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# A King Elected but not Crowned

Thus nothing definitive was accomplished by the Pozsony diet, which merely endorsed an armistice. That accord was signed by Bethlen and representatives of Ferdinand II on 23 January, 1620. One of its provisions was that a diet, convoked on 31 May, would resolve by 'beneficial means' the conflicts 'between His Majesty, the Church, and the country's other orders.'[47]47. R. Gooss, Staatsverträge, p. 491. Everyone knew that this would be the occasion for the partisans of the two rulers to reach a final decision.

Aristocrats and envoys gathered at Besztercebánya in a mood of tense anticipation. There was great pomp and circumstance, focusing on Bethlen, when, on 3 July, everyone assembled to debate the terms of peace. Those present included the allied Czech-Bohemian-Austrian orders, the king of Poland, and representatives of the Porte. The prince rightly observed in his opening address that {2-73.} never before had a Hungarian diet been graced by such magnificent deputations. The storm broke when the emissaries of Ferdinand II made their belated appearance, for they conveyed the king's refusal to include Bethlen's allies in the negotiations. That precondition, implying a separate peace, was not acceptable to the Bethlen camp. The king's men returned to Vienna several times for consultations, but they brought no concessions, and thus a break was inevitable. Ferdinand's envoys rejected in advance any decision taken by the diet and, casting blame for renewed hostilities on the orders, left for Vienna on 17 August. Bethlen had won a battle, but he and his followers would have to pay for the victory.

It was the Porte's envoy who presented the bill. There was no precedent for his attendance at a Hungarian diet, and for the feudal orders to debate in the presence of the 'eternal enemy'. They must have been stunned when he rose to read the sultan's message: 'If you want to elect a king for yourselves, choose one who is just towards you and is truly well-intentioned towards our Sublime Porte, then we will keep the holy peace with him, and hold him as well as Hungary in high esteem.'[48]48. TMÁO, p. 225.

Barely two years had passed since the diet heard the very opposite message, when it was debating the election of Ferdinand II. At that time, the members, most of whom were now assembled at Besztercebánya, had been persuaded that only the Habsburgs could rid them of the Turks and, laying aside their antipathy, made Ferdinand their king. And now they heard the Porte offering its support if they elected a 'truly well-intentioned' king.

In fact, Bethlen had some difficulty in extracting this promise from the sultan, for he was opposed by a powerful faction at the Porte. It appears that a political movement headed by Esad, who became Mufti in 1615, had from the very beginning disapproved of the prince's undertaking in Hungary. On the other hand, the party opposed to the Mufti explicitly promoted Bethlen's accession to the Hungarian throne; its covert intention was to draw a Hungary ruled {2-74.} by Bethlen into the Turkish orbit, on the model of Transylvania. In the late 1610s, the leading proponent of this strategy was Mehmed Gurdji, a wise diplomat of Georgian origin who was the divan's expert on the western regions of the empire. It was Gurdji who frequently counselled Bethlen's emissaries on ways to avoid the traps set by Esad; on one occasion, he had even 'delivered' to the latter a forged letter from Bethlen. Upon hearing of Matthias II's death, Gurdji had urged Bethlen to take advantage of the opportunity, and, in the summer of 1619, encouraged Bethlen to launch his offensive. In 1620, Gurdji fell out of favor, and while he bounced back two years later to become grand vizier, he was not able to assist Bethlen's emissaries at this critical juncture.

In any case, there was much confusion at the Porte in January 1620. Both the new, hot-tempered grand vizier, Pasha Ali Chelebi, and the megalomaniacal sultan, Osman II acted in an erratic manner. Much to the amazement of foreign envoys, they toyed with the idea of supporting Ferdinand II instead of Bethlen. However, the Porte needed to put its affairs in order before proceeding with a planned attack on Poland, and, in the process, the policy based on the hope that Hungary would be drawn into the Turkish orbit prevailed. Bethlen thus received the Porte's promise of support in his quest for the throne.

This was the message conveyed by the Porte's envoy to the Besztercebánya diet, and addressed in a major speech by the Transylvanian chancellor, Simon Péchi. The arguments he advanced in justification echoed those that had been made earlier with reference to Archduke Ferdinand. Péchi was an eminently adaptable diplomat; he marshalled his considerable skills to persuade a doubting audience that it was the Catholic church hierarchy which had driven the Hungarians to fight on behalf of Europe against the Turks, and that this was part of the Pope's devious strategy to exterminate the Hungarians. The scheme failed, continued Péchi, because the Turks, though pagans, abided by the peace treaty {2-75.} concluded with John Sigismund and resisted Western incitement to destroy Hungary. This experience showed that the Turks were trustworthy, and that alliance with the Porte could make the country's future secure. Hungary and Transylvania are one, concluded Péchi, and their joint future must be fashioned on the model of the principality. The diet must therefore reach a decision on this important matter. In the event, the politicians had little choice: by turning their back on the Habsburg king, they lost any hope of driving out the Turks, and thus they had to accept the protection of the Porte. Following Gabriel Bethlen, they reversed their former policy.

