch servants, Jutte Cosijins, named as the princesses’ nursemaid.
Despite this, the shadow of the Turkish scourge hung over Hungary. The conquest of Belgrade nearly four years earlier had exposed the disarray of the Hungarian troops and opened the kingdom for further invasions by the Ottomans. Though Mary was resolute in her campaign for Hungary, she was unable to find much assistance abroad: Charles V in early 1526 remained imprisoned, and the Empress Mary’s concern remained primarily focused on the threat of France—support from the empire remained limited, primarily from Bohemia (which shared a monarch with Hungary) and Bavaria—though the Queen of Hungary was given permission by the empress to recruit from within the Austrian dominions, and it was agreed that the queen should have access to some of the artillery kept stored at Vienna. Aid also came from Poland, with Louis’ uncle, Sigismund the Old, pledging military support. Though the Pope was unable to offer any military resources, he did pledge ƒ50,000 to the Hungarian treasury to assist in paying defense costs. Though Queen Mary was resolute in her attempt to defend Hungary, her reliance on her non-Hungarian advisors meant that few within the ranks of the nobility trusted her. Louis II’s attempts to rally support were positively anemic compared to the queen’s—a fact that was readily apparent to the nobility. “The king is a weak man—he has none of the determination that the queen possesses. If he had only a drop of her blood—then he might prove stronger than he presently is.”
Queen Mary of Hungary & Princess Anne of Hungary.
With the king's weakness, they became the heads
of the pro-Habsburg and pro-National factions, respectively.
The kingdom was divided more than ever—and these divisions also spread into the royal household, with the king torn between his sister and his wife. Relations between the queen and Princess Anne had suffered ups and downs—the pair had ceased speaking for a time in 1519, when there were rumors that the regents of Louis II would repudiate his engagement to Mary and have the young king stand for election as Holy Roman Emperor himself. Though the pair eventually made up, the breaking of Anne’s engagement in 1526 added further tension to their relationship, to the point that Anne’s began to host a court separate from her brother and sister-in-law. Anne’s court began to be frequented by those opposed to the pro-Habsburg policy of the king. One of the prime attendees at Anne’s court was John Zápolya—a magnate and head of the national party. Though his influence had been weakened by his defeat outside Belgrade in 1515, he was still beloved by many of the gentry and lower nobility, and he had connections abroad through his sister, Barbara Zápolya, wife of Sigismund the Old and thus Queen of Poland. Rumors swirled of Zápolya’s interest in Princess Anne—his mother had sought a marriage between the two when Anne was only a child, and Zápolya had also expressed his interest to the late king, Vladislaus II, in 1510 as well. Balázs Szécsi, Princess Anne’s chamberlain, wrote in his diaries that: “The king was all fury when he discovered that Zápolya—a man he had never quite trusted and whose intentions he was never sure of—had paid visits to his sister. The princess was questioned before the whole of the court, with the king demanding to know what had transpired between the pair—and if they had ever met alone. The princess defended herself adroitly: ‘I have done no wrong, both before God and before you as my brother and my sovereign. You have your friends—I am fit to have my own.’ This was not an answer that soothed the king—declaring that as she was fit to have her own friends, she should be fit to have her own establishment away from him—in Olmütz, in Bohemia. The princess departed from her brother on terrible terms—the last time that she saw him. Though the order for her banishment was rescinded when her retinue reached Pozsony, she chose to remain there rather than return to the royal capital.”
The Ottomans began to muster their troops in the spring of 1526, setting out from Constantinople in April. Their army was composed of some 50,000 men, though some claimed upwards of 100,000. The Ottomans' advantage lay mainly in their artillery: they possessed some 300 guns, more than the Hungarians could ever hope to muster. The Ottoman troops also had plenty of arquebuses—made not just by Venetian gunsmiths but by Hungarian gunsmiths as well—an issue that had prompted the Hungarian diet to pass a law banning the export of further guns to the Ottomans in 1525. Given their trajectory north, all knew that their path would take them through Hungary—and that they would likely use the Danube River as their most important transportation source. The main issue lay in Hungary’s lack of fortifications some 250 miles alongside the banks of the river: aside from Pétervárad and Buda, Hungary had no fortifications, towns, or even villages that might serve to slow the Turkish advance—made easier by the Ottoman Grand Vizier, Ibrahim Pasha, constructing a bridge to allow the Turkish troops to cross into Hungarian territory even easier. The Ottoman army marched for nearly eighty days from Constantinople and took five days to cross the Danube into Hungarian lands—encountering no resistance as they did so.
The Turkish incursion into Hungary caused a great tumult and occurred mainly because of the jealousies of the magnates. When news of the Ottoman troops marching forward spread, Louis II was keen to deploy a vanguard of troops to defend the southern border. This plan was frustrated by the great nobility who refused to serve under the king’s chosen deputy, making it clear that they would serve only under the king. The nobility, more concerned with their petty feuds and jealousies, seriously underestimated the situation that they were in and were slow to react to the king’s call for troops. By the time the Ottoman troops were already crossing into Hungarian territory, the Hungarian army was composed of three distinct units: in Transylvania, John Zápolya commanded a force of some 10,000 men, mainly charged with guarding the Transylvanian Mountain passes. The main army, led by the king himself, was composed of 22,000 men—this included some 4,000 armored knights from the noble banderiums and the king’s bodyguard; 4,500 light cavalry, mainly Hussars of Serbian origin; 6,700 Hungarian troops; and 5,300 mercenary troops—composing mainly of German Landsknechte, as well as Italian and Spanish condottiero, financed by the Papal States; and 1,500 infantrymen from Poland—with a small number of artillerymen recruited mainly from the Habsburg domains in Austria. The royal army had perhaps ninety artillery pieces all together—a small amount compared to the Turks. The troops were also well equipped compared to armies in western Europe, and many of the troops were furnished with arquebuses, but they were still outmanned and outgunned by the Turkish forces.
When the Ottomans pressed into Hungary, this left the royal forces separated—Zápolya’s forces were along the Transylvanian border, while Christoph Frankopan had some 5000 troops in Croatia, both of which were too far away to offer any tangible assistance to the king. This meant that the bulk of Louis II’s forces, centered in Buda, were the only means of offering any resistance to the Ottoman invasion—badly outnumbered and outgunned as well. Though the king favored a defensive policy—in effect, ceding ground to the Ottomans rather than fighting them in open battle—the king found himself overruled and swayed by his war council, which desired a quick, immediate strike against the Turkish marauders without waiting for reinforcements from either Zápolya or Croatia. “We are planning for our last stand against this scourge,” Louis II wrote dimly to Charles V—in hopes of convincing the newly freed emperor into sending more aid. “Your help is desired—and needed—more than ever. Stand with us and let us make a grand strike against the Turk.” The emperor never responded to the letter—his focus was on France; he did not understand the urgency of the situation in Hungary and preferred to deal with what he thought were more emergent situations. Hungary could expect no further aid from the Habsburgs—their help remained limited to what Empress Mary had sent earlier in the year. With the royal army still situated around Buda, the Ottoman forces were able to press forward unopposed, moving into the village of Mohács and besieging Pétervárad, Újlak, and Eszék. Louis, along with his council, decided that they would make their defiant stand at the village of Bár—the plains would give plenty of room for the cavalry to maneuver, and the Hungarians hoped to deal with the Turks piece by piece. The Hungarian army was also in better shape—they were well-rested, while the Ottoman troops had just endured a hellish march in the heat of the summer.
