Brian Sandberg

Going Off to the War in Hungary: French Nobles and Crusading Culture in the Sixteenth Century

 

Crusading culture played a significant role in the conceptions and practices of religious warfare in the Early Modern Period, as French authors and militant nobles redeployed Hungary as a crucial theater of crusading war. Examining crusading warfare in Hungary reveals new facets of warrior nobles’ military activities in early modern France and abroad, building on recent studies of French noble culture. The article concludes that French readers developed notions of crusading warfare in part through reports of the war in Hungary, contributing to a burgeoning literature on the production, diffusion, and reception of early modern news and information across Europe.

 

Keywords: crusading warfare, Early Modern Hungary, French nobles, noble culture.

 

Louis de Gonzague, duc de Nevers, lamented the disastrous defeat of the Hungarian army at the battle of Mohács (1526) in a treatise written during the French Wars of Religion (1562–1629), as Catholics and Calvinists engaged in intense sectarian fighting within France. 1 The duc de Nevers focused especially on the tragic death of Louis II Jagiellon, King of Hungary: “Louis was killed there with twenty thousand Christians, and so Hungary—which had served as a bulwark for Christianity against the Muslims for more than 150 years—was reduced nearly completely to obedience to the Turk.”2 Despite the ongoing religious conflict and civil war within France during the second half of the sixteenth century, nobles such as the duc de Nevers dreamed of Hungary. Many French nobles readily engaged in crusading warfare against the Ottomans, fighting in various campaigns in Hungary and in Southeastern Europe during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.

The history of crusading after the Crusades has become an important subject of research, in large part due to Alphonse Dupront’s extraordinary influence on the field of religious studies and to the curious history of three unpublished theses. Dupront defended his doctoral thesis, “Le mythe de croisade. Étude de sociologie religieuse,” in 1956, at a time when religious history was relatively marginalized in a French academic landscape that was dominated by Marxist and structuralist approaches to the humanities. The thesis remained unpublished, while its author went on to direct research at the Écoles des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales and to found its Centre d’Anthropologie Religieuse Européenne in 1972. Dupront eventually published another work, Du Sacré: croisades et pèlerinages (1987), which drew fresh attention to his research.3 The thesis itself was finally published four decades after its defense, and in a heavily revised form, as Le mythe de croisade (1997).4 In this magisterial four-volume work, Dupront constructs an extremely unconventional history of the idea of crusading, examining the “creation of a collective spirit of crusade, and thus, in the corporeal and natural sense of the word, a myth. This myth where, as in life, the realities, and dreams, the unsatiated needs get mixed up together and confused.”5 For Dupront, the early modern period represented a significant period in the transformation of the “crusading myth” that is best understood through what he calls an “existential” approach to “convergences” in the history of ideas.6

Dupront’s elaboration of an anthropology of religion has become very influential, and his work on the “crusading myth” has spurred new research and debates on crusading warfare in early modern Europe and the Mediterranean.7 The remarkable doctoral theses of Péter Sahin-Tóth and Guy Le Thiec—which were both written and defended in the 1990s, but unfortunately remain unpublished—respond directly to Alphonse Dupront’s work. Le Thiec’s massive four-volume thesis, entitled “‘Et il n’y aura qu’un seul troupeau…’ L’imaginaire de la confrontation entre Turcs et Chrétiens dans l’art figuratif en France et en Italie de 1453 aux années 1620,” meticulously examines early modern visual and textual sources depicting the Ottomans.8 Le Thiec presents vital evidence of French and European images of the Turks, proposing a complicated and ambivalent history of the construction of the “Turkish peril” and of crusading warfare. In “La France et les français face à la ‘Longue Guerre’ de Hongrie (1591–1606),” Péter Sahin-Tóth offers a crucial case study of French noble volunteers who traveled to Hungary to fight against the Ottomans.9 Sahin-Tóth, working in the mid-1990s, consulted Dupront’s then still-unpublished dissertation at the Bibliothèque de la Sorbonne and then offered a substantial critique of its interpretive framework in his own thesis, which Sahin-Tóth defended in the same year that Dupront’s Le mythe de croisade was finally published in 1997. Sadly, Sahin-Tóth was unable to publish his thesis as a book prior to his tragic death in 2004.10

My analysis of French crusading culture draws on the work of Dupront, Le Thiec, and Sahin-Tóth, and also attempts to set them into dialogue with each other. Robert Sauzet, who co-directed Sahin-Tóth’s dissertation, has since published his own historicized exploration of seventeenth-century crusading warfare by placing it into the context of the growing Catholic Reformation in France in Au Grand Siècle des âmes (2007). Sauzet refers to the “nostalgies de croisade,” or crusading nostalgia, that became popular in early modern French political culture.11 This article approaches the problem of crusading warfare from another angle, questioning whether French crusading culture really developed exclusively within a mythic or nostalgic mode. Le Thiec and Sahin-Tóth’s studies signal the need for further analysis of French nobles’ military service in Hungary and of contemporary writings about crusading experiences.

Contemporary correspondence, memoirs, and other writings conserved at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, the Archives Nationales, and various Archives départementales in France furnish evidence of French nobles’ experiences of crusading warfare in Hungary and Southeastern Europe. These sources demonstrate that French nobles were significant historical actors in shaping crusading culture and crafting images of their Ottoman enemies. French- and Italian-language sources from the Archivio di Stato di Firenze contain additional accounts of crusading warfare in Hungary during the Long War of 1593–1606. I analyze French crusading culture by juxtaposing manuscript sources from the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries with contemporary prints and pamphlets that provided French readers with news of distant crusading warfare against the Ottomans.

My interpretation of crusading warfare in Hungary also draws on more recent research in several distinct historical fields whose historiographies often remain isolated from one another. Recent research on early modern Hungary and Transylvania provides an expanded understanding of the broader political and military contexts for crusading warfare in Southeastern Europe.12 New studies of the Habsburg composite state and the Holy Roman Empire permit a deeper understanding of the crusading projects in Hungary.13 A growing historiography on the political and military organization of the early modern Ottoman Empire supplies alternative perspectives on warfare in Hungary.14 French portrayals of Hungary as a crusading space can now be considered in comparison with evidence of Ottoman conceptions of empire and territoriality.15 Finally, a rich and diverse historiography on conflict and coexistence in the early modern Mediterranean allows a more nuanced interpretation of Christian–Muslim warfare.16

I argue that crusading culture played a significant role in the conceptions and practices of religious warfare in the early modern period, as French authors and militant nobles redeployed Hungary as a crucial theater of crusading war. Examining crusading warfare in Hungary reveals new facets of warrior nobles’ military activities in early modern France and abroad, building on recent studies of French noble culture.17 Considering French nobles’ experiences of crusading war permits a reassessment of the position of crusading narratives and images within broader French political culture.18 The article concludes that French readers developed notions of crusading warfare in part through reports of the war in Hungary, contributing to a burgeoning literature on the production, diffusion, and reception of early modern news and information across Europe.19

French Crusading Imagination

Chivalric romances and chansons de geste had long shaped the ideals of French nobles, but changing historical circumstances and printed literary works expanded greatly the models for the perfect chevalier beginning in the fifteenth century.20 The rapid expansion of the Ottoman Empire in southeastern Europe and Sultan Mehmet II’s dramatic conquest of Constantinople in 1453 provided a new focus for French crusading culture. Some illuminations presented the siege through depictions of assaults on the vaunted walls of Constantinople, which had been considered among the most impressive fortifications in the fifteenth-century world. These scenes emphasized swords, polearms, crossbows, bows-and-arrows, and stones as the principal weapons employed in the fighting. Such scenes presented a mirror image of well-established tropes representing Christian crusader victories in the Holy Land—here depicting the Ottomans ascending ladders and overwhelming Christian defenders.21 One of the most iconic illuminated manuscripts instead presented a new form of siege warfare by focusing the Ottoman camps, galleys, siege lines, and bombards—offering French audiences an alternative vision of a novel form of warfare and a new enemy.22 Constantinople now represented a new site for crusading campaigns in the French and broader European imaginaries of holy war.

Visual representations and textual narratives of the siege of Constantinople proliferated in Europe in the decades after Mehmet’s conquest, even if the transition to Ottoman rule was probably less dramatic than these lamentations would lead readers to believe.23 These works established what I have referred to as a “religious drama of the siege,” which influenced European narratives of the conflicts between Christians and Muslims throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.24 Narrative and descriptive elements that appeared in the accounts of the epic siege of Constantinople became replicated in accounts of later attacks on cities such as Negroponte in 1470, which was “one of the first events in Renaissance history to be recorded in print more-or-less immediately after the fact,” according to Margaret Meserve.”25 News pamphlets and siege narratives played an important role in early print media. Andrew Pettegree argues that “these publications, though generally originating in Italy, achieved a remarkable geographic range. The crusading writings of Cardinal Bessarion were among the first books published in France.”26 A growing urban audience for printed news across Europe read accounts of the Ottoman attacks on Otranto and Rhodes in 1480. When the Knights of Saint John of Jerusalem defended Rhodes against a besieging Ottomans army in 1522, Italian printers produced numerous pamphlets and maps relating the siege, which were then diffused in France.27 The battles and sieges fought between Christian and Ottoman forces were increasingly reported in short pamphlets, printed in octavo format, as printing presses experimented with inexpensive editions intended for broad readerships and gradually developed news publishing.28

In the aftermath of the Ottoman conquests of Constantinople and Rhodes, the Kingdom of Hungary became one of the principal lines of Christian defense against the Ottoman advance. Artists signified Hungary’s new position as a bulwark against the Ottomans through portrayals of Hungarians fighting against Turkish soldiers.29 Scenes of “Turkish cruelties” established lasting iconographic conventions depicting Ottomans soldiers as barbarous, monstrous infidels.30 Narrative tropes quickly emerged in textual sources to describe the combats between Christians and the Ottomans in Hungary. French nobles developed associations between Christian brotherhood and Christian defense that referred not to the Holy Land, but to battlefields in Southeastern Europe.

New pieces of crusading literature updated legendary chivalric figures for sixteenth-century audiences. A French prose translation of Ludovico Ariosto’s Orlando furioso, which had originally been published in 1516, appeared in 1544.31 Herberay des Essarts adapted and translated Amadis de Gaule, a chivalric romance that had originally been published in Spanish in 1533, producing an eight-volume series printed from 1540 to 1548.32 Amadis de Gaule became such a major best-seller that other authors and translators extended the series throughout the second half the sixteenth century and into the early seventeenth century.33 These chivalric romances promoted visions of bellicose deeds, but other genres also contributed to French attitudes toward crusading war.

French crusading literature and artistic works drew on broader European tropes of the “terrible Turk” and the “Turkish peril.”34 French chronicles and histories established a long lineage of crusading warfare by setting the Ottomans into a continuous progression of Muslim “infidel” enemies. Guillaume Aubert’s L’histoire des guerres faictes par les chrestiens contre les turcs... (1559) provided a prehistory of the struggle against the Turks—beginning with the birth of Muhammad, continuing with the rise of the Saracens, and culminating with the Crusades.35 Chronicles and artworks celebrated the crusades of Louis IX, or Saint-Louis. One popular theme was the Byzantine Emperor’s gift of the Crown of Thorns to Saint-Louis and its installation in the Sainte-Chapelle on the île de la Cité in Paris.36 A sixteenth-century treatise on the rise and fall of states referred to the impressive power of the Ottomans: “Among all the things that we admire today, there is nothing so marvelous as the fortune of the Ottomans, with the progress of their greatness.”37

French crusading culture may have been “orientalist” is certain ways, but was much more varied, complicated, and political than Edward Said’s famous theory of Orientalism allows. Said insists that “from the end of the seventh century until the battle of Lepanto in 1571, Islam in either its Arab, Ottoman, or North African and Spanish form dominated or effectively threatened European Christianity. That Islam outstripped and outshone Rome cannot have been absent from the mind of any European past or present.”38 Guy Le Thiec effectively challenges Said’s interpretation by demonstrating the diversity and complexity of European images of the Turks. Although European authors and artists described Ottoman sultans as terrible, feroces, and cruel, they also presented this cruelty as linked to tyranny, suggesting that the Ottoman domination was both rational and ephemeral. Indeed, Le Thiec presents ample evidence that many Europeans envisioned a role in toppling Ottoman tyrannical rule: “the Turkish tyranny, which threatened to expand in Europe and to block the Catholic project of converting infidels, became a power to combat and convert.”39 Prophesies, prognostications, and theatrical performances promoted crusading efforts against the Ottomans, demonizing the Turks and offering assurances that the end of “infidel” rule was near.40

Crusading ideals were not simply confined to literary works, since French nobles were active producers and consumers of crusading culture. Many of the grands, or great nobles, responded to calls to fight the “infidel” by planning personal crusades or elaborate military ventures. French nobles were already accustomed to supporting religio-political causes by engaging their honor as nobles volontaires, or noble volunteers, and offering their military service. French nobles who served as volunteers were often simply referred to in sources as la noblesse, because they did not have stable military offices or charges.41 When French nobles traveled abroad to join crusading forces in Hungary, they often attached themselves to military commanders and their entourages or formed their own cavalry companies.42 Infantry and cavalry companies from France, Lorraine, Flanders, and other Francophone regions periodically joined Imperial armies fighting against the Ottomans.43

Many French nobles viewed crusading as a special obligation of the French king and his nobles. Members of the Valois royal family, and later the Bourbons, actively promoted crusading projects through military orders, artistic works, and printed publications. The Valois dynasty furthered crusading ideals through the activities of the Ordre de Saint-Michel, which had been created in 1469. Henri III created the Ordre du Saint-Esprit, or Order of the Holy Spirit, in 1578.44 According to Nicolas Le Roux, Henri III aimed to forge a common “religious and moral ideal” for Catholic nobles, but the military order simultaneously promoted a recharged Catholic militancy that would prove difficult to control.45 French kings also provided support for the crusading activities of Order of Saint John of Jerusalem, whose members became popularly known as the chevaliers de Malte, or Knights of Malta after their relocation from Rhodes following the 1522 siege.46 The Knights of Malta promoted a crusading spirit in their own ranks, but also encouraged Christian princes to support their efforts and engage their own forces in combat against Muslims.47

The expansion of the Ottoman empire, the growth of news reporting, and the spread of Protestantism all transformed the French notions of crusade significantly during the sixteenth century, as Hungary became fully incorporated into French crusading culture. French crusading activities became more narrowly associated with a specifically Catholic combat against the Ottomans, rather than a common defense by all Christians. As Reformation movements spread into France in the 1520s and 1530s, the growing threat of heresy brought comparisons between the “infidel” Turks with the Huguenot “heretics” within the kingdom. Such associations would flourish in crusading literature once religious warfare erupted in France in the mid-sixteenth century.48

The remainder of this article will focus on discussions of Hungary in French crusading culture at three distinct moments: the battle of Mohács of 1526, the Hungarian campaign of 1566, and the Habsburg–Ottoman War of 1593–1606. An analysis of these Hungarian cases will reveal shifting sixteenth-century French perceptions of Hungary as a crusading battleground, allowing us to re-examine contemporary notions of crusading warfare.

The Battle of Mohács, 1526

Sultan Süleyman I led a major Ottoman field army to invade Hungary in 1526, overwhelming a Hungarian army at Mohács and occupying much of the kingdom. King Louis II of Hungary drowned as he attempted to flee from the battlefield, leading to the collapse of the Jagiellon rule in Hungary. Géza Pálffy argues that “the battle meant more than just the end of the territorial integrity of the realm of St. Stephen. It was a major change in the history of central Europe just as the conquest of Constantinople in 1453 had meant a major change for all of eastern Europe.”49 Shocking news of the disastrous battle circulated throughout Europe through Italian and German pamphlets.50 If French printers produced pamphlets narrating the battle, none seem to have survived—perhaps because the French news publishing was still in its infancy or because of the political crisis in France following the capture of King François I at the battle of Pavia in 1525.51 Nonetheless, the memory of Mohács gradually entered into French narratives of crusading warfare.

Later sources progressively constructed a detailed narrative of the battle of Mohács as illustrating essential facets of a crusading tale. Martin Fumée’s historical account of Mohács, written in 1595, referred to the “piteous history of the loss and ruin of the kingdom of Hungary, and the wars that have occurred in our time between the Christians and the Turks.”52 Accounts of the battle provided tender descriptions of the slain king’s body.53 Fumée’s presentation of the battle of Mohács focused on the cruelty of the Ottoman soldiers, describing graphically the humiliating treatment of the head of one of the Hungarian nobles killed in battle: “The next day, his head having been separated from his body, was carried all around the enemy camp as a symbol of triumph, being stuck on a lance and reportedly planted in front of Süleyman ’s tent.”54 Fumée also described the beheading of Hungarian prisoners after the battle: “The day after the battle, 1500 Hungarians who had been captured, including many of the principal nobles … were all suddenly decapitated, their blood serving as a sacrifice for these infidels.”55 Such gory accounts of Turkish atrocities became integral parts of French crusading texts.

