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# The Mutual Indifference of the Allies and Rákóczi's Final Plans

The Swedish commander, Torstensson, was compelled to lift the siege of Brünn when the prince recalled Zsigmond Rákóczi and his associates. The prince tried to explain that he himself had been instructed by Constantinople to return home, but this must have been a disingenuous pretext; in fact, the Porte's orders had reached him back in June 1645, at which time he replied through his ambassador, István Serédi, that while he might have been able to call off his campaign before the start, he could not incur the dishonor of turning back. Rákóczi had also instructed his envoy to offer, but on no account actually pay, money to the grand vizier. In the event, no money changed hands. When, in September, Serédi informed the grand vizier that his master 'had obeyed the great emperor's orders' and concluded peace, the Turkish dignitary seemed 'singularly unimpressed'. In Serédi's lame explanation, 'what choice had His Highness but to make peace with the German and submit to Your Highness?' At the end of the interview, Pasha Mehmed complained: 'Why did your master make peace? We had even replaced the commander of Buda to please him.'[78]78. A. Beke and S. Barabás, eds., I. Rákóczi György és a Porta (Buda-pest, 1888), pp. 778-79. When the ambassador reported on the meeting to Rákóczi, he gave no indication that the grand vizier really wanted the prince to return home.

{2-128.} Unaware of these circumstances, Rákóczi's allies found his explanation eminently plausible. In any case, they soon seemed to have less need for his help: from August 1645 onwards, the fortunes of war smiled on the anti-Habsburg forces. Although Torstensson had been forced to withdraw from Moravia to Bohemia, on August 3 the Hessians and a French army crushed the Bavarians at Allersheim; on August 25, Denmark and Sweden made peace at Brömsebro, allowing the Swedish forces to concentrate on the war against the Habsburgs; Königsmark, Queen Christina's general, occupied a large chunk of Saxony and, in early September, compelled that state's prince-elector to declare neutrality. Thus most of the German empire fell to the anti-Habsburg powers: the Swedes policed the northern, and the French the southern regions. That fall and winter, they exploited the ceasefire to prepare for a decisive assault on the hereditary provinces.

In the campaign of 1646–47, it was the imperial forces that gained the upper hand. Torstensson's successor, General Wrangel, was about to lay siege to Prague in the summer of 1648 when orders came to pull back. The peace talks that had been going on for years at Münster and Osnabrück finally bore fruit.

The outcome reflected the utter disregard of the western allies for the Habsburgs' Czech kingdom, and thus underscored the hopelessness of altering Hungary's fate with the aid of the western coalition in the Thirty Years' War. That great conflict had been sparked off by the revolt in Prague. The Dutch and the German Protestants had resorted to all manner of diplomatic manipulation in order to exploit that revolt and spark off a great European war, but they offered little tangible assistance to the Czechs. The latter's revolt was crushed early in the Thirty Years' War, when the imperial forces still had the upper hand. In 1635, after Sweden and France had joined the fray, a partial peace was concluded that covered the Czech lands. This left the resolution of the Czech problem up to the emperor, and the allies were never prepared to reconsider this decision. {2-129.} When, in the summer of 1648, the envoys of Ferdinand III — the losing party — concluded the Peace of Westphalia, the earlier provision regarding the Czech lands was left to stand. The emperor's effective authority had been drastically trimmed; he was forced to concede vast territories and to pay reparations to half of Europe. His Czech kingdom aroused no interest; it did not earn a single mention in the wordy Treaty of Westphalia.

The fate of the Czech lands confirmed that Europe's great powers were interested in Hungary and its neighbors only to the extent that the latter could serve their own conflicting pursuits. They cared as little about Bethlen's or Rákóczi's objectives as about the Czechs' national aspirations. They considered the region to be part of the Habsburg sphere of influence, and had no wish to alter this situation. Nor should their attitude cause any surprise. International politics leave no room for altruism, and Transylvania's princes were no different from the rest: they supported the western allies only to the extent of their own interests. Bethlen abandoned his allies at Vienna, and György Rákóczi I did the same at Brünn. Once he had concluded the agreement on Hungary, Rákóczi was only interested in winning recognition for his country in the reshaped Europe, and thus to be a signatory to the Treaty of Westphalia. By dint of great diplomatic effort, he obtained his wish, and this despite the fact that he had concluded a separate peace in 1645. But the treaty contained no substantive reference to Hungary, which everyone considered to belong to the emperor's sphere.

By the time peace returned to Europe, Rákóczi was already embroiled in new international schemes. He had been approached by the prince of Ostrorog, Janusz Radziwiłł, with a proposal for action against the Turks. The initiative, which came from King Wladislaw IV, suffered the fate of many such projects. In the euphoria that greeted the new era of peace, there was much speculation about a Christian crusade against the 'pagan' Turks, but no {2-130.} one was ready to pass to the act. Yet Radziwiłł's talks with the prince were not entirely fruitless, for they sowed the seeds of a new, eastern coalition against the Habsburgs. And part of the scheme was to put Zsigmond Rákóczi on the throne of Poland.

Prince Janusz was well-suited to the diplomatic task of rallying Poland's neighbors. His noble antecedents and engaging personality put him in the social elite, and his cultivation and elegant style served him well in domestic politics. Although he was a member of the king's inner circle, he never forgot his Lithuanian origins, and, as a token of his political independence, he abstained from adhering to Poland's established Church. The Protestants, who similarly kept their distance, called themselves dissidents and regarded him as their leader. He moved purposefully to forge foreign links: in February 1645, his son was joined in marriage to Maria, daughter of Moldavia's Voivode Vasile.

Zsigmond Rákóczi was designated to join this political circle. The plans called for his marriage to the voivode's other daughter, Irene, who had been educated in Constantinople; he would thus become related to the mighty Radziwiłłs, and this, along with the support of Moldavia's boyars, would buttress his claim to the Polish throne. Naturally he would also be backed by Transylvania, through his father or, by succession, his brother. Transylvania's western contacts, nurtured in the Thirty Years' War, could also aid his cause. With all this backing from east and west, Zsigmond Rákóczi had a chance to become king of a major power, Poland.

The scheme proved to be well-timed, for King Wladislaw IV fell ill and died in the spring of 1648; it drew further impetus from the concurrent revolt of Cossacks in Poland. The movement of the Ukrainian Cossacks had an unforeseeable impact on Polish society and the politics of eastern Europe. For the first time, György Rákóczi I seized the diplomatic initiative. While Europe dithered over the problem of the rebellious Cossacks, he wrote to their ataman, Bohdan Khmelnytsky, to request support for Zsigmond's {2-131.} royal claim. In the fall of 1648, the ataman replied that, in memory István Báthori, he would do as bid. In shaky Latin, he waxed poetic about the late king: 'He spread his wings and sheltered us with his kindness as if we were his sons, and we have preserved many of the privileges and liberties that he granted to us.'[79]79. S. Szilágyi, ed., Erdély és az észak-keleti háború I (Budapest, 1890), p. 6.

Prince György Rákóczi I did not live long enough to read these fine words. He died on 11 October 1648, leaving the implementation of his plans up to his sons György and Zsigmond.