Sultan Suleiman following the Victory at Bár.
The Battle of Bar unfolded on September 1st, 1526, and played out over a matter of two hours. While Archbishop Pál Tomori struck a victorious blow against the irregular Rumelian troops and surged the Hungarian line forward, the Hungarians came within striking distance of the Sultan Suleiman, and Hungarian bullets struck the Sultan’s cuirass. As the Hungarians pressed forward, the irregular troops were reinforced with regular troops from the reserves; this, combined with a charge by the elite Janissary regiments, allowed the Ottomans to overwhelm the Hungarian offensive, and their left flank faltered completely. The Hungarians suffered heavy casualties from Turkish artillery fire and musket volleys. The Hungarian army was soon surrounded by the Ottoman cavalry as they outmaneuvered the Hungarian troops to entrap them in a pincer attack. The Hungarian center, composed of heavy knights and infantry, collapsed under the barrage of Turkish fire. The Hungarian royal army was vanquished, and those who refused to flee were killed or captured. During the chaotic retreat, Louis II was killed by a volley of arquebus shots that struck him across his back and his neck, shredding his armor and knocking the king from his horse. When the king was found after the battle in a nearby stream, the water was soaked crimson—his body a mess of bloody viscera. Louis II was the first monarch to be killed in battle by gunfire. The result at Bár was catastrophic for the Hungarians: aside from the king, some 1000 nobles and other military leaders lost their lives, and some 14,000 troops were killed. Sultan Suleiman was in awe at the Hungarian defeat, and believing that it must be a trick, he held back several days before daring to put his troops back on the march. Some 2000 prisoners were executed before the Sultan ordered the army to march onwards—Suleiman watched the massacre from atop a throne of gold.
The death of the king threw the kingdom into complete chaos—news of the defeat and the king’s death reached Queen Mary a day after the battle, which threw the queen into deep mourning. “She is a shadow of herself,” One anonymous courtier wrote. “Pale and shaken—but eyes as determined as ever. Despite the strain of this heavy news, her focus remained entirely upon Hungary—and her daughter, little Elizabeth.” For the rest of her life, the queen would wear a heart-shaped locket that had been worn by the king at Bár and found upon him after his death. In the aftermath of the king’s death, Mary attempted to gather support from across the factions of nobility to proclaim her daughter as Queen of Hungary, with herself as regent. But with the Turkish army marching forward, the idea received very little support. With the kingdom thrown into heavy turmoil, there were many—especially the petty nobility—who looked for a king and military leader to deliver Hungary from its present situation. This was no time for an infant monarch—most especially a girl. Mary was soon pressed by her supporters to take leave from the capital—with the collapse of the royal army, the capital was undefended, and few wished for the queen or for the king’s daughter to fall into Turkish hands. Mary wasted little time and departed from Buda to Viségrad—home to the Holy Crown of Hungary. Mary, like her predecessor Elizabeth of Luxembourg, conspired to smuggle the Holy Crown away from Viségrad—ostensibly to keep it from falling into the clutches of the Turks, but to ensure she would hold the insignia that might make her daughter queen. With the aid of one of the crown guards, Mary arranged for the crown, along with other pieces of the Hungarian crown jewels, to be packed into a trunk with a box of jewels and furs that she had brought along with her. Rather than staying overnight in Viségrad, Mary and her retinue immediately departed, moving at a furious pace until they reached Pozsony, where Mary set up her court—and where Anne had been residing for several months.
Soon after Mary’s escape from Buda, the Ottomans reached the royal capital. Undefended and left for the picking, the Ottomans were merciless as they sacked the capital of the Hungarian crown. They pillaged and seized whatever they could, carrying away treasures from both Buda Castle and the homes of the great magnates. Following their attack on Buda, Sultan Suleiman decided that his work was done. Hungary was now in chaos and would pose no threat to him. Rather than impose a victory or sovereign upon the kingdom, he decided that he would withdraw back to his own domains and allow the nobility to have their petty squabbles. The Ottoman retreat left a power vacuum in Hungary; while Mary ostensibly claimed to be regent as Queen Dowager, a secondary font of power began to develop around John Zápolya—one of the few magnates to come through the Ottoman invasion with his troops intact, as he had not been present at the disastrous Battle of Bár. “I must ask that you send support as soon as possible,” Mary wrote furiously to her brother, the emperor. “Louis is gone, and my situation is more precarious than ever… Elizabeth is the rightful successor, the rightful queen of this kingdom—yet I cannot demand their allegiance from my present position. Each day, the dreaded Zápolya grows stronger… I fear he will clasp the crown from my daughter’s head.” Mary’s fears were well founded—with each passing day, Zápolya’s influence grew stronger, supported by the late king’s sister, Anne.
Engraving of John Zápolya.
Though Anne remained at Pozsony during and through the Battle of Bár, she did not remain long after Mary’s arrival. When Zápolya arrived in Buda, he wrote to the princess, stating, “The way is clear now for you to return to Buda, where you rightfully belong. There is no need for you to sulk in exile—that is the place of the late queen, not you. Her time has ended. Your time is now. Come to Buda. I await; I wish to be your husband—and I wish to be your king. And you shall be my queen.” Anne certainly found herself drawn to Zápolya’s wishes and desires—his ambition and his need for power were beyond attractive to a princess who had spent over a decade engaged to a man she had never met. It was little surprise that Anne decided that her fate belonged with John Zápolya—when her options were limited to a possible exile in Bohemia or Poland, with no say or control over her own fate. Princess Anne arrived in Buda in October of 1526—shortly after her arrival, she married John Zápolya secretly at Buda Castle. A month later, Zápolya summoned a diet at Székesfehérvár, which consisted primarily of the lower nobility. The diet voted not only to grant Princess Anna the revenues and lands previously held by Queen Mary, which were taken from her, but also to offer the Hungarian crown to John Zápolya. Zápolya duly accepted the offer of the diet and was proclaimed King of Hungary the next day—he was crowned, but without the Holy Crown, which was discovered to be missing.