French authors recounting the battle of Mohács explained the fall of Hungary to a weakening valor of the Hungarian nobility in the face of successive Ottoman invasions. René de Lucinge argues that in the past, Hungary had displayed “the valor of its kings and of its peoples [who were] toughened, hardened, and able to endure the rigors of war.”56 He stresses the contrast between the heroic Hungarians of previous centuries and those of the sixteenth century, who had “abandoned this first valor and bastardized the exercise of arms.”57

In the aftermath of Mohács, the Ottomans occupied southern Hungary, but the remainder of the kingdom became divided in a succession dispute among Christian princes. Ferdinand von Habsburg, younger brother of the Emperor Charles V, claimed the throne of Hungary and attracted some of the Hungarian nobility, but János Szapolyai opposed his rule and eventually sought Ottoman support.58 Few pamphlets seem to have been published in France on the confusing struggle in Hungary, perhaps because the ongoing Habsburg–Valois wars made the subject controversial.59 French readers could nonetheless follow news of Ferdinand’s entry into Székesfehérvár and his coronation on 3 November 1527.60 Ferdinand succeeded in establishing Habsburg rule in Hungary, with strong ties to the Holy Roman Empire, but the realm was effectively divided into three regions.61

Despite the ambiguous status of the Kingdom of Hungary in the wake of Mohács, French pamphlets stressed the ongoing fighting against the Ottomans. When Süleyman I’s army encircled Vienna in 1529, letters and pamphlets circulated the news of the epic siege. One French language pamphlet called for a common defense of Christianity:

 

good princes and Christian lords, do not have hearts so hardened toward each other. Form an agreement together and make the Turkish dogs, enemies of our holy faith know that you are defenders of the faith of Jesus Christ. For, if you can demonstrate your power in the face of this mean Turk, all his power cannot resist you.62

 

After a series of massive assaults, the Ottoman army finally abandoned its siege of Vienna and withdrew. Criers reported the news of the Ottoman retreat in the streets of Paris, according to one contemporary journal, which presents the retreat as “a great victory” for “Don Ferdinand, King of Hungary, brother of the Emperor,” but also one delivered by Jesus Christ, who sent a hailstorm to ravage the Ottoman troops at a critical moment. The journal relates that religious processions were held throughout Paris to give thanks to God for the salvation of Vienna and the defeat of the Turks.63

A military frontier gradually formed in Hungary, as Habsburg, Ottoman, and Transylvanian forces constructed border fortresses and fortified cities in the contested borderlands.64 After Ottoman forces took Buda in 1541, Habsburg forces began to construct a new defensive system in Hungary that was composed of border fortresses, captain generalcies, regular garrisons, and irregular troops and financed by the Habsburg monarchy.65 Meanwhile, Ottoman military and administrative officials crafted a new military frontier system of their own in Hungary.66 French pamphlets discussed the ongoing fighting in the militarized borderlands, citing Christian victories in Hungary and Transylvania.67

Representations of the military frontier in Hungary proliferated through printed city views and maps. City views by Sebastian Münster included Buda as the capital of Hungary, while later engravings by Georg Braun and Frans Hogenberg prominently displayed the bastioned fortifications of cities throughout Habsburg territories and around the world.68 Printed maps and city views, including at least one siege view, depicted Hungarian communities and the military border for French audiences by the 1560s.69 One curious anthropomorphic map of Europe as a queen presents Hungary, Poland, and Lithuania as the ventre, or abdomen, of the body of Europe—suggesting its crucial position as a barrier to Ottoman expansion.70

French readers were probably unaware of the brutal realities of early modern raiding and siege warfare in Hungary, aside from stereotyped descriptions of the “cruelties” of the Turks.71 François de La Nouë deplores the “domination” of the Turks, alluding to the Christian lands conquered by the Ottomans, and insists that “against these peoples, one must draw the sword, not to convert them … but to punish them for their cruelty and tyranny.”72 French writers stressed the Austrian defense of Christianity, emphasizing that Hungary remained contested because of the efforts of the Habsburgs. René de Lucinge argues that “After the Turks came, they found the obstacle of the House of Austria, seconded by the forces of Germany, and supported by the power of the Catholic King [of Spain], who never learned to fear the Turk.”73 Lucinge laments “all these heresies” that produce divisions within Christendom, complaining especially about Calvinism’s notorious influence.74

French crusading ideals had to confront the problematic French relationship with the Ottomans, which stemmed from commercial and political negotiations beginning in 1533 and culminating in a Franco–Ottoman alliance against the Habsburgs. François I allied with sultan Süleyman I and invited the fleet of Hayreddin Barbarossa to harbor in the port of Marseille before launching joint military-naval operations to besiege Nice in 1543–44.75 Many French nobles were critical of Franco–Ottoman diplomatic relations, however. François de La Nouë, a prominent Calvinist nobleman, condemned the French alliance with the Ottomans: “if we make a comparison … of the utility of all this Turkish aide with the decrease in the renown of the French among all the nations of Europe, one would have to confess that the shame [of it] has much outweighed the profit.”76

The outbreak of the religious wars in France in 1562 created new complications for French crusading culture. The confessional fighting between Huguenots and Catholics in France reinforced associations between heretics and infidels. The French monarch’s duty as roi très chrétien to suppress heresy in the kingdom was increasingly connected with a global Catholic struggle, which encompassed the French people’s duty to fight against heresy and false belief. One source stressed:

“That as Christians we are obliged, especially since the first duty of a Christian is to maintain his religion and, according to the means that God has given him, not to put up with the practice of another contrary one. That our adversaries are in agreement with us [on this] and demonstrate that they will not put up with any other religion being practiced where they have power, as in Geneva and elsewhere. That as French people, we have a particular obligation, especially since among Christians, we call ourselves Most Christian.”77

The confessional struggle against heresy within France thus reinforced French notions of a Christian duty to uphold God’s honor and to battle against false religion. French crusading culture already presented Hungary as a sacred battleground in the war against the infidel, but French nobles and authors increasingly envisioned distant fighting against the Ottomans as closely linked to the bloody fighting against heretics within France.

The Hungarian Campaign in 1566

Pierre de Bourdeille, seigneur de Brantôme, noted that 1566 was “destined to make the French travel” as French nobles and soldiers set off to Malta, Madiera, Hungary, and other destinations to fight against the Ottomans.78 The same year, René Benoist published a pamphlet, Exhortation Chrestienne aux fideles et eslevz de Dieu, de batailler par tous moyens possiblees pour le grand Seigneur contre l’Antechrist, encouraging French nobles to engage in the great crusade against the “idolaters and infidels.”79 Sultan Süleyman I led another Ottoman field army into Hungary in the summer of 1566, prompting a large imperial mobilization and attracting many noble volunteers, including Henri de Lorraine, duc de Guise.80

Printed pamphlets circulated war news from Hungary for a public of French urban readers and listeners. Jean de Malmidy’s Discours veritable de la grand guerre, qui est au païs de Hongrie…, had provided a narrative of the previous campaign between Imperialists and Transylvanians in Hungary in 1565. The author dedicates this pamphlet to Antoine de Croy, prince de Porcian, and claims to provide an eyewitness account of the fighting.81 The focus of such pamphlets and other publications suggest tensions within crusading culture as printers increasingly specialized. There seems to have been a certain degree of competition between printers reporting on the theaters of war in Hungary and in the Mediterranean, as suggested by simultaneous reports on the fighting in Hungary and on the epic siege of Malta in 1565. After the successful Christian defense of Malta, Brantôme celebrated Jean de La Valette-Parisot, Grand Master of Malta, as one of the great captains of France, indicating that French people “are very happy and honored to have had in our nation such a great captain, who spilled the blood of the infidels and enemies of God and of our law and avenged that of Christians that was wickedly poured out by them over many years.”82 Accounts of the siege of Malta may have temporarily drawn some attention away from the Hungarian war theater, but they also stressed a common notion of Christian defense. The Ottoman invasion of Hungary in 1566 brought French readers’ focus back to Hungary as the bulwark against Turkish domination.

Süleyman’s field army advanced and besieged the fortified town of Szigetvár, which became the focal point of the fighting in Hungary in 1566.83 A pamphlet entitled, Advis de Vienne en Austriche, et de Hongrie…, presented an account of the fighting in Hungary, allegedly related by an eyewitness. The pamphlet author claims that “one of my friends has written me, that as for Hungary, that the Imperial army there is growing day by day, and that it will soon consist of 90,000 infantry, not counting the cavalry.” The pamphlet develops as a series of reports from the Imperial army in Hungary, which included troops sent by the Duke of Savoy, Duke of Ferrara, Granduke of Tuscany, and other allies of the Emperor, as well as the duc de Guise.84

French accounts of the 1566 campaign in Hungary presented the duc de Guise as a heroic crusader. A contemporary pamphlet recounted the duc de Guise’s travels to Vienna and his preparations to join the imperial army, concluding: “my lord and his troop are almost all mounted and armed, hoping to depart for the encampment in five or six days.”85 Brantôme later recorded that “this young valorous prince thus went [to the Hungarian front], well accompanied by many nobles … who could well have numbered a hundred, all valorous.”86 Curiously, some later pro-crusading texts minimized Guise’s participation in the 1566 campaign. For example, Martin Fumée’s late sixteenth-century history of the wars in Hungary merely recorded the French contingent alongside other “nations” that joined the Imperial army.87 Perhaps this source’s reticence to celebrate Guise’s warrior experience stemmed from its publication during the Catholic League wars of the 1590s, which were fueled by deep divisions between Catholic extremists, Catholic moderates, and Huguenots.88

At the time of the 1566 campaign, the duc de Guise’s voyage to the battlefields of Hungary allowed him to establish his crusading credentials and gain vital military experience. Agrippa d’Aubigné mentions the French contingent that joined the imperial army, noting several nobles in the duc de Guise’s entourage, including Philippe Strozzi, Guy de Saint-Gelais de Lansac, and Timoléon de Cossé-Brissac.89 Brantôme later described the French nobles who “went to Hungary with this valiant prince the duc de Guise, who was not yet 18 years old, who—following the example of his ancestors in holy war—wanted to confront the infidel army of the great sultan Süleyman, who was there himself in person.”90 Sahin-Tóth presents the duc de Guise’s participation in crusading war as linked with a specifically Lorraine crusading culture.91 However, the duc de Guise also seems to have helped popularize Hungary as one of the war zones—along with Malta and the Netherlands—associated with military education for young French noblemen. Hungary thus became an appropriate stop on a grand tour for French nobles seeking military adventure and a proper education.92

The Ottomans seemed poised to advance on Vienna after Szigetvár capitulated in early September 1566, but Ottoman forces abruptly abandoned their campaign and withdrew. Süleyman the Lawgiver had actually died at the encampment at Szigetvár, but his senior officers apparently managed to keep his death a secret for several months. Ottoman withdrawal signaled an early end of the campaigning season, which seems to have frustrated many French nobles who were preparing to travel to Hungary to join the fight against the Turks. Brantôme recalled that “I wanted to go off to the war in Hungary; but, in Venice, we heard of the death of the great Sultan Süleyman.”93 Many French nobles were apparently disappointed by the abrupt end of the crusading war in Hungary.

Nonetheless, French reading audiences had become increasingly interested in Eastern Europe following the 1566 campaign. French interest in the Hungarian theater of war is shown by the production of maps of Eastern Europe and the Ottoman Empire, as well as maps specifically on Hungary, such as Gérard de Jode’s Hungariae typus (1567).94 Despite the sustained transnational interest in the ongoing struggle against the Ottomans, news from the Mediterranean threatened to eclipse the Hungarian military frontier.

The great Christian victory at Lepanto in 1571 immediately became a monumental event in crusading culture, celebrated in pamphlets, books, poems, and paintings.95 Because King Charles IX did not officially join the great Holy League against the Ottomans in 1571, studies of Lepanto have often overlooked the significance of the battle for French crusading culture.96 However, many French nobles participated directly in the battle of Lepanto, serving in the Maltese galleys or fighting as volunteers in the Christian fleet. Couriers brought the first news of the victory, which apparently prompted spontaneous celebrations in many French cities. According to one pamphlet, “even in this city of Lyon you will have heard the great bells that give full and certain testimony (with the hymns and canticles that were sung to the God of armies in great devotion and joy) for such a victory.”97 News of the battle of Lepanto circulated widely in France through letters, celebrations, poems, pamphlets, and other publications.98 One pamphlet emphasized Christian unity in crusading combat against the Ottomans: “God wishes to crown entirely the Christians’ victory to punish the insolence and tyranny of the Barbarians.”99

The election of Henri de Valois, duc d’Anjou, as King of Poland in 1573 heightened French audience’s engagement with Eastern Europe in general.100 Henri’s reign as king of Poland was short, since Charles IX’s death in 1574 made him heir to the French throne and brought his return to France. Nonetheless, the French fascination with Polish culture remained, most famously evoked by Henri III’s extravagant fashion and earrings.101 Such styles supported the development of broader stereotypes about Hungarians and other Eastern European peoples in literary and non-literary texts.102 Brantôme told a curious tale of a Spanish officer who had fought in Hungary and who was “exhausted for arms.” The officer regretted having gone to Hungary, “having found in this country no courtesy, the people there being barbarous and rude.”103

French crusading projects became increasingly elaborate toward the end of the sixteenth century. The Calvinist noble François de La Nouë boasted that “if the Christian princes were firmly united, they could chase the Turks from Europe in four years.”104 Alphonse Dupront regards La Nouë as a “solitary crusader,” emphasizing his isolation and inability to realize such a sweeping vision of unified crusade. Dupront further suggests that the “crusading myth” was becoming secular during La Nouë’s lifetime, yet many other French nobles were also engaged in formulating crusading projects.105 Louis de Gonzague, duc de Nevers, developed various planning documents for crusading campaigns in the Mediterranean and Hungary.106 Despite this continued interest in grandiose crusading, warfare in Hungary gradually evolved into a protracted form of seasonal raids along the military frontiers in the 1580s.107 French nobles would have to wait almost a decade for another opportunity to develop their crusading projects in Hungary.

The Habsburg–Ottoman War, 1593–1606

Soon after a new Habsburg–Ottoman war broke out in Hungary in 1593, Nicolas Brulart de Sillery wrote that “I am horrified to hear what is written and published in various places” about the Catholic Leaguers, who refused to accept Henri de Bourbon’s conversion to Catholicism and who were vigorously opposing his accession to the French throne as Henri IV. Brulart believed that the Leaguers were ignoring “the danger of the Turk,” warning of the threat posed by Ottoman armies in Hungary. Brulart argued that: “it seems that God is inviting Christians to reunite and join together though the great success that He has given to the forces of the Emperor in Hungary.”108 Brulart went on to relate the latest news from the theater of war in Hungary and Transylvania, optimistically hoping that Pope would support the Holy Roman Emperor and launch a “ general and offensive war” in Hungary.109

Many French people indeed hoped for peace in France after years of brutal religious conflict within the kingdom, yet Nicolas Brulart de Sillery was not the only French observer to draw connections to Hungary. Guillaume Ancel, French ambassador at Prague, emphasized “the necessity for a peace in France, which cannot happen without the reception of the king.”110 The urgent need for peace within France, for this writer, was clearly coupled to the common Ottoman threat against all Christians: “nothing is more certain than that the continuation of our wars will serve to aid the progress of the enemies of Christianity to penetrate into the entrails of Germany.”111 Despite such hopes for peace, the religious wars would continue to rage in France, but French nobles increasingly became involved in crusading warfare in Croatia and Hungary in the 1590s.

The Habsburg–Ottoman War (1593–1606), also known as the Long Turkish War, produced sustained raiding and siege warfare, attracting crusading contingents from France and elsewhere. Géza Pálffy argues that “the Long Turkish War … was the first modern war in Hungarian history,” characterized by foreign troops, confessional conflict, and civil warfare.112 Péter Sahin-Tóth demonstrates that numerous French and Francophone nobles participated in crusading warfare in Hungary during the Long War. His detailed research in French and Austrian archives reveals a variety of motivations that led French, Wallon, and Loraine nobles to engage in crusading warfare alongside Imperial forces that were fighting against the Ottomans.113

By the time the Long Turkish War broke out, French news publishing had developed significantly, with a number of presses specializing in producing pamphlets relating war news. A number of French-language pamphlets narrated military campaigns, battles, and sieges in Hungary throughout the war. The tributary states of Transylvania, Moldavia, and Wallachia rebelled against Ottoman indirect rule in 1594, joining the crusading cause. French readers could follow the 1595 campaign through Jean de Malmidy’s Discours veritable de la grand’ guerre, qui est au païs de Hongrie, which described the Imperial forces’ capture of Esztergom.114 French authors were writing now histories, chronicles, and other works specifically focused on the wars in Hungary.

Martin Fumée’s Histoire generalle des troubles de Hongrie et Transilvanie (first published in 1595) provided a geographic description of Hungary in addition to a narrative history of the sixteenth-century wars in Hungary. Fumée pointedly dedicates his history “to you (the French people) and to no other.” After describing the brutality of warfare in Hungary, Fumée invites French readers to reflect upon the destructiveness of war. “When you see the ruins and great desolations of a beautiful and rich country, you see your own at present reduce to an identical state.”115 Fumée draws direct comparisons between the miseries of Hungary and France, which were both suffering from divine punishment. He concludes: “it seems that we are in a worse condition than Hungary is in.”116 Hungary then served as a reminder to French people of the shared miseries of religious disunity, political chaos, and civil warfare that continued to plague both kingdoms.

