Előremenekülés. A harmincéves háború mint megoldás az Erdélyi Fejedelemség hatalmi válságára
Fleeing Forward: The Thirty Years’ War as a Solution to Transylvania’s Crisis

Summary/Abstract: With the resignation of Sigismund Báthory from the princely title in 1597, a long-lasting crisis started in Transylvania. During the Long Ottoman War of the turn of the 17th century, practically each year new candidates surfaced to win the throne for themselves with Habsburg, Ottoman, or Polish support. This trend did not stop with the Peace of Zsitvatorok in 1606: the position of the Transylvanian princes was threatened by armed competitors on an almost biannual basis. Gabriel Bethlen (1613-1629) was the prince who managed to stop the trend, although in the first years of his rule he also had to endure an attempt for deposition from the direction of the Kingdom of Hungary and was in a weak position to resist Ottoman pressure because he had earned the throne with military support of the sultan’s army. This paper argues that Bethlen managed to escape from these dire straits by fleeing forward and entering the war which started with the Bohemian uprising in 1618. His successes (despite the uprising’s collapse in 1620) and the ensuing Thirty Years’ War made sure that Bethlen did not have to worry about threats coming from the Habsburg Empire. More surprisingly, this also brought him relief in the sultan’s realm: the fact that he brought to the Sublime Porte representatives of the confederated lands gave him so much credit that in the 1620s he could enjoy a position in the Ottoman world of politics which lacks any parallel among the princes of Transylvania.

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