While many of the lesser nobles had sided with Zápolya, there remained an important faction of magnates who remained attached to the pro-Habsburg cause of Queen Mary. A rump diet consisting of pro-Habsburg magnates was hosted at Pozsony in December of 1526—the diet not only declared that Princess Elizabeth was Louis II’s legitimate heiress but also named Mary as regent of the kingdom. The young Elizabeth was crowned using the Holy Crown, and the stage was soon set for a division of the kingdom into warring factions—but Zápolya, with his Transylvanian troops, remained one of the most potent forces in Hungary. “When the king discovered that the late queen had absconded with the Holy Crown, he was furious,” Wrote one of Zápolya’s supporters in his memoirs. “He wrote to the late queen, demanding that the crown be returned to him. In return, he promised to ensure that the queen would be granted a suitable establishment for her widowhood and that funds for Princess Elizabeth would be provided as well.” It was clear that Zápolya did not recognize the claims of Mary or her supporters about the late king’s daughter, rendering any sort of solution between the two squabbling factions impossible and ensuring that they could not collaborate against the future Ottoman threat. The envoys of King John soon fanned out across Europe, seeking support and recognition, with France offering positive support to Hungary’s new king.
Mary’s lack of support from her brother the emperor put her into a precarious situation—the only military forces at her disposal were the 5000 troops that had been raised in Croatia by Christoph Frankopan—who remained an adherent[1] to the queen and her cause, becoming one of her primary and most trusted advisors. The queen, in return, lavished rewards upon the Frankopan family—one of her first decrees was to mandate the return of lands and estates seized from the Frankopan family by King Matthias in 1469—lands they had tried to reclaim in vain in 1523. It was little surprise that the divisions in Hungary soon spilled over into Croatia: dueling diets were held at Samobor and Virovitica; while the Samobor Diet was prepared to recognize the rights of Elizabeth to her father’s inheritance, the Virovitica Diet, composed mostly of the lower Slavonian nobility, supported John Zápolya as their rightful king. Mary would name Christoph as Ban of Croatia—while Zápolya would support John Tahy for the role.
In this difficult period, Mary would draw much solace from religion—but not the Orthodox Catholicism of her family. Martin Luther sent the queen a booklet as well as four psalms, which he dedicated to her and Princess Elizabeth, providing much-needed relief to the queen in the difficult days of her widowhood. Mary began a correspondence with Luther, writing in one letter that, “Your words have been of much comfort to me in these most difficult times—when I am alone and must be a rock for not only my daughter, but so many others… It is hard to believe the years I spent with a veil over my eyes—a veil which you have lifted with your teachings…” Mary took into her household Matthias Dévai Biro as her court preacher—a Franciscan priest with Protestant sympathies. He would later study at Wittenburg under both Martin Luther and Philip Melanchthon. The disastrous defeat at Bár had practically neutered the Hungarian church; over half of its bishops perished in battle, and the grave unrest meant that neither John Zápolya nor Mary were willing to enforce the anti-Lutheran edicts that had been passed in 1523. The chaotic situation in Hungary helped make the kingdom fertile ground for the reformation and its ideas. Mary’s flirtation with Protestantism caused dismay among some of her supporters—most especially the heavily Catholic Croats—and caused issues with her brother, the emperor, as well, who urged Mary to dismiss Biro and cease any active contact with Luther.
Landscape with a large cannon, c. 1518.
These squabbles gave Zápolya the upper hand, for divisions among Mary’s supporters weakened her own cause desperately. In 1528, Zápolya’s cause grew as he overcame the troops of Christoph Frankopan at the Battle of Varazdin, with Frankopan killed in battle. With Mary’s prime military force in Hungary now vanquished, Zápolya ordered his troops to move into western Hungary, where Mary’s adherents had set up their rival governments, with their first task being to seize Pozsony—and to take the queen dowager and little princess as captives. With the deteriorating situation, Mary was urged by her supporters to leave Hungary and seek refuge. Though Mary was reluctant to give up the fight, she knew that she could not remain. “The queen was valiant in those last hours,” Ursula Röhr, an attendant to the queen, wrote in her private diary. “Despite the worries of the servants, her courage put everyone to rest. Due to the haste with which the queen needed to depart, she knew that she would be forced to take only what was necessary, and her primary concern was the Holy Crown of Hungary. She ordered it packed into a trunk with a hidden compartment… with the trunk packed with the queen’s most mundane items: her chemises. The trunk was scented with valerian and garlic—giving it a most noxious odor to ward away curiosities…” When King John’s troops captured Pozsony after a brief siege, the queen and her daughter were long gone, having crossed the frontier into Bohemia. The king was infuriated to discover that she had escaped—but more than that, she had escaped with the Holy Crown. Some of Mary’s jewelry—those not pawned from her already dim collection—was abandoned by the queen in her haste to escape from Hungary. John Zápolya gleefully appropriated what remained left behind and bestowed the jewels upon his wife. Several trunks of silk and gowns were also discovered, which Anne happily divided among her suite of ladies.
Mary was safe—and she soon found refuge in the city of Brün, in Bohemia. The death of Louis II had left Bohemia in an interregnum—in 1497, it was agreed that Bohemia could elect its next king should their monarch die without heirs, but some argued that the king did have a potential heir: Princess Elizabeth. Princess Anne, the late king’s sister—now Queen of Hungary—was discounted because of her marriage to John Zápolya; it had been performed without the consent of the Bohemian Diet, and thus her succession rights were considered void[2]. John Zápolya also had no interest in pursuing the Bohemian Crown; his focus was on Hungary and ensuring his reign was undisputed there. Aside from Louis’ daughter, there were also potential successors from among the great Bohemian nobility; there were the two grandsons of George of Podiebrad: Charles, the Duke of Münsterberg-Oels, and Frederick II, the Duke of Legnica. Znedek of Rozmital, the Supreme Burgrave, and Vojtech of Pernstejn, a Moravian magnate. There were also possible foreign candidates: John, the Elector of Saxony; George, the Duke of Saxony—as a son of Sidonie Podiebrad; Joachim, the Elector of Brandenburg; Louis X, the Duke of Bavaria—and even King François of France. Support for the next monarch coalesced around three separate parties: those supporting the rights of Princess Elizabeth—this included those who wished to keep close relations to the House of Habsburgs; supporters of the Duke of Bavaria; and those who wished to continue a connection with the House of Jagiellon—supporting the candidacy of the King of Poland.
During the interregnum, the previous administration had continued to govern the kingdom according to its customs and laws while maintaining correspondence with Queen Mary and the Emperor, who had his own interest in the potential election for the Bohemian crown, not wishing for its electoral vote to slip too far from the Habsburgs grasps. Despite his unease with Mary’s contact with Luther, the emperor wrote a tender letter to his sister when news reached him of her safe arrival: “I am gladdened to hear that you have passed out of Hungary safely—though of course it is most unhappy news; I regret that more cannot be done in Hungary… but I am beyond pleased that you are safe.” The emperor’s concern was not merely fraternal; in 1527, Charles V’s wife, the Empress Mary, had safely delivered a son, who had been christened Maximilian, providing the emperor with a male heir nearly six years since the mysterious death of his eldest son, Philip. The emperor saw his sister’s daughter as a prime bride for his son, considering her potential inheritance: Bohemia—along with her rights to Hungary.