A series of French language pamphlets and narratives related the ongoing fighting in Hungary in the late 1590s. Another imperial army took Eger in 1596, but attrition led to less intense fighting in 1597.117 An account of the ongoing war in Hungary related the sieges of Győr/Raab, Tata/Tottis, and Temesvár (Timişoara, Romania), as well as the broader military campaigns and skirmishes.118 When Imperial armies launched a major new offensive to retake Buda, a number of French pamphlets reported on the action.119 A pamphlet entitled, L’admirable et heureuse prinse de la ville de Bude en Hongrie par l’armee Imperialle, sur les Turcs, offered a series of reports from the war zone in Hungary in the form of several short letters from an anonymous correspondent who was accompanying the Imperial army.120 The siege of Raab provided the subject for another pamphlet published the same year. The author of this pamphlet highlights military technology at the siege, focusing on the use of a pétard, an explosive device often used against city gates.121 The imperial siege of Buda in 1598 again failed to retake the city, however.

As informal French involvement in crusading war increased, so did tensions with the Ottoman Empire—especially concerning the status of French subjects under Ottoman rule. During the 1598 campaign, the French ambassador in Istanbul reported that Sultan Mehmet III was attempting to prevent forced conversions of French subjects within his empire.122 When Christian troops destroyed an Ottoman force near Buda in 1599, a French source celebrated: “God always gives an excellent victory to small forces of Christians facing a great multitude of Turks.”123

After the promulgation of the Edict of Nantes in May 1598, many determined Catholic Leaguers departed from the kingdom in disgust rather than accept Henri IV as a legitimate Catholic ruler.124 Some of these ex-Leaguers, or dévots, headed off to Hungary to serve in the crusading army organized by the Habsburgs against the Ottomans.125 Several members of the Guise family joined armies fighting against the Ottomans in Hungary in the early seventeenth century. Philippe-Emmanuel de Lorraine, duc de Mercœur, aimed to fight against the Ottomans and “to spill the last drop of my blood for the maintenance and protection of our religion against this great other sect of infidels that they say are in great number in Hungary.”126

The duc de Mercœur indeed went on crusade in 1600–1601, serving as lieutenant general for the Holy Roman Emperor in Hungary. A number of contemporary French sources portrayed the duc de Mercœur as an ideal crusader.127 Brantôme records that Mercœur “having acquired lots of money during his wars, employed them in the war in Hungary, where he went in person with his beautiful troops, [and] where he fought so well that he was the envy of the Germans, for he surpassed them all in the art of war.”128 An account of the war in Hungary stresses the duc de Mercœur’s courageous response to the Ottoman Grand Vezir: “That he will not hesitate at all to attack the largest number of infidels with less Christians, even if they have sly minds, being confident in God’s aid.”129 Péter Sahin-Tóth constructs a detailed analysis of the duc de Mercœur’s military leadership and crusading activities in Hungary.130

The Ottomans launched a major offensive in Hungary in the summer of 1600, targeting the fortified city of Nagykanizsa (referred to as Canisa by many contemporaries). In September 1600, an Ottoman army besieged Nagykanizsa, which the Ottoman Grand Vezir described in a letter: “we are going to besiege Canisa, the key to the Christian lands, and the principal gate of this unhappy country of Hungary.”131 The duc de Mercœur led a force to relieve the siege, but the Imperial garrison at Nagykanizsa capitulated in October.132 Several Ottoman writers, including Katib Çelebi, wrote celebratory accounts of the Ottoman siege of Nagykanizsa, incorporating fictional and historical elements.133

A major imperial army assembled under the command of Habsburg Archduke Ferdinand in 1601, aiming to retake Nagykanizsa. The imperial army was a multi-ethnic crusading force composed of Austrian, German, Swiss, Hungarian, Savoyard, Tuscan contingents, accompanied by noble volunteers from France and other territories. The army advanced into Hungary and besieged Nagykanizsa in September 1601.

The writings of a French noble who participated in the Nagykanizsa campaign (presumably Marin Malleville) offer valuable insights on the crusading experience in Hungary.134 Malleville accompanied the Tuscan military contingent to Hungary, having been “commanded by the Grand Duke, my master, to head to Nagykanizsa to join lord Don Giovanni his brother.”135 Malleville could thus offer a close narrative of the campaign in Hungary based on his service with the Tuscan troops and the multi-ethnic crusading army. Soon after the siege trenches opened, Marin Malleville wrote to a Tuscan secretary to describe the siege of Nagykanizsa. Malleville claims that he had suggested a surprise attack on Nagykanizsa and that Don Giovanni de’ Medici had proposed this plan to Archduke Ferdinand.136 Nagykanizsa was not surprised, however, and a formal siege soon developed. Simultaneously, another imperial force was besieging the Hungarian city of Székesfehérvár, which was held by a small Ottoman garrison. Székesfehérvár was taken in only ten days, but the trench fighting around Nagykanizsa wore on for three months. Malleville describes the heavy losses in the ranks of the imperial army and expresses his “pain” after hearing that two fellow officers had been captured and “they were enslaved.”137 The Imperial army eventually abandoned the siege in November 1601.

Soon afterward, Malleville wrote to Henri I de Montmorency, duc de Montmorency, to report the news of the siege of Nagykanizsa. Malleville provides a detailed and complex narrative, which begins by recounting that prior to his departure for Hungary he sent two falcons to Guitard de Ratte, bishop of Montpellier, to keep for the duc de Montmorency. Malleville expresses his surprise that he has not still received confirmation of the falcons’ arrival after his return to France following the campaign. 138

Marin Malleville’s account of the Nagykanizsa campaign is full of recriminations. “I could tell the story of the siege of Nagykanizsa,” Malleville wrote, “but we received so little honor there that I do not dare open my mouth to speak to Your Highness.”139 Malleville compares the geography of Hungary and the character of the fighting to the religious wars he had already experienced in France.140 Malleville offers a description of the fortifications of Nagykanizsa, specifying that “the fortress is composed of five bastions.”141 The siege was finally abandoned—a military failure that Malleville blamed on the German soldiers and the Imperial commanders.142

Malleville criticizes the abandonment of the siege and the withdrawal of the crusading army. He describes the “poor order and disorder” among the Imperial and allied troops toward the end of the siege, which resulted in “the loss of four pieces of artillery, which were abandoned.”143 Malleville records a poem or song that he had heard among the Italian troops, which mocked the German officers in the army:

 

Questa la crude anzi fera Canisa

Che fu lassata impreda in man di cani

Con vituperio infama di Hongueri Corbati est Allemani

E sol l’Italia ce remasta occisa.144

Not content merely to report this satirical verse, Malleville comments himself on the Imperial leaders, who allegedly followed the advice of the Archduke’s Jesuit confessor rather than military officers.145 Malleville was not the only contemporary to assess the Nagykanizsa campaign, but his privileged perspective as a military observer offers a fascinating glimpse of the tensions in the crusading army.

There were other reasons for the failure of the crusading campaign to retake Nagykanizsa, however. The famous case of a group of Francophone soldiers at Papa who mutinied against their commanders and became renegades in May 1600 suggests the strains of crusading war during this period.146 A Catholic noble named de Potrincourt, who had led an infantry regiment for the Catholic League, provides another example of the conflicting loyalties in the Hungarian wars. Potrincourt had raised a new regiment to serve in Hungary during the 1600–1601 campaigns, but allegedly became a renegade serving in Ottoman forces. Brantôme claims that “he revolted and became a renegade … taking with him many brave men of his.”147 Potrincourt apparently remained a renegade, and “he died serving as the pasha of Damascus with a strong reputation and greatly appreciated by his master.”148

The demobilization of the imperial army following the failed Nagykanizsa campaign discouraged some of crusading nobles. Marin Malleville returned to France and Giovanni de’ Medici decided to seek other opportunities for military command at various princely courts. Charles de Gonzague, duc de Nevers, nonetheless led a new group of French nobles on crusade in Hungary in 1602.149 These French nobles joined the Imperial army in the summer of 1602 for another attempt to retake Buda, which also failed.150 Blaise de Montluc-Montesquieu, seigneur de Pompignan, died of disease while serving in the entourage of the duc de Nevers.151 In the aftermath of the 1602 campaign, many more crusading nobles departed.

During the latter stages of the Long War, Hungary descended into an even more chaotic civil war. Lutheran towns resisted Catholic bishops’ efforts at recatholization in Hungary, especially after Habsburg troops occupied a Lutheran church in Kassa (Košice, Slovakia) in January 1604.152 Later in the year, a Calvinist Hungarian noble named István Bocskai led a major uprising against Habsburg rule, but failed to gain widespread support of the Lutheran Hungarians. According to Géza Pálffy, Bocskai instead “became the carefully manipulated vassal of the Ottomans, a ‘Turkish king of Hungary.’”153 Negotiations finally led to an Ottoman–Habsburg peace in 1606, which granted Bocskai the title of Prince of Transylvania, although he died later that year. The Transylvanian diet promptly elected another Calvinist noble, Zsigmond Rákóczi, as its new prince in early 1607.154

Many of the crusading nobles who had fought in the Long Turkish War seem to have been disillusioned by the experience. French Catholics were presumably shocked by the news of a peace sanctioning of a Calvinist prince of Transylvania, but most of them were probably back in France by the time the peace was signed. Indeed, many foreign nobles and soldiers had departed well before the end of the war. Don Giovanni de’ Medici, who had commanded Tuscan troops in Hungary in 1601–1602, traveled to Flanders and then to France, where he offered his services to King Henri IV.155 During his travels, Don Giovanni expressed his continued interest in the war in Hungary by thanking a Florentine official for a delivery of avvisi, manuscript news circulars: “the avvisi that you have send me and that your continually send, are always appreciated.” Don Giovanni noted, however, that “the avvisi from Germany and Hungary arrive here [in Sedan] much earlier by other means.”156 These news connections are perhaps an indication of the close personal and news networks that had been forged among the nobles who had waged crusading warfare in Hungary during the Long War.

Conclusion

By the early seventeenth century, Hungary had become a vital space of crusading experience, which held intimate meaning for many French nobles. Genealogies composed for French nobles in the first decades of the seventeenth century often celebrated family members’ military service in Hungary. A manuscript livre de raison of the seigneur de Châtillon recorded that one of his family members “had been killed in Hungary in 1605 toward the end of December.”157 Other nobles carefully conserved their letters and commissions related to their crusading experiences to use as proofs for their induction into the Order of the Holy Spirit.158 These sources show that lived experiences of crusading in Hungary were deeply meaningful to many French nobles and their families. This article has approached such sources and the wider problem of crusading warfare from a new angle, revealing shifting understandings of French military service on Hungarian battlegrounds. French writings about the battle of Mohács, the 1566 campaign, and the Habsburg-Ottoman War demonstrate that French crusading culture did not operate exclusively through mythic and nostalgic modes of expression, but instead encompassed diverse narratives and associations.

Hungary had become an important case in French political theories and treatises, offering an important lesson on monarchy. Jean Bodin portrays Hungary as suffering under Ottoman domination even before the disaster at Mohács, stressing the pernicious effect of tributary payments and internal violence.159 Martin Fumée emphasized that “this kingdom of Hungary, once rich and powerful, [has] at present fallen into such poverty that it is truly desolated”—warning that France was threatened with the same fate if it did not re-establish religious unity and good government.160 French nobles and political writers continued to dream of Christian unity through crusading. The duc de Nevers wrote: “I beg you to consider that the growth of the Muslim empire came about only because of the divisions among the Christian princes, who fight among themselves, while the Great Turk usurped Christian cities and provinces.”161 Crusading was thus usually contemplated in conjunction with commentaries on the religious divisions within Christianity.

By the early seventeenth century, the enslavement of Hungarians became increasingly important in crusading culture. Guyon considered the treatment of slaves by Christians, Muslims, and Jews, claiming that none of them actually freed slaves who converted to the dominant religion. Muslims did not free Christian slaves, he claims, “which is the reason that the Hungarians, Transylvanians, Polish, Bohemians, Germans, Italians, Danish, and other people no longer free their slaves when they convert.” He contrasts France with these other realms, emphasizing that: “France holds this privilege that any slave who sets foot there is emancipated, as shown by an ancient arrêt of the court of [the parlement de Paris] which found against an ambassador.”162 French authors now contemplated Hungary and Southeastern Europe in the context of commentaries on Mediterranean slavery and the problem of “redemption.”163 Perhaps such discussions reflected a growing interest in empire, as the French colony of Québec was founded in 1608 and New France soon began to provide outlets for crusading conquests and missionary activities.164

Crusading culture continued to be influential in early seventeenth century France. Jean Héroard, royal physician for the dauphin Louis [the future Louis XIII], recorded that Louis boasted that “one day, I will lead a great army into Hungary against the Turk.”165 Religious leaders who were affiliated with the royal family, such as Père Joseph, actively preached on the virtues of crusading.166 As an adult, Louis XIII would continue to promote crusading culture through the Order of the Holy Spirit.167 French nobles in the Knights of Malta proposed elaborate crusading projects to Louis XIII in the 1610s, while other French nobles engaged in their own personal crusades.168 A new French translation of Torquato Tasso’s great crusading tale, Jerusalem Delivered, was published in 1610 with a dedication to the duchesse de Guise, who presumably sponsored the translation.169 Charles de Gonzague, duc de Nevers, developed detailed plans to create a Milice chrétienne and launch a new Catholic crusade to the Holy Land, with support from Maria de’ Medici.170

Nonetheless, French writers often expressed regret that the religious strife and civil warfare within France prevented France from committing more fully to crusading against Muslims. French perceptions of crusading were thus shaped by the ongoing religious conflict within France, since the Edict of Nantes had failed to resolve the religious tensions between the Catholics and the Huguenots in France. New localized conflicts broke out in the confessionally mixed regions of southern France during the 1600s and 1610s. Jacques-Auguste de Thou lamented: “How many years lost in civil wars? If [the Christian princes] had instead employed them against the common enemy of Christianity, [the Turks] would have easily been chased out of Hungary and Africa: which would have added to their glory and their worth.”171 The continuing religious conflicts in France escalated in the 1620s, allowing Louis XIII and many Catholic nobles to enact their crusading desires against Huguenot “rebels” in southern France.172

Hungary remained a crucial theater of crusading warfare, but depictions of the war torn kingdom seem to have been changing by the 1620s. Deepening Franco-Spanish rivalries and the Thirty Years War (1618–48) may have led to Hungary’s displacement in French crusading culture and imaginaries of warfare.173 An altered vision of Hungary would later reemerge in a French political culture during Louis XIV’s reign, but by this time perhaps crusading warfare had truly been replaced by crusading nostalgia.

 

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Sahin-Tóth, Péter. “Expier sa faute en Hongrie. Réminiscences de croisade et pacification politique sous Henri IV.” In Foi, fidelité, amitié en Europe à la période moderne: mélanges offerts à Robert Sauzet, 2 vols, edited by Brigitte Maillard, 429–39. Tours: Publications de l’Université de Tours, 1995.

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Zoltán Péter Bagi

The Life of Soldiers during the Long Turkish War (1593–1606)

 

This study is concerned with the everyday lives, survival strategies, and social composition of the German armed forces who served in the border fortresses and field units of the Imperial and Royal Army during the wars against the Ottoman Empire that were fought on the territory of the Kingdom of Hungary in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This study shows that these troops enlisted to escape poverty and starvation, sometimes serving without weapons, and that their families often followed them onto Hungarian battlefields. As the rich source materials analyzed here demonstrate, however, their new positions confronted them with even greater challenges than they had faced previously, including the day-to-day threat of mortality, epidemics, the vicissitudes of the weather, and the constant deprivations caused by idle mercenaries. They strove to support themselves through fraud and deceit, as well as by forcefully plundering their surroundings; nonetheless, volunteering for military service did not provide them with a permanent solution to the problem of earning a living.

