1566 to 1664.
Soliman was succeeded on the throne by Selim II., son of a favourite slave, Roxalana. The male issue of the other inmates of the royal harem, whether wives or concubines, had been remorselessly sacrificed to secure the undisputed succession of one who proved the first of his race to set an example of degeneracy from the qualities which had made his predecessors the terror of Christendom. Under the rule of Soliman the power and reputation of the Porte had reached a point of elevation from which it rapidly declined under his sensual and inactive successor, and to which it has never re-ascended. The structure, indeed, raised by the warrior founders of the Ottoman dynasty, survived, without suffering material injury or diminution, too long for the peace and safety of Europe; but this permanence was due less to its own solidity than to the jealousies and dissensions of the Christian powers, political and religious, but more especially the latter. Within two years of Selim’s accession, in 1568, he concluded with the Emperor Maximilian an armistice on the basis of their respective occupation of territory, by which the Turk remained in possession of Lower Hungary. In 1575 this compact was renewed for eight years. The younger Zapolya had previously agreed that after his decease the government of Transylvania should devolve by election upon a Wayvode, a subject of the crown of Hungary; and on his death, in 1571, Steven von Bathory had been accordingly elected. This prince subsequently attained the crown of Poland, and in 1589 his cousin, Sigismund, made over Transylvania to Hungary. In 1590, in the reign of Rodolph II., son and successor to Maximilian, war again broke out between Austria and Turkey, and was prosecuted with much bitterness, but with alternations of success which led to no important results. In 1595 the Turks, after twoyears of discomfiture, recovered themselves so far as to approach the Austrian frontier in force, and seriously to threaten Vienna. The landsturm of that city was called out, and the defences were strengthened in all haste; but the force of Turkish invasion spent itself upon Upper Hungary. Several strong places in that district having been surrendered, as was alleged, by treason and cowardice, Vienna became during several years the scene of bloody executions. Thus, in 1595, Ferdinand Count Hardegg, and several of his officers, expiated on the scaffold the surrender of Raab. In the same year an engineer, Francis Diano, was executed on a charge of having undertaken to blow up the Rothenthurm bastion on the appearance of a Turkish force. Raab, after three years and a half possession by the Turks, was retaken by the Austrian commanders, Rodolph Schwarzenberg and Nicholas Palfy, an important service which the Emperor Rodolph acknowledged by the erection of columnar monuments, and by the addition of a raven to the escutcheon of the Schwarzenbergs. One of the columns remains to this day in the neighbourhood of Mödling. In 1600 a mutinous project for the surrender of the fortress Papa was detected and suppressed by summary execution, and fifteen of the leaders were reserved for a more terrible example at Vienna, twelve of whom were quartered and three impaled. It would be tedious and disgusting to pursue the list of similar atrocities perpetrated both at Vienna and in the frontier fortresses. The Austrian authorities would appear to have considered that the devices of Oriental cruelty were the only remedies or preventives for treason and cowardice, and to have overlooked the fact that many of the misdemeanours so savagely punished were attributable to their own maladministration, to the inactivity of the Emperor, and to the maltreatment and non-payment of the soldiery. In 1609 the Archduke Mathias assumed the practical exercise of sovereignty, and on his formal succession to the imperial throne on the death of Rodolph in 1612, he transferred the imperial residence from Prague to Vienna. Under his administration better measures were applied to the existing evils than those which had, by their use and their failure, disgraced the reign of Rodolph. Mathias found himself shortly after his coronation compelled to prepare for a renewal of hostilities with the Turks,who were now in possession of the whole of Hungary and Transylvania, in addition to Moldavia and Wallachia. When, however, he made application to the states of the empire, the Protestants, by far the majority, excused themselves on the allegation that no powers had been delegated to them to furnish aid to a Turkish war, and they recommended forbearance and delay in dealing with the hereditary enemy of Christendom. Mathias had no resource but to conclude an armistice for twenty years, which the Turks, on their part, exhausted by the long previous struggle, and no longer led by such a ruler as Soliman, were not reluctant to accept. They retained, however, their conquests. This truce was observed with scrupulous and unshaken fidelity by the Turks under five feeble successors of Selim II., (Murad III., Mohammed III., Achmet I., Mustapha I., Osman II.) By this honourable forbearance, practised under strong temptation of advantage from its infraction and in resistance to the allurements of Christian powers, especially of France, Austria during the thirty years’ war enjoyed immunity from attack on the most assailable portion of her frontier. Even Amurath IV., who ascended the throne in 1623, and was the first of Soliman’s successors who showed symptoms of a warlike spirit, concluded a fresh truce with Austria, and thus the Turks remained tranquil through the first half of the seventeenth century. In fact, the moral energy of their race had declined while civilization and attendant power had progressed in Christian Europe, and no exertion could have raised them to their former elevation. Amurath’s son and successor Ibrahim, notorious for his vices and cruel actions, was strangled in 1648. He was succeeded by Mohammed IV., a boy seven years of age, during whose minority confusion reigned supreme. His grandmother and mother contended for power, and Janissaries and Spahis fought over the dead bodies of viziers, murdered in rapid succession for the spoil, till they met,A. D.1656, with a master in the energetic Mohammed Kinperli. Under his administration internal licence was repressed by measures of salutary severity, and when foreign war again broke out it was conducted by him in a manner which revived the terror of the Turkish name. This war had its origin in the troubles of Hungary and Transylvania. The Transylvanians, on the death of their sovereign George Rakoczy, secondof that name, elected as his successor a distinguished leader of his army, John Kemeni, who entered into an alliance with the Emperor Leopold I. At the instigation, however, of the Turkish Vizier, a faction of Hungarian nobles set up a rival candidate, Michael Apafi. Kemeni was defeated and slain in the battle of Nagy Szollos, fought against a Turkish force in 1662. Apafi seized on the government, cancelled all the measures adopted by Kemeni, and in an assembly of the States outlawed the adherents of Austria. He failed, however, in all his attempts upon the places occupied by German garrisons, and the presence of a so-called auxiliary Turkish force was a scourge rather than a protection to the exhausted country. In 1663 Apafi was compelled to lead his forces in the train of the Vizier Achmed Kinperli, son of Mohammed, who was marching upon Hungary with the intention and expectation of annihilating the power of Austria. The advance of the Turks was so rapid and unimpeded that Vienna once more trembled at the prospect of a siege. The measures for defence, of destruction, and repair were, as usual in the moment of danger, commenced in haste, and prosecuted with more confusion than real despatch.
The progress of the Turks was favoured by disputes between the civil and military authorities of Austria, and the Vizier was thus allowed, without opposition, to secure the open country of Transylvania, and to reduce the important fortress of Neuhaüsel. After these successes he marched with his main army on Raab, with the project of exciting alarm for the safety of Styria, and then of suddenly flinging himself upon Vienna. It was, however, the good fortune of the Emperor Leopold to possess at this period the services of the only great commander of the moment, Raymond, Count of Montecuculi, as general of his forces in Hungary. On the 1st of August, 1669, this leader overthrew the Turks, in numbers fourfold greater than his own, with the loss of 17,000 men and all their artillery, in the memorable battle of St. Gothard. The armistice of Basvar followed close upon this victory. Twenty years were specified for its duration, but the civil and religious troubles of Hungary, and the severities by which Leopold sought to suppress them, led to its earlier infraction.