View of Prague, c. 16th Century.
Mary stayed for a short time in Brünn before proceeding to Prague. The queen was given a lavish welcome. While her sympathies for Luther had perhaps alienated some of her supporters in Hungary, her views were not unwelcome among the Ultraquist nobility—even those who remained attached to the Catholic Church, such as the Duke of Münsterberg, had a keen interest in Luther’s writings. Queen Mary was allowed to take up residence in Prague Castle and was given access to her dower, giving her an income for the first time since 1526. Arrangements were made for the Bohemian Diet to be summoned in the summer of 1528 to decide Bohemia’s future course. Louis X emptied his coffers to provide bribes to the Bohemian nobility, which damaged his reputation among the nobility. Throughout the spring, the position of Mary was improved when the Diets of Moravia and Silesia—having been excluded from the planned meeting of the Bohemian Diet—recognized Princess Elizabeth’s hereditary rights within those provinces. The Diet of Bohemia was formally opened in July 1528 by Znedek of Rozmital as Supreme Burgrave of Bohemia; Queen Mary was in attendance, seated upon the dais, and she was invited to speak to the assembled men of the diet. “Milords—I thank you for your generosity at a time when it has been so heavily needed. I am but a poor widow, forced to endure the horror after horror that has unfolded since the death of my lord husband, your sovereign king. You have provided the necessary succor not only to his widow but also to his daughter; she is all that remains of him, and it is her, Elizabeth, that is his legitimate heiress.” While it was a radical suggestion that Elizabeth—a young girl of three—should succeed to the Bohemian throne, many within the diet knew that Elizabeth’s succession would come with the backing of support from the emperor—as well as his domains within Austria, of which Queen Mary remained Governor. Mary’s sympathies for Luther also eased the concerns of the Ultraquist nobility—they had little desire to elect someone such as the Duke of Bavaria, who had helped quash the reformation in his own domains.
Though the diet was open to the idea of recognizing Elizabeth’s hereditary rights and elevating her mother to the position of regent, the nobility had certain concerns and demands—laid out in the Capitulation of Prague, which Mary was expected to sign. This included recognition of the Vladislav Land Orders that had been passed in 1500, as well as pledges that no foreigners would be granted political office within the kingdom, nor would they be granted pensions or estates without express agreement from the Diet. It was also agreed that the diet should have a say in Elizabeth’s future marriage, and any future marriage treaty would be subject to the diet’s approval. Other articles of the capitulation concerned Elizabeth and her future position as Queen of Bohemia—it was agreed that her future husband should be crowned King of Bohemia and co-reign alongside her, making it clear that the Bohemian nobility mainly saw Elizabeth’s potential position as queen as an aberration—and one that could be fixed once a suitable husband was found for her. Rather than elevate a dynamic man who might become a strong king, the nobility had elected instead to elevate a young girl[3]—with her mother as regent. The hopes of the Bohemian nobility did not lie in finding a strong husband for their new little monarch—better a young queen, to be joined later by a weak king: to give the nobility all the say they desired over the crown and the kingdom.
[1] In OTL, Christoph Frankopan was attached to the Habsburg cause until he was swayed to Zápolya’s side. Given his increased influence here re: Queen Mary, he remains attached to the imperial cause.
[2] This happened in OTL as well; the Bohemian Estates did not give their consent to Anne’s marriage to Ferdinand, either: her inheritance rights were not recognized, and Ferdinand had to be elected king.
[3]I've found nothing to suggest that women were barred from the Bohemian throne. At best, Bohemia perhaps had a semi-salic law. Bohemian Princesses clearly had some rights of inheritance / succession, given that Anne of Bohemia's rights were debated IOTL, and some provinces (Moravia, Silesia) accepted said rights. In this situation, the election of a young female monarch is purely cynical; the great magnates and nobles hope to dominate the government during the regency, with the intention of finding a weak prince to serve as their future king.
Chapter 17. The Hungarian Conflagration
1525-1528; Germany & Hungary
“I came indeed in arms against him; but it was not my wish that he should be thus cut off before he scarcely tasted the sweets of life and royalty.”
— Suleiman the Magnificent
Music Accompaniment: Branle de la Siutte du Constraint Leiger
Battle of Nicopolis, unknown artist.
While the King of France and the Holy Roman Emperor continued their struggles over Italy, Hungary was dealing with an enemy that they had now been dealing with for nearly two centuries—the Ottoman Turks. Having spread forth out of Anatolia, the Ottoman Empire was now one of the largest in Europe—comprising of not only its holdings in the Balkans but also its newest conquests in the Middle East: the Levant and Egypt, picked from the moldering corpse of the Mameluk Sultunate. The Ottoman Sultans—Padishah and Kayser-i Rum—were able to add yet another title to their growing list: that of Caliph, with the Ottoman Sultans being named defenders of the holiest cities in Islam—Mecca and Medina. Sultan Selim, the conqueror of Egypt, died in 1520 and was soon succeeded by his ambitious son, named Suleiman. Suleiman soon turned his focus towards Europe—the citadel of Belgrade fell into his hands after a token siege, while he used an army of 70,000 men to evict the Knights Hospitaller from Rhodes in 1522 at great loss. Now, three years later, his sights began to look further into Hungary—the road that would lead him into Europe.
Hungary, meanwhile, suffered from its own set of problems. Though Louis II had attained his majority, Hungary remained in a perilous position as the great magnates dominated the political life of the kingdom. The crown’s authority remained weakened, and royal finances were in a terrible state—the king was kept in poverty and was forced to borrow to pay for his household expenses, while his queen, Mary of Austria, despite being given a generous endowment of 40,000 ducats per annum, was forced to use her annual allowance to repay loans that had been taken out by Vladislaus II, with the queen only having access to her income onward from 1525. The state of the kingdom’s finances also extended beyond the royal household—fortresses were allowed to fall into disarray while the salaries of border troops went into arrears. All attempts to increase taxation to pay for the defense of the country were frustrated by the jealous magnates, eager to keep their hands on the wealth that had been readily poured into their hands by Vladislaus II. Politically, the kingdom remained divided between the lower gentry, who wished to see a national regeneration, and many of the great magnates, who were more favorable to a pro-Imperial foreign policy. The queen herself was the head of the pro-Imperial faction, and she had attained a great position of influence and authority for herself. She also had a base of power outside the kingdom, with the emperor having named Mary as Governor of Austria in 1523 to manage the Habsburg territories of Austria. Mary did not reside within Austria and governed these territories for her brother, largely from Hungary—Wilhelm, the Freiherr von Roggendorf, and Christoph Frankopan were appointed by the queen as her representatives in Austria.