Keywords: Long Turkish War, German-speaking military in the Kingdom of Hungary, survival strategies, subsistence

Introduction

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, a significant number of German-speaking soldiers served on the territory of the Kingdom of Hungary, some of them in the strategically important strongholds of the Hungarian border-fortress system that had been created along the Hungarian–Ottoman frontier starting in the late 1520s.1

Hungarian historians have recently discussed the military’s coexistence with civil society, primarily townsfolk and the nobility, and in the cases of Győr, Kassa (Kosice, Slovakia), Keszthely, and Murány (Muráň, Slovakia), such research has shed light on both the advantages and the disadvantages of this forcible cohabitation. In general, it is clear that military objectives far outweighed the interests of locals, whose freedoms and economic activity were restricted in numerous regions. For instance, the army sometimes established connections with local handicraft industries, thereby creating competition for local guilds. And at the same time, while the presence of the military created markets, foreign infantrymen in Kassa, for example, also developed relationships with the families of German citizens there.2 Another significant portion of the mercenaries from the Holy Roman Empire arrived in Hungary during one or another of the military campaigns of the sixteenth century: 1527, 1540, 1551–52, 1566. At the end of military operations, these hired forces tended to scatter and leave the country. However, when the continuous conflict between the Habsburg Monarchy and the Ottoman Empire escalated into all-out war again in 1593, it created a new situation. At the conclusion of certain military operations, a significant portion of these field troops did not disband, but rather found winter accommodations and remained in the Kingdom of Hungary. However, until recently, we have had little information about such soldiers. International historical scholarship, though, has long dealt with important issues like the social composition of the armed forces, everyday life in military camps, conflicts between soldiers and citizens, and the role of women in the military.3

With respect to the social composition of the armed forces and the everyday lives of soldiers, the Thirty Years’ War stands at the forefront of both traditional and more recent German historiography. From the second half of the twentieth century onward, military, social, cultural, legal, and technological historians have examined the development and position of the army in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, exploring its everyday life as if the military were its own society, or an anthropologist’s small community.4 On the basis of such research, they have offered up finely shaded portraits of the social composition of the armed forces—that is, of the economic, demographic, social, and climatic factors and changes which led a significant portion of the population to see military service as a fundamental means of survival. In addition to archival sources, German historians have recently turned toward soldiers’ diaries and memoirs, which are especially useful for historical examinations of the way war was experienced and remembered in the period. From the Long Turkish War, however, we know of only one short soldier’s diary.5 Thus in the course of my research, I have gathered together official documents issued by military leaders and also relied on the sporadic data to be found in the works of contemporary historians. On the basis of these materials, I have sought answers to questions like the following: Why—or better yet, instead of what—did these soldiers undertake such dangerous service? What sort of martial virtues did they embody? How did they support themselves and their families? And what were their lives like in the camps?

Beckoned by the Enlistment Drum

Prior to the present study, there has been no comprehensive research on this subject. Only Antonio Liepold’s 1998 monograph has dealt with the role played by the gentry of the Holy Roman Empire and the Austrian Hereditary Lands in the wars against the Ottomans in the sixteenth century.6 German historiography and my own research would suggest that, generally speaking, all social strata—from vagabonds to aristocrats—were represented among the ranks of the cavalry and infantry that served in the Hungarian theater of operations during the Long Turkish War. In the case of the mounted soldiers, medieval military traditions continued to be observed. According to Lazarus von Schwendi’s Cavalry Appointments (Reiterbestallung), the decrees of the Imperial Diet of 1570 in Speyer included a directive that only noblemen were to enlist in the cavalry.7 It was also common for hired horsemen to be selected from among the vassals of the recruiting colonel (Obrist).8

In addition to the recruiting “enterprisers” (Militärunternehmer) and captains (Hauptmänner), there were also large numbers of Southern German noblemen (from Bavaria, Tyrol, Württemberg, and Swabia), as well as wealthy urban patrician youths in the infantry. Their roles were not limited to offices on the staffs of colonels or in the prima plana that directed these units (Fahne); they also enlisted as Doppelsöldner, mercenaries who volunteered for frontline duty in exchange for double pay. A good example is the Doppelsöldner registry for Karl Ludwig Graf zu Sulz’s infantry regiment, dated July 16, 1602. According to this document, those equipped with a round shield (Rundschier) included even persons of baronial descent, like Ulrich and Hans Leonhard Freiherr zu Spauer.9 One year later, Georg Leschenbrandt reported that large numbers of men from the nobility and gentry (Herren- und Rittenstand) of Lower Austria had shown up to enlist in Georg Andreas von Hofkirchen’s infantry unit.10 In hopes of opportunities for advancement, many captains became Doppelsöldner during the reorganization and merging of regiments, as Emperor Rudolf II’s letter to Archduke Matthias mentions in relation to Hans Prenier zu Stöbing’s regiment.11 The majority of these men had originally held the rank of private first class (Gefreite), often given to soldiers of noble blood, either in the ’colonel’s unit or his deputy’s.12

What led these noblemen to enter the service of a military enterprisers? Like advantageous marriages, enlistment in the military had become an important means of improving one’s lot. The pay and the spoils of war could make it financially profitable, and it also served as a strategy for social advancement. And beyond these possible gains in income and prestige, the desire for adventure also played a part in the decisions of the counts, lords, and youthful members of the urban elite who signed up. In addition, the revival of the idea of a crusade against the Ottoman Empire was also a motivating factor for members of the nobility and the urban elite.13 Most of the noblemen who fought in the infantry were prevented by their poor financial situations from serving in mounted units.14

However, the vast majority who enlisted were ordinary men from villages and cities. In keeping with a medieval practice called Gleve, aristocratic horsemen maintained entourages (lange Reihe) of six to twelve persons who escorted them into battle.15 The main body of the infantry was also recruited from among the commoners. In the case of noblemen, financial necessity tended to mix with the desire for personal glory; commoners’ main reason for showing up to enlist was to make a living. The population explosion in sixteenth-century Europe created a surplus of labor and a price surge, which, together with the so-called little ice age and the resultingly poor crop production, had a severe effect on living conditions.16 The hope of monthly payment and the loot enterprisers promised attracted the impoverished, who were struggling to supply themselves and their families with more and more expensive food on smaller and smaller wages.17 These included the suburban poor (guild apprentices, day laborers, domestic servants),18 craftsmen in under-remunerated professions (bakers, weavers, fabric dyers, tailors),19 and agricultural workers who had lost their means of subsistence to population growth and the resulting fragmentation of property (peasants, servants, day laborers, and farmhands).20 Wandering beggars, drifters, criminals, clergymen, and students also enlisted in the military,21 and even women gave soldiering a try.22 Thus, the hierarchy within the army faithfully imitated the established structure of society. This is why Brage Bei der Wieden referred to the sixteenth-century German army as a “parallel society” (Nebengesellschaft).23

The 1570 edicts (Artikelbrief) decreed that pikemen and gunmen had to own both proper armaments and uniforms in order to be mustered.24 However, penniless recruits from the fringes of society possessed neither.25 Even in the second half of sixteenth century, military enterprisers had to buy weapons in bulk, thus enabling anyone to enlist for mercenary service. By the time of the Long Turkish War, this state of affairs had become permanent, as the following two accounts demonstrate. On June 1, 1595, the monarch ordered his comptroller’’s office (Buchhalterei) to send the financial accounts for Oberhauptmann Hans Geizkofler’s three units to Michael Zeller, the military cashier in Hungary. According to this document, equipping the 900-man unit required 5410 Gulden, 9 Kreutzer, and 2 Pfennig, while the soldiers’’ monthly wages amounted to 8565 Gulden.26 An account from January of 1601 is even more telling about the armament needs of the entire force. According to it, there were only 1430 handheld firearms in the Vienna armory at that time, while another 19,990 were to be obtained before the next campaign.27 The Cavalry Appointments directory regulated weaponry and uniforms for mounted soldiers. Enlisted noblemen were instructed to provide their entourages with proper apparel that would protect both the soldiers and their equipment from the elements. In addition, every sixth retainer was to be armed with a fine musket.28 Impoverished soldiers, recruited from the periphery of society, tended to arrive for enlistment without any weapons.29

The actual military value of Western mercenaries is subject to question; Géza Perjés considered them to be the scum of society.30 Whether evaluating their performance in the infantry or the cavalry, it is hard to give a precise answer. It is arguable that horsemen from high-born families would have had the requisite knowledge of techniques for fighting from the saddle. The documents show, however, that this was not always true of their entourages. On July 19, 1598, Johann Eustach von Westernach, in describing the enlistment of Georg Friedrich von Hohenlohe’s black riders, reported that counts and noblemen recruited many young boys and demanded that they receive the same payment as experienced soldiers.31 Apparently, this problem was a persistent one: Hermann Cristoph von Russworm, sent to investigate the rebellion of 600 Dutch mounted gunmen, advised Archduke Matthias that Philipp Graf zu Solms’ soldiers should be retained with monthly payments and renewals (reductio) because they were tried and tested soldiers who knew the enemy well, and were thus of more use to the emperor than an inexperienced band of recruits.32

The case was the same with the infantry: there are examples both of mercenaries’’ merit and of their incompetence as well. An undated and anonymous fragment, annotated by Gundaker von Liechtenstein, asserted that hired forces should be well-versed in wielding their weapons, which experience was at least partly dependent on their financial status.33 Our sources from the Long War suggest a wide variety of experience levels among the troops. In June of 1598, Westernach and Zacharias Geizkofler, in describing the muster of Johann Friedrich von Mörsburg’’s regiment, reported that among the Doppelsöldner, those wielding “short arms” and two-handed swords had been fighting in wars for periods ranging from 10 to 30 years, and that even the least experienced among them had served for 5 or 6 years—in Italy, Brabant, the Netherlands, France, Burgundy, or Hungary. The two commissioners lavished praise on the regiment’’s musketeers as well. Their report says that of a thousand such soldiers, there were perhaps 25 or fewer who had no previous combat experience. They reported that quite a few of the gunmen had served on French, Dutch, Piemontese, or Hungarian battlefields, and that the others were strong, if fairly old. The latter remark was not a random addition by Geizkofler and Westernach. The document also states that the military enterprisers had not found enough arquebusiers, and that there were too few musketeers to reassign any of them to the arquebusiers. Thus the two muster officers were forced to register many inexperienced youths.34 This is a single but not isolated example which clearly illustrates the range of experience in the infantry brigades of the Imperial and Royal Army. All in all, some of the soldiers, especially the Doppelsöldner and musketeers, were considered skilled warriors. Some weeks later, after inspecting Ludwig Graf zu Sulz’’s infantry regiment, Westernach reported that most of the enlisted were strong, healthy, battle-tested soldiers who could be truly useful to the emperor.35 In addition, there are many references suggesting that a large portion of the soldiers who were dismissed enlisted again in newly formed regiments, and that many commissioned muster inspectors had favorable opinions of these soldiers as well.36 In contrast, elements of the Bestallungen and professional reports indicate that there were rookies who had joined the ranks of the arquebusiers and were unskilled in the use of their weapons.37 In my opinion, however, this was not a significant problem. It was natural that inexperienced recruits from the fringes of society would begin their service among the arquebusiers. On the one hand, they could afford only the cheapest weapons, and on the other, much more practice would have been required to learn the weaponry techniques and battlefield formations of the Doppelsöldner. Unlike polearm-wielding soldiers, gunmen could learn the basic skills for handling their weapons in just a couple of days, and they could move more freely on the battlefield, even in the more closed tertios, or pike-and-shot formations. Their lack of experience did not necessarily put them at a tactical disadvantage either, as volley firing could do great damage to their Ottoman opponents.38 The only problem arose when an arquebusier, in hopes of greater payment, decided to enlist the following year as a musketeer or Doppelsöldner without having mastered the given weapon. According to Geizkofler’s 1603 report, this was common in the Imperial and Royal Army. It must also be noted that such efforts to earn promotions and the consequent higher wages were standard career strategies not limited to the arquebusiers.39

Based on the above observations, I would argue that neither opinion at either extreme is correct: I do not think that a completely unprepared mass of soldiers from the Holy Roman Empire was assigned to the Hungarian theater of operations. But it would also be a mistake to assume that a fully professional, well-trained infantry and cavalry entered the fray against the Ottoman army during this fifteen-year war. In reality, there are examples that illustrate both cases: we find unqualified greenhorns alongside mercenaries who had fought in numerous campaigns and knew their weapons well.

Regular Wages as the Basis of Subsistence?

Even though more volunteers usually showed up at musters than could be enrolled, and even though several units enlisted more recruits than the Bestallung called for,40 the total sum designated for payouts to mercenaries increased steadily over the course of the Long Turkish War. This phenomenon is apparently the result of three closely interrelated factors. The negotiated payments were dependent on (1) food prices, which were increasing due to the aforementioned little ice age, (2) the lobbying efforts of war contractors, and (3) the interests of recruited mercenaries.41 Sources describing the frequency and the amounts of the payments mercenaries actually received are fairly limited, thus we can only conjecture based on the written records to which we have access. In my opinion, however, it is logical to look at the various kinds of payments made to mercenaries, from their enlistment and muster until their disbandment.

The first sum of money to which an enlisted soldier was theoretically entitled was the Anritt- or Laufgeld, an advance payment that enabled an enrolled soldier to travel from the location of his recruitment to the site of his unit’’s muster inspection. Soldiers from distant provinces who enlisted in newly formed units were likely to receive this money. However, it was not always enough to cover all their expenses, as the distance between the towns where they were recruited and ultimately inspected could be several hundred kilometers; sometimes prospective soldiers simply spent this money on drinks at nearby taverns.42 In some cases, the recruit might get an advance on his first monthly payment, which was recorded on the muster registry. Troops who had already served on Hungarian battlefields could expect to receive this sort of advance again if they continued their service. In December 1597, for instance, Zacharias Geizkofler and Bartholomäus Pezzen negotiated with Seifried von Kollonich and Heinrich Matthias von Thurn, convincing them to remain in their regiment for an Anrittgeld of 4 Gulden and a monthly wage of 12 Gulden. However, these negotiations ultimately failed, and thus these advances were never disbursed.43

Soldiers did not always receive the per diem promised to those who were awaiting inspection. Payments to Tettau’s horsemen, for instance, began on the 10th day of the month, not on the date of their muster. In his July 16, 1598 report, the commissioned inspection officer explained this seeming bonus payment by noting that the horsemen had never received the Nachtgeld they had been promised.44 In most cases, however, the problem was not a failure to distribute the assigned sums, but rather that the amounts were too meager to keep up with ever-increasing food prices, which made it difficult for soldiers to provide for themselves, their relatives, or their horses.

Like the advances, the first monthly payments following a muster also seem to have been uncertain. In their report on the 1598 muster of the Mörsburg regiment, Westernach and Geizkofler noted that the soldiers were dissatisfied with their negotiated payments. Among other grievances, they complained that they had hardly received any of the money for their third month of service, and that their first month’’s payments had gone almost entirely toward their weapons expenses. In their opinion, the prices for the gear prescribed by the Capitulatio for Doppelsöldner, musketeers, and arquebusiers (11, 9, and 6 Gulden, respectively) were too high; they were also concerned that they would not receive the remaining two months’’ payment in full.45

In the period between the first month’s payment and the next muster, military enterprisers often received only an advance for the following months, out of which they had to distribute their underlings’’ wages. On November 2, 1604, Giorgio Basta summoned the colonels (Obristen) of his army and told them that their infantry and cavalry would receive their pay and uniforms only in Kassa. As a token, they handed out 2 Gulden to each soldier. However, the soliders would not receive another payment until January of 1605, and this was not a full month’s wages either, but merely another advance collected from the towns around Eperjes (Prešov, Slovakia). By June 19, 1605, this lack of wages had led to threats of mutiny. The infantrymen of the Puchheim regiment protested in front of the house of the judge in Eperjes, demanding full payment of the five month’s wages that had been denied them. The situation was resolved by the colonel’s deputy, Lazarus von Schwendi, who ordered that money and supplies be handed out to the soldiers.46

However, even these advances were not always paid. Having arrived at a muster of Walloon infantrymen, Geizkofler and Pezzen wrote in their December 3, 1597 report that though the officers had received the assigned funds, they did not disburse them to the sick.47 In January of 1598, commissioned inspector Jakob Püchler reported the following from a Walloon army muster at Érsekújvár: the officers of Alphonso Montecuccoli’s cavalry had requested that their advances not be deducted from their balances because their military enterpriser, though he had received the money, had never paid it to them.48 Russworm, Sulz, and Mörsburg described similar experiences in their 1604 reports.49 To this day, no documents confirming that the soldiers received their siege and battle payments have ever surfaced.

The army cashier sometimes issued extraordinary payments. As prescribed in the Bestallungbrief and in the Artikelbrief, troops who took part in a successful siege or battle were entitled to an extra month’s pay.50 On October 7, 1598, Westernach sent a fairly strange letter to the Emperor from the military camp in Buda. After the capture of Víziváros, the colonels and their troops, who had been hired with imperial funds, demanded their siege bonuses. However, the imperial army commissioner would only disburse this money if the Christian troops were to take the castle itself; otherwise, he argued, the already secured lower castle would be lost again.51 In December of 1601, Archduke Matthias informed the troop commanders who had taken part in the capture of Székesfehérvár and the consequent battle at Sárrét that the Emperor had denied their requests for siege and battle bonuses, along with their pleas to be compensated for the damage done to their regiments.52 The reason behind the Court Military Council’s decision may well have been a chronic lack of money, given that the regiments of those making these demands—Hofkirchen, Adolf von Althan, Preiner, and Hans Wendel von Pernhausen—had participated in both military operations.53

Whether soldiers resigned or continued their service, the commissioned muster officer would negotiate their pay with the military enterpriser who had enlisted them. In the former case, even if their agreements specified the payments to be made to the soldiers (or to their widows and orphans), such stipulations were not always honored. In some cases, not even this final payment—already diminished by deductions for advances and food expenses—would be fully paid in cash. Instead, soldiers were issued bills of credit, the so-called Restzettel, in the amount they were owed,54 which bills could be redeemed at the army cashier’s office.55 In many cases, colonels, other officers, or sometimes even civilians would purchase these bills of credit from the soldiers and demand compensation for them at a later date.56

The situation for soldiers who continued their service was hardly better. As one captain of a reenlisted Walloon infantry unit explained in a letter in February of 1596, the proposed inducement to re-up (a half-month’s pay plus food) was insufficient, especially considering that his soldiers had not received the first month’s pay promised by the Accordo. They thus demanded that they be dismissed and provided with documents of passage that would enable them to return home.57

It is not surprising, therefore, that military enterprisers in the Hungarian theater of operations had to offer their mercenaries “incentives”. On the one hand, mercenaries were motivated by these irregularly issued monthly payments; on the other, as Parker has demonstrated in the case of the Netherlands’ Spanish army,58 continually rising food prices also compelled them to enlist.