Bethlen, in turn, accommodated the demands of the feudal orders. He accepted to be elected king and to sign the electoral charter. In keeping with the agreed protocol, he was ceremonially acclaimed king on 25 August 1620. Seated on a throne of gold and red silk, Bethlen received the homage of the estates and heard the cheer, prompted by Imre Thurzó, 'Long Live King Gábor'.[49]49. I. Katona, Historia critica, pp. 480-81. His new subjects then withdrew to draft laws undreamed of by the most radical theorists of an ideal feudal state. There must have been little debate, for the fifty-two articles were drawn up by August 29, and there was nothing exceptional in the tenor of the laws. They fitted the needs of the moment, but their tone differed from any previous legislation passed by a Hungarian diet. It was not customary to provide for oversight of measures that involved the monarch, yet the diet now ruled that it would review grants made by the king out of the Church's estates; that the treasurer would be fully empowered to manage state revenues; and that a commission of the diet would settle outstanding issues involving the previous ruler. The members of this commission were drawn from the three parts of the country, and included seven magnates, seven noblemen, and three burghers.

Thus, although the estates had rallied to Bethlen and elected him king, these articles and the electoral charter limited his powers to the convocation of diets and the promulgation of laws. The new {2-76.} king put his signature on the law, thereby legitimating an unprecedented restriction of the monarch's rights, but his gesture was little more than a necessary courtesy: having obtained the diet's assent to Turkish overlordship, he allowed those assembled at Besztercebánya to enjoy a momentary sense of superior power. In all probability, he let them prevail because he did not attach great importance to this essentially subjective perception; he must have known that the impact of laws was shaped not by the intentions of the drafters but by the modalities of implementation. His relationship with his new subjects would be determined not by the diet's resolutions but by everyday practice.

Bethlen was adamant on one point: he refused to be crowned. This odd choice is commonly attributed to his prescience; he allegedly anticipated the failure of his enterprise and thus shrank from temporarily assuming the country's supreme symbol. This hypothesis would be more plausible if there was additional evidence that Bethlen could make wholly irrational decisions; and that is not the case. Indeed, it would have been more like him to take the crown in a penultimate attempt to safeguard his power. However, he may have anticipated the very opposite of failure; and the hope of victory may have prompted him to temporize until he could be crowned, according to Hungarian custom, by the archbishop of Esztergom. There is no evidence that, prior to mid-November 1620, he entertained any thought of defeat. On the contrary: he ruled in determined fashion, thereby transgressing the limits set by the feudal orders.

Disappointment awaited those Hungarian politicians who thought that Bethlen would be a submissive and accommodating ruler. Setting aside charter and restrictive law, he sought to gain absolute control over the country. The constraints imposed by the estates threatened to weaken not only his personal power but also the efficacy of his political movement. For one thing, it was simply not practicable to involve the feudal institutions and convoke the {2-77.} crown council at short notice in a situation that required quick decisions. Instead of the laborious, periodic collection of income from Church estates, he found it more expedient to mortgage these properties when the need arose. It became a senseless luxury to pay an army to defend the border at a time when relations with the Porte seemed settled and the most pressing necessity was to muster strength against Ferdinand II. This gave rise to an irresolvable dilemma.

The feudal orders could accept Bethlen's state only if it allowed free rein to the exercise of their rights. Yet the survival of that state was contingent on military victory, and such victory could not be won without constraints on these rights.

A further complication lay in the evolving relations with the Porte. The support given by the Turks brought new dangers. Hardly had Buda's pasha, Mehmed Karakas, gone on a war footing before he occupied Vác. To be sure, he acted without the consent of Constantinople, where Bethlen's supporters understood that the attack imposed great strain on Hungarian-Turkish relations and proceeded to have the governor dismissed. The pasha's initiative nevertheless had a powerful impact on public opinion: it conjured up the possibility that victory over the Habsburgs would usher in a dangerous situation in which the Hungarians, ruled by a monarch committed to the Porte, would be at the mercy of the Turks.

On the one hand, Bethlen's measures to promote the efficacy of his political movement made the situation unstable; on the other hand, the loss of Vác raised questions about the benefits of an eventual victory. That Turkish action came at the worst possible moment, in early November 1620. The country was already seething at the loss brought about by the Turks' 'support' when news came of Ferdinand II's great military victory at Prague.