Another fixture of the Hungarian court was Louis II’s sister—Anne. Anne had been raised alongside Mary and had been betrothed to Ferdinand of Austria at a young age. When Ferdinand was kept behind in Spain, their engagement entered a nebulous phase—when Mary was finally wed to Louis II, Anne accompanied her now sister-in-law to Hungary; the diet bestowed upon Anne a small annuity of 3000 ducats—with hope that her marriage to Ferdinand might come to fruition. When Ferdinand was named Prince of Asturias in 1526—and beseeched to seek out a marriage more amiable to Spanish interests, Ferdinand finally took the step of terminating his engagement. Louis II was incensed at what he viewed as a betrayal by his Habsburg relatives, writing to the Empress Mary: “This is an affront to the dignity of the Holy Crown of Hungary—as well as the honor of my sister. The betrothal was signed nearly a decade ago, and she has languished—waiting to be summoned by her husband. It is only now that we discover that Ferdinand is not prepared to follow through with the promises made by his grandfather. It is a great disappointment, and I do hope that the emperor is prepared to rectify the situation…” Despite additional pleas from Queen Mary of Hungary, the king’s plea fell on death ears—though the Empress Mary did deign to discharge a small sum of ƒ10,000 from her privy purse to assuage the King of Hungary’s hurt feelings. The broken betrothal left Princess Anne free to marry, though her brother’s concerns lay in other areas.
Louis II, King of Bohemia and Hungary, c. 1526.
The King and Queen of Hungary had a tender relationship—it was a relationship built on mutual affection and love. Though the king had a mistress prior to his marriage named Angelitha Wass, he was faithful to the queen following their marriage. They spent a great deal of time together, with a Hungarian courtier of the period writing in his journal that, “The king has eyes only for the queen, and the queen only has eyes for the king. They are a pretty pair, like two little dolls—they go about each day, spending nearly every waking moment together. Even when the king meets with the council, she is often present—sitting to the side and sewing or reading. Once business is finished, they spend their days hunting, feasting, and riding. She is the king’s heart and dearest advisor—if only she were a man, the things she might accomplish!” Despite their mutual attraction, the early years of the marriage were plagued by childlessness—with the queen even visiting local shrines in hopes that she might conceive a son. The king and queen’s prayers were answered when the queen discovered she was pregnant; in November of 1525, the queen gave birth—not to a son, but to a daughter. Born on the feast day of Saint Elizabeth of Hungary, the little princess was named Elizabeth. Mary doted upon her daughter and soon spent vast amounts of time in the royal nursery with one of her favored Dutch servants, Jutte Cosijins, named as the princesses’ nursemaid.
Despite this, the shadow of the Turkish scourge hung over Hungary. The conquest of Belgrade nearly four years earlier had exposed the disarray of the Hungarian troops and opened the kingdom for further invasions by the Ottomans. Though Mary was resolute in her campaign for Hungary, she was unable to find much assistance abroad: Charles V in early 1526 remained imprisoned, and the Empress Mary’s concern remained primarily focused on the threat of France—support from the empire remained limited, primarily from Bohemia (which shared a monarch with Hungary) and Bavaria—though the Queen of Hungary was given permission by the empress to recruit from within the Austrian dominions, and it was agreed that the queen should have access to some of the artillery kept stored at Vienna. Aid also came from Poland, with Louis’ uncle, Sigismund the Old, pledging military support. Though the Pope was unable to offer any military resources, he did pledge ƒ50,000 to the Hungarian treasury to assist in paying defense costs. Though Queen Mary was resolute in her attempt to defend Hungary, her reliance on her non-Hungarian advisors meant that few within the ranks of the nobility trusted her. Louis II’s attempts to rally support were positively anemic compared to the queen’s—a fact that was readily apparent to the nobility. “The king is a weak man—he has none of the determination that the queen possesses. If he had only a drop of her blood—then he might prove stronger than he presently is.”
Queen Mary of Hungary & Princess Anne of Hungary.
With the king's weakness, they became the heads
of the pro-Habsburg and pro-National factions, respectively.
The kingdom was divided more than ever—and these divisions also spread into the royal household, with the king torn between his sister and his wife. Relations between the queen and Princess Anne had suffered ups and downs—the pair had ceased speaking for a time in 1519, when there were rumors that the regents of Louis II would repudiate his engagement to Mary and have the young king stand for election as Holy Roman Emperor himself. Though the pair eventually made up, the breaking of Anne’s engagement in 1526 added further tension to their relationship, to the point that Anne’s began to host a court separate from her brother and sister-in-law. Anne’s court began to be frequented by those opposed to the pro-Habsburg policy of the king. One of the prime attendees at Anne’s court was John Zápolya—a magnate and head of the national party. Though his influence had been weakened by his defeat outside Belgrade in 1515, he was still beloved by many of the gentry and lower nobility, and he had connections abroad through his sister, Barbara Zápolya, wife of Sigismund the Old and thus Queen of Poland. Rumors swirled of Zápolya’s interest in Princess Anne—his mother had sought a marriage between the two when Anne was only a child, and Zápolya had also expressed his interest to the late king, Vladislaus II, in 1510 as well. Balázs Szécsi, Princess Anne’s chamberlain, wrote in his diaries that: “The king was all fury when he discovered that Zápolya—a man he had never quite trusted and whose intentions he was never sure of—had paid visits to his sister. The princess was questioned before the whole of the court, with the king demanding to know what had transpired between the pair—and if they had ever met alone. The princess defended herself adroitly: ‘I have done no wrong, both before God and before you as my brother and my sovereign. You have your friends—I am fit to have my own.’ This was not an answer that soothed the king—declaring that as she was fit to have her own friends, she should be fit to have her own establishment away from him—in Olmütz, in Bohemia. The princess departed from her brother on terrible terms—the last time that she saw him. Though the order for her banishment was rescinded when her retinue reached Pozsony, she chose to remain there rather than return to the royal capital.”
The Ottomans began to muster their troops in the spring of 1526, setting out from Constantinople in April. Their army was composed of some 50,000 men, though some claimed upwards of 100,000. The Ottomans' advantage lay mainly in their artillery: they possessed some 300 guns, more than the Hungarians could ever hope to muster. The Ottoman troops also had plenty of arquebuses—made not just by Venetian gunsmiths but by Hungarian gunsmiths as well—an issue that had prompted the Hungarian diet to pass a law banning the export of further guns to the Ottomans in 1525. Given their trajectory north, all knew that their path would take them through Hungary—and that they would likely use the Danube River as their most important transportation source. The main issue lay in Hungary’s lack of fortifications some 250 miles alongside the banks of the river: aside from Pétervárad and Buda, Hungary had no fortifications, towns, or even villages that might serve to slow the Turkish advance—made easier by the Ottoman Grand Vizier, Ibrahim Pasha, constructing a bridge to allow the Turkish troops to cross into Hungarian territory even easier. The Ottoman army marched for nearly eighty days from Constantinople and took five days to cross the Danube into Hungarian lands—encountering no resistance as they did so.