Alternative Means of Making a Living

As mercenaries had to provide for themselves and their families, they had to seek other sources of income in addition to—or instead of—their “normal” pay, which came only irregularly, or not at all for months. Petty fraud, the systematic looting of their environment, and family members’ incomes helped them mitigate the severity of their destitution.

Minor Circles of Deception

Even the Artikelbrief accepted at the Imperial Diet of 1570 in Speyer contains several paragraphs addressing soldiers’ various cons, swindles, and schemes. According to this document, the swapping of weapons and gear between mercenaries was prohibited. It also defined the length of the month to be served and the corresponding payment, and also recommended execution for those who deserted or took unauthorized leave after receiving their wages. It also made it a capital offence to enlist as a mercenary under two different captains or in two different places, which some did in hopes of doubling their money. To eliminate this possibility, recruits were supposed to fill out their muster documents with their given and family names, as well as their place of origin. Officers were obliged to ensure that everyone served in the campaign with their own weapons and armor. In addition, enterprisers had to make sure not to enlist anyone from another infantry unit or from the cavalry.59

Apart from the types of fraud referred to in the Artikelbrief, there are other instances of deception in the contemporary sources. An order issued by the Hofrat on April 12, 1600 prohibited enterprisers from enrolling vineyard laborers (Hauer) for military service. Their enlistment was discouraged as they sometimes deceived both the vineyard owners and the recruiting captains. They did not do their work in the wineries, nor did they show up at the musters, stealing and damaging crops as they migrated to and fro.60

It also happened that enterprisers and enlisted men were partners in such schemes, the unit commander secretly dismissing his soldiers and keeping their wages for himself. To keep his ruse from being discovered, the commander would hire day laborers at minimal cost to “stand in for the roll call” and then depart, as related by a patent issued on November 10, 1600.61

Pillaging as a Means of Survival

Plunder and pillage were everyday activities for the enlisted, from their muster and encampment until their disbandment, despite the fact that the Artikelbrief recommended the death penalty for anyone who engaged in such acts.62 Even so, it did little to discourage them. On the one hand, as Zacharias Geizkofler pointed out in his report dated January 11, 1597, the Dutch cavalry was accustomed to pillaging and marauding.63 The next year, Martin Crusius, a Greek professor at Tübingen University, noted in his journal that Georges Bayer de Boppard’s Walloon infantrymen had caused extensive damage at Pfuhl (near Ulm), going so far as to burn down 17 houses.64 On the other hand, the soldiers’ daily payments were insufficient to sustain them. In his May 15, 1598 letter to Rudolf II, Archduke Matthias reported that mercenaries from the Russworm infantry regiment, while waiting for their muster in Lower Austria, received four Kreutzer a day with which to provide for themselves and their families. However, as the author argued, this was so meager—not even enough to buy bread—that the soldiers simply stole whatever they needed to survive from poor local subjects. Thus, the Archduke proposed a doubling of the daily payment for those waiting to be mustered. In addition, he allowed taxes on the locals to be decreased or eliminated altogether.65

The most problematic form of tax increase levied on local subjects was the repeated postponement of the day of muster. According to a detailed note compiled by members of the Lower Austrian nobility in 1602, Hofkirchen’s 3000 infantrymen waited to be mustered at Krems for 36 days. Sulz’s regiment had to wait 42 days at Tull for the muster commissioners. Hans Ernst von Sprinzenstein’s unit had to stay idle for 73 days until their muster. In addition, the mounted arquebusiers hired by the Lower Austrian noblemen were given an extra 20,000 Rheingulden over and above their allotted wages in hopes of stopping their harassment of poor local subjects.66

The prolongation of marches also imposed significant burdens on local populations. According to the aforementioned note, 3000 Walloons spent 14 days on a march over land and water across Lower Austria; the infantry hired by the Upper Austrian nobility spent 10 days; the Salzburg army 16 days; and Philipp Otto Graf zu Salm, Wild- und Rheingraf’s 500 riders took 23 days. On such occasions, local inhabitants had to provide supplies not only for the troops, but for the commissioned inspectors as well, not to mention the constant abuses of power they had to endure.67

The armies that appeared at muster sites for disbandment also caused great damage. As the waiting time for the muster increased, so did the burdens on the local population. Note the following data from the compiler of the previously cited Lower Austrian registry: Kollonich’s 1000 horsemen, while waiting to be disbanded in the area of Marchfeld and Ebzersdorf, parasitized the population for 21 days, while the 2000 Austrian infantrymen at Hainburg did likewise for 21 days. One thousand soldiers from Salzburg did so for 5 days at the Schwadorf estate, while the infantry hired by the Upper Austrian noblemen spent 46 idle days in the vicinity of Fischamand.68 Geizkofler and Pezzen seem justified in suggesting in their December 3, 1597 report that the quickly and competently executed muster, reorganization, and disbandment of the Royal and Imperial troops stationed at Pozsony (Bratislava, Slovakia) saved the subject population approximately a hundred thousand Gulden.69

Those who remained in service were ordered into winter encampments by the Court’s Military Council. As this was enormously expensive, Rudolf II recommended in an October 1601 letter that wages for these months should be decreased, or that two month’s payment should simply be skipped.70

To spare Austria, Walloons were usually quartered in Hungarian territories, where nearby counties, towns, and villages were to provide for them. However, as they were underpaid, soldiers often “acquired” supplies from the vicinity of their accommodations.71 In the records of the patrician conclaves of Sopron, Vas, and Zala counties, there are recurrent entries complaining about instances of Walloon and French extortion in their villages, which led them to petition Archduke Matthias to have these soldiers transferred.72

The German military was quartered in Lower Austria, usually in Vienna, either in the towns and villages along the Hungarian border or in the territory of Habsburg Hungary.73 Their payments for extended service were, again, erratic or missing, which led them to take essentials like food and firewood from local subjects by force. The February 23 entry of the Court Military Council’s 1595 protocol relates that Andreas Medwe was sent to Helckendorf to investigate crimes committed by the mercenaries of Jakob Hannibal von Raitenau’s regiment, including the murder of a peasant.74 Some months later, in December of 1595, Raitenau’s German soldiers were again involved in a series of incidents. Because of the aforementioned huge amount of unpaid wages,75 the remaining army that was housed on the outskirts of Vienna began systematically robbing the population. Their transgressions ceased only when certain key figures were captured and executed on December 20.76

The army that was stationed in Upper Hungary also imposed a great burden on the population of the neighboring counties. This is why the local nobility petitioned the Emperor on April 30, 1603 with a detailed depiction of the soldiers’ plundering of the locals. According to their petition, they had complained several times about the damage done by soldiers of various nationalities, especially mounted gunmen wearing white, green, and blue coats, serving in Szatmár (Satu Mare, Romania). They divided the villages among themselves, confiscating wood, hay, and straw by force and without payment. Village judges and subjects were coerced into trading at prices that were set by the plunderers. Thus, one véka (an obsolete unit of measurement) of oats normally went for for one Gulden, but it also happened that soldiers would demand not one, but two, or even four véka in exchange for this fee. If there was no fodder in the village, the population would be forced to travel to the market in Kassa or elsewhere to purchase the required supplies. And while market prices fluctuated, soldiers would pay for their foodstuffs, wine, and fodder only according to a set list of prices, and thus villagers were sometimes forced to do this shopping at a loss.

In the winter, depending on the conditions, three or four of these mounted gunmen would chose a county and move into a village. Once there, they would demand food of the best available quality, also requisitioning free provisions for their wives or children or companions. First they would be given beer, and when it ran out, they would want the best wine. If there was no wine, they would send the locals away to find some, sometimes to sources miles away. All in all, they indulged themselves, keeping kitchens and cellars open all day and night. This caused the locals to complain, as they did not have so much that they could satisfy their guests, who forced the peasants to do their bidding by beating them or threatening them with weapons. They also looted houses, taking pillows, beds, geese, hens, and swine, and even this was not enough, as they often seized everything that had not been buried. As long as the soldiers were there, they would want a half véka of fodder—nearly equivalent to a Prague bushel—for each horse. And if that was not sufficient, peasants would be sent to the market to buy more.

The author of this document goes on to discuss the coming of spring. Villagers were afraid of further damage, suspecting that, beyond the usual seizures, the soldiers would confiscate lambs, pigs, geese, and other poultry. On top of all this, some of the mounted gunmen, unsatisfied with the aforementioned goods, came with wagons and took the wheat, barley, and oats that the serfs had grown and had it milled for their own use. These soldiers committed such plunder not once or twice or four times, but as often as they fancied. Thus—the noblemen’s complaint asserted—our villages had survived the Tatars (that is, the Ottoman Turks), only to be destroyed by our own mounted soldiers. Not only did the nobles worry that their tax-paying serfs were being plundered and impoverished, they were increasingly disturbed by the mercenaries’ failure to distinguish nobles from commoners. They ravaged estates and occupied empty houses, treating everyone equally.

The local nobility argued in this petition that the soldiers of Johann Baptista Pezzen’s regiment had done the greatest damage. They looted, plundered, and pillaged everywhere, in the courtyards and castles of noblemen, clergymen, and laymen alike. They butchered countless cattle, they abused virgins and women of good reputation, they committed murder and other despicable acts—it is a wonder that the earth did not open up and devour them.77 And thus the Court ordered the Szepes Chamber in Kassa to investigate the complaints of the Upper Hungarian nobility, which also included the assertions that Pezzen’s infantry regiment had taken three or four thousand (!) horses and that the plundered goods of a single captain had filled eight wagons.78

This pillage and plunder was naturally accompanied by violence and destruction, and military leaders struggled against such viciousness, both in their camp regulations and in the Artikelbrief. Thanks to these efforts, certain provisions of the two documents forbade the abuse or dishonoring of women in labor, the pregnant, virgins, the elderly, preachers, priests, and parish clerks. They likewise forbade the looting or destruction of churches, monasteries, hermitages, and schools. For all such transgressions, clauses 8 and 9 of the Artikelbrief held out the possibility of the death penalty.79 In article 53, Schwendi also forbade, under threat of execution, the destruction of crops, mills, and bakers’ ovens, by which provision he hoped to safeguard the army’s food sources. In addition, in article 54, the drafters of this document emphatically stressed that the aged and infirm, clerics, women, and small children—that is, the unarmed and those incapable of bearing arms—should never beaten or killed; anyone who committed such a crime was to pay for it with his life. Schwendi also used the threat of death to ward off another recurrent form of hooliganism—anyone who pilfered or set fire to a military camp without the express command of his colonel was to be executed. 80 Of course, these official prohibitions had little actual effect on everyday practice, as exemplified by the sacking of Beszterce (Bistrita, Romania) in February of 1602. However, neither in its death toll nor in the volume of plundered wealth did this incident measure up to the losses suffered by the rich city of Magdeburg, which was sacked in 1631 by the soldiers of the Catholic League, and where 20-30,000 citizens were slaughtered.81 Thus, the Long Turkish War was marked by pillaging, plundering, and ransacking, just like other European theaters of war. However, the volume of such depredations permanently circumscribed the growth of the cities of the Kingdom of Hungary and Transylvania, so that neither in population nor in economic terms did they ever reach the size or potential of similar cities in Western Europe.

Wives and Children

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the motley crews that accompanied the armed forces were made up primarily of women and children.82 In antiquity, it was not regarded as extraordinary for a mercenary to set off on a military campaign with his wife, or even his entire family. Even into the nineteenth century, their presence was generally described as a common military obligation.83 Based on communications from the Long Turkish War and the Thirty Years’ War, it is possible to come up with a rough estimate of the number of people who stayed in military camps but did not fight. In a patent dated April 28, 1601, Rudolf II informed the magistrates of Grundramsdorf, Neudorf, and Biedermasdorf that Captain Dietmayr Schiffer’s 200-man battalion, then in the service of the Pope, was to be dismissed if it were to come to any of these three villages. According to this document, these soldiers were accompanied by 19 women and children (Trossweib und Bubeln).84 At the end of February, 1632, after a short siege, the defenders of Buxtehude surrendered the stronghold entrusted to them to Swedish troops, who, in exchange, promised the Imperial Guard and their companions a safe withdrawal. A short time later, 501 soldiers, 335 women, and 367 children abandoned the city.85 In all probability, they belonged to a regiment of Albrecht von Wallenstein’s army, then stationed at Forchheim, near Bamberg, at the muster of which the enteprisers listed 2258 soldiers, 916 women, and 521 children.86 Johann Jakob von Wallhausen, on the other hand, in his 1615 work Kriegskunst zu Fuß (Warfare On Foot), reckoned that the recruitment of 3000 soldiers would mean the presence of 4000 women and children (!) in their camp.87 This number does not appear to be an exaggeration, given that in 1573 it was assumed that approximately 5000 various people (footmen, servants, wives, prostitutes, and children) and as many as a thousand horses would accompany a 3000-man Spanish regiment going off to war.88

Enterprisers were generally of the opinion that the wives and children in the camps were merely useless, hungry mouths89 who slowed the army down, contributed to rising food prices, and lowered morale. Accordingly, they renewed their efforts to restrict or even prohibit the hiring of married mercenaries.90 In spite of this, there were many of them in the Christian armies of the Long War and their contemporaries viewed their presence as common, even customary. As Ferenc Dersffy wrote in his August 13, 1597 letter to the lord lieutenant (supremus comes or főispán) of Árva county, György Thurzó of Bethlenfalva: “…with the Germans, as they cannot be without them, there are many women.”91 Four years later, Peter Casal wrote to Graz from the Christian encampment at Kanizsa that in the two regiments hired by Gianangelo Gaudanzi di Madruzzo, Baron d’Avy, he had seen more women than men.92

The women and children traveling with the army were not just useless idlers to be fed; they took part in the everyday life and work of the camp and tried to help their families earn a living. For example, they participated in the construction of siege ramps. Casal, who personally took part in the siege of Kanizsa in 1601, mentions several times in his letters that the women worked alongside the men and that several of them were even shot.93 They also took part in the cleaning of the camp lavatories and in nursing the sick and the wounded.94

In addition to carrying all the family’s belongings, women cared for the children and looked after the animals. They washed officers’ clothes for money, occasionally begged for alms, and sometimes hurried to the battlefield to loot corpses with their husbands.95 To sustain their families, they often risked their lives by looking for food outside the camps. According to Casal’s description, food was so scarce in the camp of the Christian army besieging Kanizsa that in early September of 1601 every able person left the camp armed with huge poles, walking as far as a mile to beat the fruit from the region’s apple and plum trees. In their hunger, many gorged themselves, devouring all the fruit in sight and subsequently falling ill.96

Enterprisers also seem to have taken advantage of the presence of family members in the camps, as it happened more than once that women and children dressed themselves in army garments before a muster and thus deceived the mustering officer. The military enterpriser could then pocket the payments meant for those who were serving only on paper, after honoring these supplementals” with a few coins. Such troublesome experiences can be inferred from the Bestallung issued in Preiner’s name on March 15, 1602. It emphasized that enterprisers were not to enlist young kids (Buben), but men skilled in warfare. In addition, Geizkofler’s report, dated January 18, 1603, in reinforcing the edicts of the 1603 Imperial Diet in Regensburg, suggested that it would be necessary to set up a permanent army because youngsters were enlisting at every recruitment drive, especially among the arquebusiers, and that they were useless and a waste of food.97

Whether in the Long Turkish War or the Thirty Years’ War, if her husband left her or was killed in battle, the situation of a mercenary’s wife could change quickly. If she could not support herself or find a new husband—that is, in many instances—she had no other option than to prostitute herself to survive. After a while, these women came to be regarded just like those who had joined the campaigning army as prostitutes in the first place.98

A Final, Desperate Move: Desertion, Insubordination, or Mutiny

Soldiers’ dissatisfaction was directly proportional to their unpaid wage bills and their hunger. The Christian army that besieged Kanizsa in 1601 included mercenaries from Central and Southern Italy who could not tolerate the Hungarian climate and often deserted the army in groups of twenty or thirty.99 In the spring of 1602, some privates and infantrymen from the Althan regiment, fed up with their unpaid wages, left their winter encampment and deserted to Vienna. The Emperor distributed a patent throughout the city and the entirety of Lower Austria, warning residents to keep their gates closed and to check every passage, ferry, and customs checkpoint if necessary. Upon capture, these deserters’ full names were to be reported and they were to be kept under strict surveillance.100 In that same year, the remaining soldiers of Johann Baptista Pezzen’s regiment left their appointed winter quarters and marched back to Austria.101