The Turkish incursion into Hungary caused a great tumult and occurred mainly because of the jealousies of the magnates. When news of the Ottoman troops marching forward spread, Louis II was keen to deploy a vanguard of troops to defend the southern border. This plan was frustrated by the great nobility who refused to serve under the king’s chosen deputy, making it clear that they would serve only under the king. The nobility, more concerned with their petty feuds and jealousies, seriously underestimated the situation that they were in and were slow to react to the king’s call for troops. By the time the Ottoman troops were already crossing into Hungarian territory, the Hungarian army was composed of three distinct units: in Transylvania, John Zápolya commanded a force of some 10,000 men, mainly charged with guarding the Transylvanian Mountain passes. The main army, led by the king himself, was composed of 22,000 men—this included some 4,000 armored knights from the noble banderiums and the king’s bodyguard; 4,500 light cavalry, mainly Hussars of Serbian origin; 6,700 Hungarian troops; and 5,300 mercenary troops—composing mainly of German Landsknechte, as well as Italian and Spanish condottiero, financed by the Papal States; and 1,500 infantrymen from Poland—with a small number of artillerymen recruited mainly from the Habsburg domains in Austria. The royal army had perhaps ninety artillery pieces all together—a small amount compared to the Turks. The troops were also well equipped compared to armies in western Europe, and many of the troops were furnished with arquebuses, but they were still outmanned and outgunned by the Turkish forces.
When the Ottomans pressed into Hungary, this left the royal forces separated—Zápolya’s forces were along the Transylvanian border, while Christoph Frankopan had some 5000 troops in Croatia, both of which were too far away to offer any tangible assistance to the king. This meant that the bulk of Louis II’s forces, centered in Buda, were the only means of offering any resistance to the Ottoman invasion—badly outnumbered and outgunned as well. Though the king favored a defensive policy—in effect, ceding ground to the Ottomans rather than fighting them in open battle—the king found himself overruled and swayed by his war council, which desired a quick, immediate strike against the Turkish marauders without waiting for reinforcements from either Zápolya or Croatia. “We are planning for our last stand against this scourge,” Louis II wrote dimly to Charles V—in hopes of convincing the newly freed emperor into sending more aid. “Your help is desired—and needed—more than ever. Stand with us and let us make a grand strike against the Turk.” The emperor never responded to the letter—his focus was on France; he did not understand the urgency of the situation in Hungary and preferred to deal with what he thought were more emergent situations. Hungary could expect no further aid from the Habsburgs—their help remained limited to what Empress Mary had sent earlier in the year. With the royal army still situated around Buda, the Ottoman forces were able to press forward unopposed, moving into the village of Mohács and besieging Pétervárad, Újlak, and Eszék. Louis, along with his council, decided that they would make their defiant stand at the village of Bár—the plains would give plenty of room for the cavalry to maneuver, and the Hungarians hoped to deal with the Turks piece by piece. The Hungarian army was also in better shape—they were well-rested, while the Ottoman troops had just endured a hellish march in the heat of the summer.
Sultan Suleiman following the Victory at Bár.
The Battle of Bar unfolded on September 1st, 1526, and played out over a matter of two hours. While Archbishop Pál Tomori struck a victorious blow against the irregular Rumelian troops and surged the Hungarian line forward, the Hungarians came within striking distance of the Sultan Suleiman, and Hungarian bullets struck the Sultan’s cuirass. As the Hungarians pressed forward, the irregular troops were reinforced with regular troops from the reserves; this, combined with a charge by the elite Janissary regiments, allowed the Ottomans to overwhelm the Hungarian offensive, and their left flank faltered completely. The Hungarians suffered heavy casualties from Turkish artillery fire and musket volleys. The Hungarian army was soon surrounded by the Ottoman cavalry as they outmaneuvered the Hungarian troops to entrap them in a pincer attack. The Hungarian center, composed of heavy knights and infantry, collapsed under the barrage of Turkish fire. The Hungarian royal army was vanquished, and those who refused to flee were killed or captured. During the chaotic retreat, Louis II was killed by a volley of arquebus shots that struck him across his back and his neck, shredding his armor and knocking the king from his horse. When the king was found after the battle in a nearby stream, the water was soaked crimson—his body a mess of bloody viscera. Louis II was the first monarch to be killed in battle by gunfire. The result at Bár was catastrophic for the Hungarians: aside from the king, some 1000 nobles and other military leaders lost their lives, and some 14,000 troops were killed. Sultan Suleiman was in awe at the Hungarian defeat, and believing that it must be a trick, he held back several days before daring to put his troops back on the march. Some 2000 prisoners were executed before the Sultan ordered the army to march onwards—Suleiman watched the massacre from atop a throne of gold.
The death of the king threw the kingdom into complete chaos—news of the defeat and the king’s death reached Queen Mary a day after the battle, which threw the queen into deep mourning. “She is a shadow of herself,” One anonymous courtier wrote. “Pale and shaken—but eyes as determined as ever. Despite the strain of this heavy news, her focus remained entirely upon Hungary—and her daughter, little Elizabeth.” For the rest of her life, the queen would wear a heart-shaped locket that had been worn by the king at Bár and found upon him after his death. In the aftermath of the king’s death, Mary attempted to gather support from across the factions of nobility to proclaim her daughter as Queen of Hungary, with herself as regent. But with the Turkish army marching forward, the idea received very little support. With the kingdom thrown into heavy turmoil, there were many—especially the petty nobility—who looked for a king and military leader to deliver Hungary from its present situation. This was no time for an infant monarch—most especially a girl. Mary was soon pressed by her supporters to take leave from the capital—with the collapse of the royal army, the capital was undefended, and few wished for the queen or for the king’s daughter to fall into Turkish hands. Mary wasted little time and departed from Buda to Viségrad—home to the Holy Crown of Hungary. Mary, like her predecessor Elizabeth of Luxembourg, conspired to smuggle the Holy Crown away from Viségrad—ostensibly to keep it from falling into the clutches of the Turks, but to ensure she would hold the insignia that might make her daughter queen. With the aid of one of the crown guards, Mary arranged for the crown, along with other pieces of the Hungarian crown jewels, to be packed into a trunk with a box of jewels and furs that she had brought along with her. Rather than staying overnight in Viségrad, Mary and her retinue immediately departed, moving at a furious pace until they reached Pozsony, where Mary set up her court—and where Anne had been residing for several months.