One year later, Russworm had to investigate the revolt of 600 Dutch mounted gunmen who had been hired by Solms in Upper Hungary. According to his report, the soldiers’ disaffection and their ransacking of the region had been caused by the failure to pay them, and he recommended that this be kept in mind in sentencing both the leaders and the participants in this mutiny.102

As described in a letter written to Rudolf II in May of 1604, another thousand soldiers, these from the Mörsburg infantry regiment, also revolted over delinquent payments. This group left their appointed winter quarters in the town of Szentgyörgy (Durdevac, Croatia), marched to Lower Austria, and occupied Schwechat. However, when Sulz and Bernhard Leo Gall’s infantry and cavalry arrived to confront them, they disavowed their mutiny and gave up their five chief leaders.103

There is no doubt that the largest mutiny of mercenaries during the Long Turkish War was the revolt at Pápa. By August or September of 1599, the French and Walloon infantry brigades in the military camp at Esztergom were on the verge of open revolt. By disbursing some money, Geizkofler, the Court Military Council, and the Court Chamber managed to resolve the precarious situation, but only temporarily. In June of 1600, the French army, still lingering at their winter quarters in Pápa, revolted over insufficient supplies and overdue wages. It took a proper siege to retake the stronghold from them, and some of them even defected to the Ottoman army.104 Considering all this, it is no surprise that Karl von Liechtenstein’s professional report argued that it was inadvisable to enlist additional French troops, given their unreliability. He also advised against hiring new Walloon mercenaries because their long marches to the battlefield greatly increased their cost, and their casualties could not be easily replaced. It must also be noted that Liechtenstein was of the opinion that the climatic conditions in the Hungarian lands made Italians unfit for imperial service there; he also considered Cossacks marauders rather than soldiers.105

Weather and the Troops

In addition to the constant hardships soldiers faced, like mortal danger and unpaid wages, we have to consider two more influences on their everyday lives: weather and epidemics. The so-called “little ice age” was the period of intensified glaciation between the fourteenth and the nineteenth centuries. One of its coldest periods took place at the turn of the seventeenth century. By the end of the sixteenth century, the hot, dry summers of the 1550s were turning colder and colder, with more and more precipitation. Alpine glaciers started to grow in the mid-1580s and kept advancing until the turn of the century, and as a result, the average annual temperature dropped by 1.2-1.4 degrees Celsius. Summers became cooler and rainier, while winters became colder and harsher, and this climate change also affected the Carpathian Basin. The cold period that started in the middle of the sixteenth century was at its worst between 1595 and 1602.106

In the 1570 Artikelbrief, Schwendi required both infantry and cavalry to wear good coats or cloaks in order to protect themselves and their firearms from the cold.107 Of course, this directive was not always obeyed. Westernach wrote in his October 7, 1598 report to the Court Military Council that due to the cold, many men were lying sick in their tents and in makeshift huts.108 One month later, muster inspector Kulner reported from the muster of the Preiner regiment that a large part of the infantry had fallen ill as a result of the cold weather and their poor garments.109 In a volume published in 1685, Tobias Kober wrote that bronchitis and the common cold were regular problems in Hungary, especially in the encampments. Most soldiers were affected, and often suffered from the resulting sore throats and pulmonary diseases. Afflicting the whole body, these ailments contributed to the so-called “Pannonian languor” (“languores Pannonicos”). Old soldiers protected themselves with aqua vitae (pálinka, or vino sublimate), often drinking it in the morning. Mörsburg prohibited his infantrymen from consuming spirits, but Kober convinced him that pálinka was indeed useful during cold season. However, the wise doctor also added that its consumption could be harmful in hot weather. Some aqua vitae could drive thickened mucus out of the throat, but it was thought to cause one’s bile to boil when the weather was hot. Thus he advised Mörsburg to consider the suitability of the weather and the season, particularly in the Hungarian encampments. Having served as field medic to the Imperial and Royal Army in 1596 and 1597, Kober thought that the various natural phenomena that scourged the Christian army during the siege of Buda in 1598 were actually the work of Turkish sorcerers and Satan himself.110

Christian and Ottoman sources both mention that the weather during the siege of Kanizsa in the autumn of 1601 was rather cold and wet. This greatly slowed the preparations for the siege, as the almost constant rainfall on the already sodden swamplands made digging siege ramps and filling the moat impossible. For example, their supposedly decisive assault was to start on October 28 because the Imperial and Royal forces had been able to start the digging for the ramps only nine days earlier. Then, a great snowfall rendered the continuation of the siege impossible. The incessant rain, followed by snow and freezing dawns, made the conditions almost unbearable for the starving soldiers. The Southern Italians, who had never known such dire weather, suffered the most. To provide material for the sandbags they used to fill the moat, soldiers were forced to cut up their tents, which meant sleeping in the trenches under the open sky. It was no wonder that they froze to death en masse, or deserted to escape these terrible conditions. On their march toward Kanizsa, Russworm’s armies suffered similar losses. Although they had brought tents, they were unable to pitch them, and thus 3000 men and women and 300 horses would perish along the way.111

However, disease resulted not just from the rain and the cold, but also from the heat. According to Ortelius, hot weather contributed to the illnesses and deaths of soldiers in the month of August in both 1596 and 1598. In both instances, dehydration led to fatigue and eventually to death.112

Hygiene in the camps was also a serious problem. Fronsberger’s work contains an undated set of regulations which established strict sanitary procedures for camp latrines and abattoirs in hopes of preventing epidemics.113 However, outbreaks of contagious diseases could not be avoided. As a result of haphazard burial practices and a lack of basic hygiene, an epidemic broke out during the siege of Esztergom in 1595; its casualties included deputy commander Karl von Mansfeld.114 Kober also reports that one year later, a physician who had arrived with the troops from Upper Austria also died during an epidemic at the siege of Hatvan. When the defenders’ artillery forced his camp into retreat and he was out tending to the wounded, Leonhard Rauwolff drank from the Zagyva river (“Hadwaniensisaquae”), at which point, according to Kober, the urine and feces in the water poisoned him. The old medic was ignored in the camp, was not treated adequately, and eventually died of constant diarrhea that September.115 Two years later, as the Christian army was retreating to the Szigetköz, the flooding Danube soaked their camp. The resulting epidemic afflicted Adolf von Schwarzenberg, Bernhard Leo Gall, and Geizkofler, but in the end, only a few of their cohort would die of it.116

Conclusion

The entirety of Austro-Hungarian and European society was represented in the Imperial and Royal Army at the end of the sixteenth century. We find soldiers who enlisted out of a sense of Christian duty, impoverished nobles, and citizens seeking honor and adventure. As in the Thirty Years’ War, however, it was the penniless who made up the great mass of the armed forces. Trying to escape poverty and starvation, these initially unarmed recruits and their families had to face everyday dangers in the Hungarian theater of war: mortal violence, destitution caused by unpaid wages, epidemics, and exposure to the elements. They strove to survive through fraud and deceit, as well as by looting and ransacking their environment. Already by the end of the fourteenth century, their rulers had been trying, through various decrees, to prohibit such “solutions”, but in vain—their everyday survival strategies simply did not comport with the norms set down for them by the authorities.117

Joining the military did not solve the long-term problem of subsistence. Even so, it happened more than once during the Long Turkish War that more people showed up at a muster of a regiment than could be accommodated. For many, there was no way to return to their former lives. They spent the time between their terms of service wandering about as vagrants (gartender Knecht), waiting to be mustered again.118

These roving, armed soldiers and their families, meanwhile, tried to support themselves by means of minor (or more serious) criminal acts, often imposing significant burdens on local populations. However, these methods allowed soldiers to secure a living for themselves and their families only in the short term. And because of they were under-housed and perpetually malnourished, their constitutions were even less capable of withstanding the climatic ordeals and accompanying illnesses that confronted them on the battlefields of Hungary.

It is important to reiterate that among the soldiers who arrived in the Kingdom of Hungary in this period, we find the unprepared and unqualified alongside mercenaries who had fought in numerous campaigns and knew their weapons well. Therefore, it is incorrect to assume that every recruit who reached the Hungarian theater of war would have been completely unprepared militarily; however, it would be equally irresponsible to assert that they were all trained professionals.

 

Archival Sources

Österreichisches Staatsarchiv

Kriegsarchiv

Hofkriegsratakten

Wien Expedit

Wien Registratur

Prag

Bestallungen

Alte Feldakten

Hofkammerarchiv

 

Niederösterreichische Gedenkbücher 1595–1596

 

Mandate, Patente und Passbriefe in Kriegssachen (MPP)

Kriegsakten

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Balázs Lázár

Turkish Captives in Hungary during Austria’s Last Turkish War (1788–91)

 

During the last Turkish war of the Habsburg Monarchy (1788–91), several hundred Ottoman soldiers were taken prisoner by the Habsburg army and accommodated in Hungarian fortresses. Numerous rules and orders were issued by Joseph II regarding the treatment of these prisoners. These rules represent interesting mixes of the new ideas of the Enlightenment and old habits. According to these regulations, the captured Turks were given the status of prisoner of war and were provided with regular supplies. The study also examines the circumstances of the capture, the lives, and often the deaths of the Turkish prisoners in Hungary, as well as the exchanges of prisoners, which began only slowly but eventually resulted in their release. The fate of the Austrian prisoners in Turkish captivity is also briefly discussed. The paper was completed exclusively on the basis of primary sources.

Keywords: Austro–Turkish War (1788–91), prisoners of war, treatment of captives, exchanges of prisoners, Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor, King of Hungary

 

Introduction

Until recently, the fate of captives and prisoners of war was one of the most neglected chapters of the military history.1 Interest in this topic, however, has grown considerably, parallel with the evolution of new approaches, e. g. “the new military history” or John Keegan’s novel perspective of the common soldier. These current trends in military history also have evinced significantly more interest in the fate of noncombatants and other “minor characters” of the conflicts than previous histories of “the warlords.” Inspired by a vague notion, this study examines the question of Turkish prisoners held captive in Hungary during the Turkish War of Joseph II, a topic that in the end proved more interesting than one might first have assumed, and also by and large has been ignored in the secondary literature.2 In the historiography, prisoners are usually presented only as a data, in spite of the fact that there is a wealth of sources on which scholars could draw. I found valuable and essentially untouched archival materials on the Turkish prisoners of war in the Military Archive in Budapest, where the documents of the Hungarian General Commando (the territorial organization of the Habsburg military administration, the “outstretched arm” of the Aulic War Council) is preserved. Not surprisingly, the other rich source, one is tempted to use the word “goldmine,” is the archival material of the Aulic War Council in the Kriegsarchiv Vienna. The so-called Lacy-reforms from 1766 established an unparalleled bureaucracy, and the records that were kept provide researchers with a vast array of sources. This raw material of the Habsburg military administration is especially useful if one is interested in going beyond the traditional themes of military history, as in this particular case, which concerns the treatment with prisoners. For example, the thorough Habsburg bureaucracy recorded the names, the ranks, the ages and the origins of thousands of Turkish prisoners in muster rolls, so we have a precise overview of the contemporary Ottoman army in the Balkans.

In addition, one can glean significant data concerning the army and the state of the enlightened absolutisms at work. The fates of the Turkish prisoners suggest a rigid, slow system that was, however, not without humanity. This state was headed by a restless but also very demanding ruler, Joseph II. His short but usually comprehensive and sometimes sarcastic notes on the files may well reveal more about his personality than the hundreds of studies that have been written on him, whether apologetic or condemning. His decisions in concrete cases show the limits of his “enlightened” thinking.

This study is concerned first and foremost with the Ottoman prisoners in Austrian captivity and in the area of Hungary.3 Did they enjoy the same treatment as their Western counterparts? Was their status as prisoners of war acknowledged at all? What sort of rules applied to them? How could the Austrian military bureaucracy solve the potential problems of supplying hundreds of people from another religion and culture with shelter and sustenance, however minimal? How did their captivity come to an end?

First, I am going to summarize the contemporary norms and practices regarding prisoners of war in Europe. Then, I will describe the rules issued by Joseph II in the course of this war. I also discuss the circumstances under which the masses of prisoners were taken, the details of their transportation, accommodation and supply in Hungary, and the problems that arose concerning the maintenance of watch over them and numerous events, such as outbreaks of unrest and escapes. I also touch briefly on the conditions under which the Austrian soldiers in Ottoman captivity lived, since their fates were intertwined with those of the captured Turks during the exchange processes. The development of these processes proved to be rather interesting, and many useful sources are available, so the question of prisoner exchange is one of the focal points of my study.

Captivity in the Eighteenth Century

It is difficult to find a comprehensive work regarding the unwritten law of captivity before the age of formal international conventions and the Great War. Although the “ransom-culture” of the Middle Ages4 and the Early Modern Period5 have met with some interest among historians, the Age of Enlightenment (what one might also refer to as the Napoleonic period) was rather neglected from this point of view, apart from some cursory comments in standard works and some focused studies.6 The rough outlines of the system, however, can be drawn. As a result of the evolution of standing armies after the Treaty of Westphalia (1648) and the limited wars of the eighteenth century, warfare tended to show a “milder” face. The armies were paid, fed and clothed in a more regular way than they had been during the long and brutal Thirty Years War. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when wars were already being fought by professional mercenary armies, it was common practice to press captured mercenaries into the service of their captor. It was almost daily routine during the Thirty Years War, although this custom had gradually disappeared by the end of the seventeenth century, parallel with the evolution of the new standing armies, though as late as 1756, Frederick the Great attempted to press the whole encircled and captured Saxon army into the Prussian army. In the eighteenth century, however, the exchange of prisoners became common practice and even the primary practice when dealing with soldiers who had been taken captive. Before or during a campaign, the opposing commanders (or even rulers) concluded an official agreement, the so called cartel, which regulated the quotas and set the terms. Moreover, committees were formed to supervise the process and overcome the difficulties. These committees consisted of officers and commissaries from both parties. The basic rule of the exchange was reciprocity, but sometimes it proved to be impossible: generally one belligerent had more prisoners than the other, or one had captured more officers etc. To address these differences, various kinds of quotas were established. For example, one sergeant “counted” as two privates and a lieutenant as twelve; a colonel was worth as much as 48 men.7 The old habits of ransoming were still alive in an altered form: a prisoner in the middle of the eighteenth century could hope that his state would agree to pay the ransom, knowing, however, that this sum might be deducted from his future pay.8 For a captured high-ranking general one could ask a huge prize. During the Seven Years War (1756–63), in the conflicts between Prussia and Austria a Field-Marshall could be ransomed for 15,000 Gulden or exchanged for 3,000 privates.9

The fates of the prisoners were also determined by the circumstances of their captivity. This period was famous for sophisticated siege warfare. When a commander and the garrison of a besieged fortress had fulfilled their duty but nonetheless been compelled to capitulate, their performances were usually acknowledged in the document of the capitulation, which might even grant them free leave with or without arms. Sometimes they had to give their word not to fight for a year or so. If captivity was nevertheless unavoidable, in such documents the circumstances of the arrest―especially for officers who had been captured―were also regulated.

As armies and warfare evolved, international law began to put down modest roots. In 1625, Hugo Grotius had stated, “[i]t has long been a maxim, universally received among the powers of Christendom, that prisoners of war cannot be made slaves, so as to be sold, or compelled to the hardships and labor attached to slavery.”10 Grotius’ thesis was widely known throughout Europe by the Age of Enlightenment.

This protection, though based on moral, unwritten law and habits, obviously did not apply to the Turkish prisoners during the wars of liberation at the end of the seventeenth century. On the contrary, the captured Turks could be freely bought and sold. The Ottomans and mostly their tributaries, the Crimean Tartars, also made a huge profit from the ransoms that were paid by Christians to free prisoners.11 The Peace of Karlowitz (1699) marked the end of this practice. The 12th point of the treaty declared that all prisoners should be mutually released.12 The Treaty of Passarowitz, which restored the territory of the Kingdom of Hungary (1718), included this stipulation, but when an enemy of the Sultan had been less successful, the Porte showed little interest in returning prisoners who had already been sold. After the Treaty of Belgrade (1739), the difference between the fates of the Russian and the Austrian prisoners was striking. The former were released relatively quickly without ransom, and sometimes the Porte even bought back them from private hands in order to release them. Of the Austrian prisoners, the state-owned galley rowers were released, but others were enslaved until as late as the 1750s, and Austrian diplomats and monks from the Trinitarian Order continued to pay ransom for them. The explanation for this different approach is simple. The Russians had scored considerable successes during the war, taking thousands of Turkish prisoners, but the Austrians had mostly suffered setbacks.13

After almost half a century of peace, a new war threatened to break out in the Danube Valley. In accordance with the Russo–Austrian treaty of 1781, Joseph II—rather unwillingly—had to declare war on the Ottomans after a Turkish “aggression” against Russia in August 1787, though as historians have persuasively argued, the Sultan was continuously provoked by the Russians. The Czarina, motivated by the Polish precedent, had ambitious plans for the partitioning of the Ottoman Empire, and Joseph felt that he had to keep peace with the Russians (who he felt were likely to win), although Vienna had had good relations with Constantinople since the 1740s. But at the beginning of February 1788, war was formerly declared. The Austrians had a very cautious operation plan whereby six army or independent corps were to be deployed along the Turkish border. The main army (under Field-Marshall Lacy), concentrated around Zimony (Zemun, in Serbia), tried to capture Belgrade, while the corps of Slavonia and Croatia invaded Bosnia from the valleys of the Una and Sava Rivers. On the other side of the Danube River, a corps covered the Banat. A weak corps protected Transylvania, while the army of Prince Friedrich Josias of Sachsen-Coburg, in cooperation with the Russians, operated from Galicia and Bukovina in the direction of Moldau and later Wallachia.14

Rules regarding Prisoners

As in almost every walk of life, Joseph II was not satisfied with the traditions, habits and unwritten laws of the past in the case of the captured Turks. The problems with regard to Turkish prisoners first came up in a report from Bukovina. On March 5, 1788, Prince Coburg put a question to the Aulic War Council in Vienna (Wiener Hofkriegsrat). Coburg wanted to know what kind of provisions were due to the recently captured Ottomans. How much money should be spent on food and accommodation? Should bread be issued in kind or in cash? Field-Marshall Graf Andreas Hadik, President of the War Council, faced the task of finding solutions to this problem. Hadik wrote a note to Emperor Joseph II on March 20, 1788 in which he declared, “searching in the old files of the previous war in the archive, we could find no specific information about this question [that of providing sustenance and lodging for Turkish prisoners].” Some scattered information was be found, however, according to which the high-ranking Turkish prisoners were simply to be exchanged for captured Christians as soon as possible. One could also claim a significant sum of money (Ranzionirungs Geld), as much as 100 Ducats or more. The “temporary” costs of these persons were covered by the Court Chamber (the main financial organ of the empire), and these expanses were to be added to the ransom. The common Ottoman soldiers were nevertheless delivered to imperial officers as servant, handed over to galley, or assigned other compulsory labor.15

All in all, Hadik had not found satisfactory solutions from the past regarding provisions for and treatment of the Ottoman prisoners. He asked for a resolution to this problem from the sovereign. In the end, it was Joseph who had to make the decision, which he composed immediately on Hadik’s note. Interestingly, this new regulation was a mix of the mentality of the Enlightenment and the habits of the past. According to the imperial resolution, four categories were established, to which the captured Ottoman soldiers were to be assigned. The main principle of this categorization was the religion of the person captured. In the case of a Muslim prisoner, he should receive a supply of 4 Kreuzers daily in cash, together with one ordinary portion (one pound) of bread. These conditions were the same in the case of Prussians who had been captured (during the war of 1778–79) and French prisoners taken five years later.16

At the same time, a Christian who was an Ottoman subject and had taken up arms against the Imperial troops was to be pressed into the army. These people were sent to distant garrisons on the other side of the empire in order to ensure that they would not be able to escape. If a prisoner were found unfit for military service, he was to be assigned some kind of “public work.” The Emperor cautioned captors to be watchful, “because the Ottomans dress the Christians just as they dress the Turks, so one must inspect them closely [i. e. medically to determine whether the prisoner had been circumcised or not].”

Christians who were not Ottoman subjects17 but had fought against the Imperial troops fell into the third category. They were to be interrogated as to their names and the details concerning their families and then sent to lifelong ship-hauling, the same fate as suffered by notorious criminals. Finally, Joseph ordered captured deserters (former Austrian soldiers) who had been captured were to be court-martialled immediately.18

There were also questions regarding the status of and provisions for captured Turkish officers.19 After a short hesitation, the Emperor acknowledged their status as if they were European “guests.” The commander of the Main Army, the pedant and hard-working Field Marshall Moritz Lacy, soon compiled a comprehensive breakdown of the ranks in the Ottoman Army and made a proposal concerning provisions for the captured officers. The highest rank on Lacy’s list was the Bin baschi, “commander of a detached corps,” who would receive 24 florins every month, just like a Janissary Aga or a Sipahi Aga, though no one would receive more than one portion of bread daily. Joseph accepted the proposal on April 30 in the camp at Zimony.20

One additional question remained to be addressed. What if one of the Muslim prisoners wanted to convert to the Christian faith? According to an imperial resolution, which was transmitted by an order from Hadik to the General Commando in Buda, if somebody “of his own will” declared his intention to convert, he had to be furnished with the necessary requisites and then released as a free man. His freedom, however, would not last not long. If the proselyte proved fit for military service, he was to be drafted immediately. Were he deemed unfit for military service, the “new citizen” would be settled far from the border and would be allowed to earn a living.21 Thus converting the faith meant becoming the subject of the Hungarian king just like centuries earlier.22

Very few prisoners actually chose to convert during their relatively short period of imprisonment, although the Austrian bureaucracy probably registered every case. It is also not surprising that captives, who were accommodated in the crowded fortress of Munkács (Mukacseve, Ukraine), where health conditions were hardly optimal, were perfectly willing to convert to Roman Catholicism if it meant getting out of the prison in the fortress.23

Falling into Captivity

The first large group of Turkish prisoners was captured in the siege of Szabács (Šabac, Serbia). This small, desolate fortress next to the river Sava River was in key position for every movement against Belgrade. Joseph himself conducted the siege, which started on April 20. The bombardment began immediately and in the early morning of April 24, the Austrian infantry made an assault against a breach. After having put up fierce resistance, the defenders were compelled to withdraw to the small inner fortress. Finally, on April 26, the garrison of Szabács capitulated.24 The Austrians captured three Turkish senior officers (a Janissary Aga and two other commanders: Achi Akbar and Achi Ibrahim), 33 officers, 32 non-commissioned officers (NCOs) and 617 privates. In the fortress there were 13 Greek-Christians (three merchants and 10 servants, “Knechte”) and five Jews.

In the terms of capitulation, the bellicose Joseph acknowledged the gallant and “soldier-like” behaviour of the Turkish defenders. Some officers were allowed to leave temporally on parole to take care of their families. The officers were allowed to wear their swords and keep their horses. The prisoners were transported to the Fortress of Pétervárad (Petrovaradin, Serbia) and later taken to Arad, Szeged and Károlyváros (Karlovac, Croatia) “at the cost of the state,” as Joseph emphasized to Chancellor Kaunitz.25 Ultimately the prisoners from Szabács were accommodated in Szeged (in the barracks of the so called Invaliden Commando) and the fortress of Arad. The former was designated for the officers and the latter for the NCOs and commoners.

In the case of the Christians and Jews who were captured in Szabács, their captors did not deliver the daily portion of bread, but rather gave them on the 4 Kreuzers they had been promised. In the case of Muslim prisoners, however, the regulations that had been set by Joseph and Lacy were followed.26

The Imperial generosity after the capitulation of Szabács soon caused problems. On July 4, Field-Marshall Lacy informed the Hungarian General Commando that the prisoners who had been released on parole had failed to return, so their comrades (i. e. their bailsmen), whom “they had left behind perfidiously,” had to put in irons, accommodated in the casemates and assigned to compulsory labor. They were allowed only to write one (and only one) letter regarding what had befallen them. Naturally their swords and knives were taken away and their horses were sold if their masters were unable to cover the costs of their sustenance. Other problems must have arisen, because Lacy reminded the commanders of Szeged and Arad of their responsibility regarding the excesses and misdeeds of the Turkish prisoners. The Field-Marshall finally demanded that not only the names of the deceased prisoners but also the causes of their deaths be reported to the Main Army Headquarters.27 Later in the autumn of 1788 Joseph strictly forbade all form of release on parole, and no requests for parole were allowed either, “because the Turkish prisoners are supplied everything that they need.”28

The second and third batch of prisoners was sent by Field-Marshall Gedeon Loudon, commander of the corps in Croatia and Slavonia. The little fortress of Dubica (Dubica, Bosnia and Herzegovina) at the river Una was encircled and later besieged from the middle of April. Having taken over command, Loudon had immediately started the bombardment on Dubica on August 18, 1788. The defenders soon were compelled to surrender. The Turkish commander tried to convince Loudon to grant the garrison free leave, but he rejected their entreaties and the 414 Ottoman soldiers29 were taken prisoner, although like Joseph at Szabács, in the terms of capitulation Loudon acknowledged their courage and endurance: “Dubica is now just a heap of stone and the disgusting smell of dead bodies and horses and cattle carcasses within make it hard to believe that the garrison was able to defend it for so long.”30 The officers were allowed the keep their sabers, and Loudon promised to take care of the wounded and sick Turkish soldiers in hospitals. The women and children who were found in Dubica were sent to inner Bosnia.31 The Turkish prisoners from Dubica were escorted to Gradisca (Nova Gradiška, Croatia) in Slavonia, where they remained until at least September 3, and then some time were taken to Hungary. We know only scattered details of their fates after this because of the sources.32 One transport was taken to the small but famous fortress of Szigetvár.33 The other half of them may have been escorted to Győr.

The next victim of the energetic and aggressive Loudon was the fortress of Novi (Novi Bosanski in Bosnia and Herzegovina), which was also situated near the Una River. The defenders again put up significant resistance and the first storming of the walls, which took place on September 21, was repulsed. The Austrian artillery nevertheless continued the siege and within a week the little fortress had been completely ruined. On October 3, the garrison capitulated.34 In Novi, Loudon took 590 Ottoman soldiers prisoner (566 Turks and 24 Vlachs).35 The question of their accommodation, however, created difficulties because of the deteriorating military situation. Taking advantage of the slowness and hesitation of the Austrian main army, which had been delayed near Belgrade, the Turks won the initiative. They had crossed the Danube River at Vidin and pushed back the Austrian army corps. Accompanied by 20,000 soldiers, Joseph rushed to defend the border at the Banat. At the end of September, his army was almost encircled by the enemy and Joseph ordered a withdrawal. At Karánsebes (Caransebeş, Romania) on the night of September 21, this movement changed to panic. The army retreated as far as Lugos (Lugoj, Romania). The imperial high command had good reason to fear the invasion of Banat, Transylvania or even southern Hungary.

In the middle of August, Joseph ordered that the prisoners be transported deeper into Hungary, specifically to Nagyvárad (Oradea, Romania). He also got the casern of Nagyvárad made suitable to provide lodging for the prisoners. Joseph also directed that “prisoners, who must do compulsory labor, should be treated the same way in Nagyvárad as they are in Arad and Szeged.”36 Nevertheless, until mid-autumn this order was only partially executed.

At the beginning of November 1788, the prisoners from Novi were sent to Arad and Szeged, so the initial fear of a Turkish invasion had already faded. The prisoners of Szabács must have been in Arad and Szeged already, because both places were described as “overcrowded,” like Szigetvár. Joseph finally decided that the prisoners from Novi had to be accommodated somewhere in northeastern Hungary, and Huszt (Khust, Ukraine), Szolnok, Ungvár (Uzhhorod, Ukraine), and Munkács were raised as possible destinations.37 In the end, most of them were taken to the fortress (and prison) of Munkács.

The Fate of the Prisoners in Hungary

The first Turkish prisoners of war (at the beginning only eight men) were held captive in the Fortress of Arad (Arad, Romania). In a short time, problems arose concerning provisions for them. On April 8, General Vinzenz Barco, the commanding general in Hungary, reported from Buda to Vienna on the problems faced by the fortress commandant of Arad. Except for bread, the Turkish prisoners were not willing to eat anything that had been touched by Christian hands, so he had had to supply them with firewood so that they would be able to cook themselves. Furthermore, the Turks had wanted to eat warm meals twice a day. Barco and the commandant of Arad sought a “highest resolution” on this question before more prisoners arrived. On April 17, the War Council sent an order according to which, apart from the daily one pound of bread and 4 Kreuzers, nothing should be given to the Turks.38 Interestingly, when there were several hundred prisoners in Arad and other places, Joseph changed his mind. On May 10, the emperor permitted the fortress commandant to supply them with firewood, but the Turks had to be satisfied with the “ordinary” portion and cook together.39

The issue of providing accommodation for the Turkish prisoners also caused headaches for the military and civil officials of the fortresses and municipalities. In Győr, at the end of 1788, the first suggestion regarding accommodation for these 500 men40 was to designate the empty college building of the suppressed Jesuit order for this purpose. This project failed because of the poor condition of the building. Finally, the decision was made to use the newly built casern to house the Turkish prisoners, but one company of Austrian soldiers which had guarded the prisoners had to take lodging in private domiciles in the city.41

At the beginning, the prisoners enjoyed “too much freedom” in Győr, as the War Council put it. Some Turks were allowed to go out into the city and walk the streets with lit pipes hanging from their mouths and wearing their sabers at their sides. Keeping their swords was the orderly privileges of the Turkish officers, granted by the document of capitulation of Dubica, but the private Turks also carried long knives with them, according to the complaints. The emperor forbade these practices and ordered that the Turks not leave the casern and that any and all knives be taken from the privates and only given back temporally when they were needed to “slice the meat.”42

The long winter and the crowded conditions in the casern soon took their toll. On February 10, 1789, the commander of the Lacy regiment reported to the Hungarian General Commando that 34 Turks (of the 610 prisoners) had died of some “extraordinary diseases,” despite the efforts of the regiment’s medical staff. The command therefore requested that no more prisoners be sent to Győr and that a military hospital be established near the city. In answer, the General Commando praised the regiment’s command for its efforts and offered the reassurance that no more prisoners would be sent to Győr, but rejected the idea of establishing a hospital.43

The presence of the prisoners in Győr raised other problems. The city was situated on the main communication road of the Danube River valley, so Joseph found it problematic to station numerous captured enemies there. On March 26, 1789 Hadik (according to the emperor’s note) instructed the Hungarian General Commando to take the prisoners to the fortress of Lipótvár (Leopoldov, Slovakia) in the northwest of Hungary.44 Hadik also ordered the expansion of the available building in order to accommodate possible transports in the future. Arrangements had to be made to provide lodging not only for the prisoners, but also for the soldiers (generally invalids) who would stand guard. In the case of Lipótvár, the nearby city of Nagyszombat (Trnava, Slovakia) was designated to accommodate the guards.

The order of Hadik was executed rather slowly indeed. The General Commando had had one group of prisoners transferred to Székesfehérvár earlier in April. On May 6, the Aulic Council made its resolution clear. The emperor again ordered the immediate transfer of all of the prisoners to Lipótvár.45 Consequently, several hundred Turks made a long detour to Székesfehérvár on their way to Lipótvár.

In Szigetvár, the responsible guard unit was compelled to report “great unrest” among the 266 Turkish prisoners from Dubica, who had demanded more freedoms.46 The cause of this unrest their loss of the right to go into the town from the fortress. It was Joseph who had prohibited this, not only for the Turks in Győr but for every prisoner of war in Hungary. The former commanders of the garrison, including three agas, submitted a written complaint to the emperor in which they quoted the promises they had received from Loudon at the capitulation of Dubica. Joseph, however, insisted that every Turkish prisoner was to be given the same treatment. Besides, as the order of the Aulic War Council to Szigetvár stated: “We have to make it clear to these agas that prisoners in our hands are treated more humanely than prisoners on the other side, so they had better stay calm.” In the same letter, the War Council ordered the guard in Szigetvár through the General Commando to take strict measures if necessary in order to prevent further unrest.47

In Munkács, in addition to the small rooms of the fortress, houses in the small town were also requisitioned for this purpose, so the General Commando had to engage in lengthy correspondence with the County of Bereg and its vicecomes. According to a November 4 report to the General Commando (Munkács), the fortress of Munkács and the neighboring Palanka casern could accommodate only 345 prisoners and a guard of 120 men, not the required 645 prisoners and 283 men. The rest had to be billeted in the domiciles of burghers until the necessary renovations of the fortress and the casern were completed.48

Within six months, however, it became clear that Munkács was not suitable for the accommodation of hundreds of prisoners. As had been the case in Győr, epidemics broke out, and the “awkwardness of having these people watched over by invalid soldiers and the resulting concerns about desertion” prompted the President of the War Council to propose a move to the casern in Kassa (Kosice, Slovakia) and to keep Munkács in reserve should 150 new prisoners arrive.49 Joseph agreed to the transfer, but he ordered that, in addition to Munkács, other places in Hungary be prepared to accommodate future transports. The move to Kassa took place at the end of June.50

One of the best indicators concerning the conditions under which these prisoners lived is their mortality rate. Despite the regular supply of provisions, the mortality rate was high according to any kind of modern standard. From September 1, 1788 to December 31, 1789, it was seven percent (of 281 prisoners, 20 died) in Szigetvár. In Lipótvár this figure was 5.5 percent (31 of 560), but in the case of Kassa the losses were enormous: 21 percent (168 of 791).51 Later, one could include the casualties of the infamous prison of Munkács, where unfortunate prisoners spent several months. The high mortality rate, however, was caused by conditions at the time, not by punishment or negligence.