Soon after Mary’s escape from Buda, the Ottomans reached the royal capital. Undefended and left for the picking, the Ottomans were merciless as they sacked the capital of the Hungarian crown. They pillaged and seized whatever they could, carrying away treasures from both Buda Castle and the homes of the great magnates. Following their attack on Buda, Sultan Suleiman decided that his work was done. Hungary was now in chaos and would pose no threat to him. Rather than impose a victory or sovereign upon the kingdom, he decided that he would withdraw back to his own domains and allow the nobility to have their petty squabbles. The Ottoman retreat left a power vacuum in Hungary; while Mary ostensibly claimed to be regent as Queen Dowager, a secondary font of power began to develop around John Zápolya—one of the few magnates to come through the Ottoman invasion with his troops intact, as he had not been present at the disastrous Battle of Bár. “I must ask that you send support as soon as possible,” Mary wrote furiously to her brother, the emperor. “Louis is gone, and my situation is more precarious than ever… Elizabeth is the rightful successor, the rightful queen of this kingdom—yet I cannot demand their allegiance from my present position. Each day, the dreaded Zápolya grows stronger… I fear he will clasp the crown from my daughter’s head.” Mary’s fears were well founded—with each passing day, Zápolya’s influence grew stronger, supported by the late king’s sister, Anne.
Engraving of John Zápolya.
Though Anne remained at Pozsony during and through the Battle of Bár, she did not remain long after Mary’s arrival. When Zápolya arrived in Buda, he wrote to the princess, stating, “The way is clear now for you to return to Buda, where you rightfully belong. There is no need for you to sulk in exile—that is the place of the late queen, not you. Her time has ended. Your time is now. Come to Buda. I await; I wish to be your husband—and I wish to be your king. And you shall be my queen.” Anne certainly found herself drawn to Zápolya’s wishes and desires—his ambition and his need for power were beyond attractive to a princess who had spent over a decade engaged to a man she had never met. It was little surprise that Anne decided that her fate belonged with John Zápolya—when her options were limited to a possible exile in Bohemia or Poland, with no say or control over her own fate. Princess Anne arrived in Buda in October of 1526—shortly after her arrival, she married John Zápolya secretly at Buda Castle. A month later, Zápolya summoned a diet at Székesfehérvár, which consisted primarily of the lower nobility. The diet voted not only to grant Princess Anna the revenues and lands previously held by Queen Mary, which were taken from her, but also to offer the Hungarian crown to John Zápolya. Zápolya duly accepted the offer of the diet and was proclaimed King of Hungary the next day—he was crowned, but without the Holy Crown, which was discovered to be missing.
While many of the lesser nobles had sided with Zápolya, there remained an important faction of magnates who remained attached to the pro-Habsburg cause of Queen Mary. A rump diet consisting of pro-Habsburg magnates was hosted at Pozsony in December of 1526—the diet not only declared that Princess Elizabeth was Louis II’s legitimate heiress but also named Mary as regent of the kingdom. The young Elizabeth was crowned using the Holy Crown, and the stage was soon set for a division of the kingdom into warring factions—but Zápolya, with his Transylvanian troops, remained one of the most potent forces in Hungary. “When the king discovered that the late queen had absconded with the Holy Crown, he was furious,” Wrote one of Zápolya’s supporters in his memoirs. “He wrote to the late queen, demanding that the crown be returned to him. In return, he promised to ensure that the queen would be granted a suitable establishment for her widowhood and that funds for Princess Elizabeth would be provided as well.” It was clear that Zápolya did not recognize the claims of Mary or her supporters about the late king’s daughter, rendering any sort of solution between the two squabbling factions impossible and ensuring that they could not collaborate against the future Ottoman threat. The envoys of King John soon fanned out across Europe, seeking support and recognition, with France offering positive support to Hungary’s new king.
Mary’s lack of support from her brother the emperor put her into a precarious situation—the only military forces at her disposal were the 5000 troops that had been raised in Croatia by Christoph Frankopan—who remained an adherent[1] to the queen and her cause, becoming one of her primary and most trusted advisors. The queen, in return, lavished rewards upon the Frankopan family—one of her first decrees was to mandate the return of lands and estates seized from the Frankopan family by King Matthias in 1469—lands they had tried to reclaim in vain in 1523. It was little surprise that the divisions in Hungary soon spilled over into Croatia: dueling diets were held at Samobor and Virovitica; while the Samobor Diet was prepared to recognize the rights of Elizabeth to her father’s inheritance, the Virovitica Diet, composed mostly of the lower Slavonian nobility, supported John Zápolya as their rightful king. Mary would name Christoph as Ban of Croatia—while Zápolya would support John Tahy for the role.
In this difficult period, Mary would draw much solace from religion—but not the Orthodox Catholicism of her family. Martin Luther sent the queen a booklet as well as four psalms, which he dedicated to her and Princess Elizabeth, providing much-needed relief to the queen in the difficult days of her widowhood. Mary began a correspondence with Luther, writing in one letter that, “Your words have been of much comfort to me in these most difficult times—when I am alone and must be a rock for not only my daughter, but so many others… It is hard to believe the years I spent with a veil over my eyes—a veil which you have lifted with your teachings…” Mary took into her household Matthias Dévai Biro as her court preacher—a Franciscan priest with Protestant sympathies. He would later study at Wittenburg under both Martin Luther and Philip Melanchthon. The disastrous defeat at Bár had practically neutered the Hungarian church; over half of its bishops perished in battle, and the grave unrest meant that neither John Zápolya nor Mary were willing to enforce the anti-Lutheran edicts that had been passed in 1523. The chaotic situation in Hungary helped make the kingdom fertile ground for the reformation and its ideas. Mary’s flirtation with Protestantism caused dismay among some of her supporters—most especially the heavily Catholic Croats—and caused issues with her brother, the emperor, as well, who urged Mary to dismiss Biro and cease any active contact with Luther.
Landscape with a large cannon, c. 1518.
These squabbles gave Zápolya the upper hand, for divisions among Mary’s supporters weakened her own cause desperately. In 1528, Zápolya’s cause grew as he overcame the troops of Christoph Frankopan at the Battle of Varazdin, with Frankopan killed in battle. With Mary’s prime military force in Hungary now vanquished, Zápolya ordered his troops to move into western Hungary, where Mary’s adherents had set up their rival governments, with their first task being to seize Pozsony—and to take the queen dowager and little princess as captives. With the deteriorating situation, Mary was urged by her supporters to leave Hungary and seek refuge. Though Mary was reluctant to give up the fight, she knew that she could not remain. “The queen was valiant in those last hours,” Ursula Röhr, an attendant to the queen, wrote in her private diary. “Despite the worries of the servants, her courage put everyone to rest. Due to the haste with which the queen needed to depart, she knew that she would be forced to take only what was necessary, and her primary concern was the Holy Crown of Hungary. She ordered it packed into a trunk with a hidden compartment… with the trunk packed with the queen’s most mundane items: her chemises. The trunk was scented with valerian and garlic—giving it a most noxious odor to ward away curiosities…” When King John’s troops captured Pozsony after a brief siege, the queen and her daughter were long gone, having crossed the frontier into Bohemia. The king was infuriated to discover that she had escaped—but more than that, she had escaped with the Holy Crown. Some of Mary’s jewelry—those not pawned from her already dim collection—was abandoned by the queen in her haste to escape from Hungary. John Zápolya gleefully appropriated what remained left behind and bestowed the jewels upon his wife. Several trunks of silk and gowns were also discovered, which Anne happily divided among her suite of ladies.
Mary was safe—and she soon found refuge in the city of Brün, in Bohemia. The death of Louis II had left Bohemia in an interregnum—in 1497, it was agreed that Bohemia could elect its next king should their monarch die without heirs, but some argued that the king did have a potential heir: Princess Elizabeth. Princess Anne, the late king’s sister—now Queen of Hungary—was discounted because of her marriage to John Zápolya; it had been performed without the consent of the Bohemian Diet, and thus her succession rights were considered void[2]. John Zápolya also had no interest in pursuing the Bohemian Crown; his focus was on Hungary and ensuring his reign was undisputed there. Aside from Louis’ daughter, there were also potential successors from among the great Bohemian nobility; there were the two grandsons of George of Podiebrad: Charles, the Duke of Münsterberg-Oels, and Frederick II, the Duke of Legnica. Znedek of Rozmital, the Supreme Burgrave, and Vojtech of Pernstejn, a Moravian magnate. There were also possible foreign candidates: John, the Elector of Saxony; George, the Duke of Saxony—as a son of Sidonie Podiebrad; Joachim, the Elector of Brandenburg; Louis X, the Duke of Bavaria—and even King François of France. Support for the next monarch coalesced around three separate parties: those supporting the rights of Princess Elizabeth—this included those who wished to keep close relations to the House of Habsburgs; supporters of the Duke of Bavaria; and those who wished to continue a connection with the House of Jagiellon—supporting the candidacy of the King of Poland.
During the interregnum, the previous administration had continued to govern the kingdom according to its customs and laws while maintaining correspondence with Queen Mary and the Emperor, who had his own interest in the potential election for the Bohemian crown, not wishing for its electoral vote to slip too far from the Habsburgs grasps. Despite his unease with Mary’s contact with Luther, the emperor wrote a tender letter to his sister when news reached him of her safe arrival: “I am gladdened to hear that you have passed out of Hungary safely—though of course it is most unhappy news; I regret that more cannot be done in Hungary… but I am beyond pleased that you are safe.” The emperor’s concern was not merely fraternal; in 1527, Charles V’s wife, the Empress Mary, had safely delivered a son, who had been christened Maximilian, providing the emperor with a male heir nearly six years since the mysterious death of his eldest son, Philip. The emperor saw his sister’s daughter as a prime bride for his son, considering her potential inheritance: Bohemia—along with her rights to Hungary.
View of Prague, c. 16th Century.
Mary stayed for a short time in Brünn before proceeding to Prague. The queen was given a lavish welcome. While her sympathies for Luther had perhaps alienated some of her supporters in Hungary, her views were not unwelcome among the Ultraquist nobility—even those who remained attached to the Catholic Church, such as the Duke of Münsterberg, had a keen interest in Luther’s writings. Queen Mary was allowed to take up residence in Prague Castle and was given access to her dower, giving her an income for the first time since 1526. Arrangements were made for the Bohemian Diet to be summoned in the summer of 1528 to decide Bohemia’s future course. Louis X emptied his coffers to provide bribes to the Bohemian nobility, which damaged his reputation among the nobility. Throughout the spring, the position of Mary was improved when the Diets of Moravia and Silesia—having been excluded from the planned meeting of the Bohemian Diet—recognized Princess Elizabeth’s hereditary rights within those provinces. The Diet of Bohemia was formally opened in July 1528 by Znedek of Rozmital as Supreme Burgrave of Bohemia; Queen Mary was in attendance, seated upon the dais, and she was invited to speak to the assembled men of the diet. “Milords—I thank you for your generosity at a time when it has been so heavily needed. I am but a poor widow, forced to endure the horror after horror that has unfolded since the death of my lord husband, your sovereign king. You have provided the necessary succor not only to his widow but also to his daughter; she is all that remains of him, and it is her, Elizabeth, that is his legitimate heiress.” While it was a radical suggestion that Elizabeth—a young girl of three—should succeed to the Bohemian throne, many within the diet knew that Elizabeth’s succession would come with the backing of support from the emperor—as well as his domains within Austria, of which Queen Mary remained Governor. Mary’s sympathies for Luther also eased the concerns of the Ultraquist nobility—they had little desire to elect someone such as the Duke of Bavaria, who had helped quash the reformation in his own domains.
Though the diet was open to the idea of recognizing Elizabeth’s hereditary rights and elevating her mother to the position of regent, the nobility had certain concerns and demands—laid out in the Capitulation of Prague, which Mary was expected to sign. This included recognition of the Vladislav Land Orders that had been passed in 1500, as well as pledges that no foreigners would be granted political office within the kingdom, nor would they be granted pensions or estates without express agreement from the Diet. It was also agreed that the diet should have a say in Elizabeth’s future marriage, and any future marriage treaty would be subject to the diet’s approval. Other articles of the capitulation concerned Elizabeth and her future position as Queen of Bohemia—it was agreed that her future husband should be crowned King of Bohemia and co-reign alongside her, making it clear that the Bohemian nobility mainly saw Elizabeth’s potential position as queen as an aberration—and one that could be fixed once a suitable husband was found for her. Rather than elevate a dynamic man who might become a strong king, the nobility had elected instead to elevate a young girl[3]—with her mother as regent. The hopes of the Bohemian nobility did not lie in finding a strong husband for their new little monarch—better a young queen, to be joined later by a weak king: to give the nobility all the say they desired over the crown and the kingdom.
[1] In OTL, Christoph Frankopan was attached to the Habsburg cause until he was swayed to Zápolya’s side. Given his increased influence here re: Queen Mary, he remains attached to the imperial cause.
[2] This happened in OTL as well; the Bohemian Estates did not give their consent to Anne’s marriage to Ferdinand, either: her inheritance rights were not recognized, and Ferdinand had to be elected king.
[3]I've found nothing to suggest that women were barred from the Bohemian throne. At best, Bohemia perhaps had a semi-salic law. Bohemian Princesses clearly had some rights of inheritance / succession, given that Anne of Bohemia's rights were debated IOTL, and some provinces (Moravia, Silesia) accepted said rights. In this situation, the election of a young female monarch is purely cynical; the great magnates and nobles hope to dominate the government during the regency, with the intention of finding a weak prince to serve as their future king.
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This was a big one! And very interesting at that! Now, I’m hoping for Elisabeth and Maximilian to marry when they are older. With Austria, Bohemia and the Netherlands under one monarch, there might be hope for the empire to get itself together. Especially since there’s no Spain or Hungary to throw ressources at as well