“The Most Important Duty” – Guarding the Prisoners

The old and neglected buildings were not simply uncomfortable and unhealthy, they also raised serious security questions. The other problem was the composition of the guards who were responsible for watching the prisoners. The superannuated soldiers of the different Invaliden Commandos and the members of second-rate troop units like the garrison regiments and the staff-regiment were not always up to the task. However they received full pay while serving as guards.

On the night of November 8, 1788, four Turkish prisoners escaped from the Palanka casern. They managed to hide in the forests for several months. The commander of the fortress received a strict rebuke from the General Commando because of “his carelessness in his most important duty, which is guarding these prisoners.”52

There were other prison breaks too, of which the emperor demanded immediate and accurate account. On September 30, 1788, the General Commando reported to the Aulic War Council that two Turks had escaped from Lipótvár. They had not gotten far and were soon caught and brought back by the peasants. The fugitives were held under arrest until the emperor decided their fates. In his note about the case, as regards the punishment Hadik reminded Joseph of two other precedents: captured deserters from Zamość (see below) had had to do compulsory labor in chains, which were also worn in the night. First of all, “without any lengthy inquiry” they received “a certain number of strokes with the stick because that is the habit in this kind of case, which is very common in wars.” Hadik obviously regarded these as cases of desertion. In Munkács, the fugitives, who had already been captured and condemned to compulsory labor (digging entrenchments), had contemplated another plot to escape, so the final sentence in their case was ship-hauling, and they were each assigned to one of four different sites distant from one another. Hadik then asked for a resolution in the case of the fugitives, assuring the emperor that the question of who bore responsibility for the prison break in Lipótvár would be examined by the General Commando. The imperial resolution was short: “they are sentenced to ship-hauling.”53

All in all, guarding the Turkish prisoners was not a rewarding task. On 24, February 1789, all of the 31 Turks in the Galician fortress of Zamość (today Poland) managed to escape with the help of a soldier they had bribed, a private from the 1st Garrison Regiment. The latter was court-martialed and executed, but the garrison-commandant, Major Marquis de Torres, was also sentenced to a 14-day arrest according to the order of Joseph because “he did not personally take care of the gate key.” Torres also had to pay the calculated ransom for the 31 fugitives. The commanding general of Galicia also received a slight rebuke, because Zamość was deemed a bad choice as a place to hold prisoners, since it is situated too close to the border.54

At the beginning of the war, Joseph and his military advisors might have expected a “flood of prisoners” following the Austrian successes. This did not come to pass. Four years later, however, Munkács, Arad, Szeged and some other places in the Kingdom of Hungary nonetheless had to accommodate thousands of prisoners. These prisoners, however, were not faithful Muslims, but rather enthusiastic French patriots or even Jacobins.55

Exchange of Prisoners

On October 27, from Zimony Joseph replied to an enquiry by Loudon:

“The proposal [made by the Turks] concerning the exchange of prisoners can be made, but not as the Turks have envisioned, i.e. not one for one, which would mean one officer for one private and vice versa. This exchange must only be made such that officers are exchanged for officers or, according to the circumstances and the rank of the officer, 3, 6, 9 or more privates [should be given] for one officer.”56

Joseph then designated the commander of the Austrian troops in Beschania to supervise the exchange of prisoners, and he had Loudon suggest to the Turks that the Pasha of Belgrade be the person responsible for the exchanges on the Turkish side.

However, a larger and centrally organized exchange of prisoners did not actually take place for one year. The cause of this delay must have been the “forgetfulness” of the prisoners of Szabács, Novi and Dubica who had been released on parole. Not one of them returned to the Austrians. The punishments that were inflicted on their comrades and bailsmen were to no avail. The exchange might have been complicated or hindered by the inconsistency of Turkish customs concerning prisoners, which I will discuss later. Briefly, there were simply not enough Austrian prisoners of war at the same time and same places (near the frontline and not in the distant Constantinople) to provide a basis for negotiations.

Along the Croat and Slavonic Militärgrenz (Military Border), low-scale exchanges might have been quite common, but these cases effected exclusively Grenzers and generally only involved a small number of men. The Turks and the Grenzers often had prisoners on hand because of the endless raids on both sides of the cordon. Nevertheless, cattle, oxen, and horses always represented a far more valuable target.57 Sometimes, this kind of affair was similar to kidnapping and blackmailing. Sources suggest that once it even came to pass that marauding Turks captured the wife of a Grenzer in the district of Brod. They demanded not only one Turkish prisoner for the women, but also 45 florins. The transaction was concluded, but the poor family of the Grenzer had not been able to pay the ransom, so the money was finally paid from the cash register of the Broder canton. This rather trivial case had come before the Emperor in the form of a note from the President of the War Council. Joseph had been angry: “It is nonsense that we exchanged a soldier for a woman and that, in addition, 10 Ducats was also paid. The man who arranged this ransom without preliminary consent has to pay the 10 Ducats. The War Council will have to see to it.” 58

In the end, the first step towards a regular prisoner exchange was taken by the Turks. The beg of Ostrožac (Bosnia), Mustafa Besirevich, wrote a proposal on August 21, 1789 to his “Dearest Neighbor,” Vice-Colonel Matthias Rukavina, commander of the Oguliner Border Regiment, about a “general prisoner exchange” and in particular about the possibility of exchanging a captured Grenzer officer (Lieutenant Phillipovich) for a certain Mustafa Cserich Beg, who was himself the brother of the Beg of Ostrožac. As the letter revealed, earlier Rukavina had made an offer to ransom Phillipovich for cash, but the Beg realized he had an opportunity to get back his brother. This personal bias was a significant help to the cause of the exchange, but first the Beg had to remedy the problems concerning Turks of Novi and Dubica who had been released on parole but who had not returned.59 The Beg suggested in his letter to Rukavina that if the proposed exchange were to be successful, the “perfidious” Turks, about 30 people, would hardly go back. Rather, they would probably buy and send home Christian prisoners to secure their release once and for all. If the exchange were not to take place, the Beg was willing to turn to the Grand Vizier to ask for his assistance.60

Put simply, under the pretext of a “general exchange” the Beg of Ostrožac wanted to get back his brother. His proposal, however, may have met with Vienna’s interest because providing sustenance and accommodation for more than 1,500 prisoners in Hungary alone would have represented a significant burden to the state. So Joseph willingly permitted the “general exchange” as soon as he got some compensation (albeit in the form of faint guarantees) for the missing Turks of Novi and Dubica. The proposal of the Beg of Ostrožac also suggests that earlier some of the border guards (Grenzers) had broken the pledges (“good faith”) that they had made to the Turks promising that they would return shortly with the ransom. Some of them had simply fled. The emperor agreed to release one Turkish prisoner for every Austrian soldier who had been released by the Turks after having pledged to return shortly with his ransom but who had then broken his word and never returned. Joseph also permitted Field Marshall-lieutenant Christoph Wallisch, commander of the Croatian corps who was in charge of taking some of the prisoners from Hungary to Croatia, to ease the approaching exchanges. He ordered, however, that he give specific details concerning accomodation and provisions, since “they [the Turkish prisoners] do not have the same freedoms as are allowed for prisoners on their side.”61

Almost one month before the final imperial decision on August 5, 1789, Wallisch established an Exchange Committee (Rancionirung Comission) under the command of a Grenz officer colonel (who later that year became a general), Daniel Peharnik. The Committee stipulated first and foremost that for the 30 Turkish prisoners who had been released on parole but who had not returned a suitable number of Austrian prisoners should be released in compensation. Furthermore, instead of strict rules, Colonel Peharnik enjoyed a wide scope of authority to judge in every case with regards to how many Turkish privates he should exchange for an Austrian officer or NCO (or vice versa). The committee would have no say regarding cases in which the process of ransoming had already began. For example, for Capitan Siegenfeld from the Licca Grenz Regiment the emperor had already approved a “ransom of 100 pound in gold and 66 gulden in Taller.” A site in Bosnia, Bashina Luca near Dresnik (Drežnik Grad, Croatia), was designated for the exchanges as Rancionirungs Platz. Colonel Peharnik would have to arrive at an agreement with the enemy about the conditions of the process; for example how strong should the Austrian and Turkish escort be? The committee would have to be sure that “[o]n the days of the exchange process in the area of Dresnik there will be no hostilities or fights, neither from the Turkish side nor from our side, but all will remain quiet, peaceful and friendly.”

So as of the autumn of 1789, the permanent and organized exchanges had begun. At the end of September, Lieutenant Phillipovich was successfully exchanged for the Bosnian beg mentioned below. Maybe to show their goodwill, on October 8 and 14 ten Grenzers (all private solders) were released by the enemy for the 30 frequently mentioned Turks from Novi. 62

Nevertheless, Austrian prisoners who had been captured by the Turks somewhere other than the area of Bosnia and the neighboring Military Border seem not to have been considered in the discussions regarding prisoner exchanges. In Constantinople in the infamous slave-house Bagno, 17 Austrian officers and 458 NCOs and privates were lingering in misery in the autumn of 1789.63 The president of the War Council at the time made a logical proposal with regards to trying to exchange them for Turkish prisoners in Austrian hands. Hadik was also encouraged by the recent exchanges at the Croatian border.64 However, in his reply Joseph summarized the problem concerning the issue of their possible exchange, removing the question from the agenda at the same time:

“The prisoners in Bagno are the propriety of the Sultan and there is no use in having the French ambassador in Constantinople65 to set them free anymore. Every person who was captured from our forces by the Bosnians belongs to his captor and the Sultan has nothing to do with it, thus the Porte does not care about Turks who have been captured by our forces either. Under such circumstances, the prisoners in Bagno may have nothing to hope of from the proposal of the War Council and for the time being there are no further steps to be taken with regards to the question of these prisoners.”66 It was therefore also clear to the emperor that the Bosnians must have been interested only in their compatriots, so there was only hope for the exchange of prisoners who had belonged to the garrisons of Novi and Dubica.

The fortunes of war following the capture of Belgrade67 (on 8 October 1789) by Loudon and the Russo-Austrian successes in Moldau and Wallachia had turned to the favor of Vienna and Saint Petersburg. In 1790, operations were conducted primarily in the valley of Morava and on the Lower Danube River, but on a lower scale. Meanwhile, in Vienna Joseph II died on February 20 of a pulmonary illness, with which he had been infected in the camp during the campaign of 1788. He left his brother Leopold II an exhausted state in the throes of revolt. Leopold’s most vital task was making peace with the Porte before Prussia backstabbed the monarchy. On July 27, 1790, an agreement was signed with Prussia in which Austria promised peace with the Ottomans on the basis of the status quo ante.68 The war-weary parties concluded an armistice in Giurgevo (Giurgiu, Romania) on September 23, 1790. Then, in Svistov (Svishtov, Bulgaria) a long peace-conference began. During the Austro-Turkish negotiations, Russia continued the war with the Porte, ignoring external pressure from other European powers.

As I have shown, the exchange of prisoners began in the autumn of 1789 and by February 1790 almost all of the prisoners from Novi and Dubica had been released in the abovementioned site in Bosnia.69 In return, the Austrians got back men from the Border regiments who had been captured, but for the time being no one from Constantinople, as Joseph had foreseen.

On June 17, 1790, Chancellor Kaunitz made an interesting proposal to the “Apostolic King” Leopold.70 Kaunitz had spotted in the muster-role one qadi and three imams among the prisoners of Szabács, who were being held in Kassa, and two imams in the prison of Beszterce (Bistrița, Romania). To make gestures to the Turks and at the same time to attempt to ease the sufferings of the Austrian captivities in Constantinople, the Chancellor suggested releasing these six non-combatants without any compensation. According Kaunitz, this gesture would also facilitate the task of Baron Peter Herbert, the Austrian envoy to the Porte, who was working hard to organize the peace conference at the time. The king approved the proposal.71 The War Council ordered the Hungarian and the Transylvanian General Commando to release the “literates” and escort them to the cordon between the two armies in Serbia and in Wallachia.72

The very few sources available indicate that as of the conclusion of the armistice on September 23, there were efforts to exchange the Austrian prisoners in Constantinople for the Turks held primarily in Hungary and Transylvania. There were hopes that the exchange would include the enslaved peasants taken during the war by the Turks. The new president of the Aulic War Council, Cavalry-General Ferdinand von Tige, ordered the commander of the main army in Belgrade, Field-Marshall Michael von Wallis, who also had been recently appointed, that he had to take the necessary steps to ensure the return of the Grenzer families, who had been taken during the Turkish raids on Banat and southern Transylvania in the autumn of 1788.73

After the conclusion of the armistice and even before the opening of the peace conference in Svistov, the parties might have wanted to solve the problem of the prisoners. On September 29, 1790, the War Council demanded from the General Commando the “most accurate” account of the Turkish prisoners of war staying in Hungary because of the forthcoming “official prisoner exchange.”74 On October 4, the commander of the Main Army, Field Marshall Wallis, informed the General Commando from Belgrade that according to Baron Herbert, the exchange of prisoners had to take place before the opening of peace conference, so he had to receive the accounts concerning the prisoners as soon as possible. Wallis asked for two separate accounts, one for the Christians and one for the Muslims. He also asked for a list of the Turkish women and children in captivity.75

On December 1, Wallis, acting on a suggestion of Field Marshall-lieutenant Enzenberg, reported to the War Council from Belgrade that the focal point of the prisoner exchange would be moved from the Croatian border to Ruschuk (Ruse, Bulgaria), so Wallis suggested that a certain major, Count Strassoldo, serve as head of the newly appointed exchange commission.76

Wallis, however, waited for the Turks to take the initial step. When he received information according to which a batch of released Austrian prisoners (7 officers and 93 privates) had arrived in Ruschuk from Constantinople, he immediately (on January 10, 1790) asked the General Commando to send 300 prisoners from Kassa to Temesvár (Timişoara, Romania), because there were not enough prisoners in Transylvania and Galicia to release in exchange. Buda forwarded the order to the Invalid Commando in Kassa that day.77 As Wallis indicated in his report, the Turks transported the Austrian officers by horse and the common prisoners by carts to the exchange site. In the name of reciprocity, the Austrians were also expected to move their prisoners from Kassa to the border by the same means of transportation.78

The withdrawal of the Turkish prisoners from Hungary and other parts of the Habsburg Monarchy, however, lasted for months. According to the report of the exchange commission, from January 10, 1791 to March 29 of the same year, 1,238 Turks were handed over to the Turkish commissar, Mohamed Emin, in six stages. In return, the kaiserlich-königliche army received only 18 officers and 538 NCOs and privates from the slave house in Constantinople. The exchanges took place in Giurgevo (opposite Ruschuk on the northern part of the Danube River) and around Vidin.79

The peace was finally signed in Sistova on August 4, 1791, but the real winner of the war had been Russia, which had gained Crimea once for all, and, with it, dominance over the Black Sea, in the peace of Jassy, which was signed on January 9, 1792. The last Turkish war of Austria, which caused so much death, suffering and destruction, ended with very few results. Belgrade and Wallachia had to be handed back to the Ottomans. Only the town of Orşova and two small strips on the Croatian frontier were ceded to Austria at the price of at least 30,000-40,000 soldiers lost (most of whom had succumbed to disease, like emperor Joseph II himself) and thousands more civilians killed, forced to flee, impoverished or even enslaved.80

Conclusion

To respond to the questions raised in the introduction, Joseph II, who strove for uniformity in every respect, granted the captured Turks soldiers prisoner-of-war status. Indeed he was rather ahead of his time. In the first convention of Geneva (1864), the rights of the prisoners of war were recognized by the majority of military powers. These rights were roughly similar to those prescribed by Joseph for Turkish prisoners of war some three generations earlier. As I have shown, captives were given regular supplies and enjoyed almost similar portions in kind and in cash as an Austrian common soldier in peacetime. They could also keep their money and personal belongings. The sick and wounded Turks were looked after in military hospitals, although these lazarettos were known by the Austrian soldiers themselves as places to be avoided at all cost. Joseph acknowledged the status of the enemy officers, too. Captives were permitted to write letters home, although translated summaries of these letters made it as far as the writing desk of the emperor in Vienna. In January 1789, Joseph finally prohibited correspondence by prisoners.81

On the other hand Joseph was not willing to grant Christians who served in the Ottoman army the status of prisoner of war. They were treated as mercenaries, not “legal” combatants, so the logical step was to press them into the Austrian army. This method also suited well the practices of the embryonic mass-armies, which suffered from a constant deficiency of manpower. It was, however, always emphasized that this measure only applied to Christians who had actually taken arms against the Austrian troops, and not to servants or other auxiliaries. By that time, the non-Muslim elements of the Ottoman Army consisted of mainly peasants, who had been forced to dig trenches, transport materials, and other serve auxiliary functions. This meant that most of the captured Christians fell in the non-combatant category and only a few of them were forced into the Austrian army. One other possible reason for this distinction may have lain in the efforts Joseph had previously made to prompt Orthodox Christian Serbs and Romanians to rise up and rebel against the Ottoman yoke.82

Methodically, however, it would be fairer to compare the Austrian conduct with regards to captives to the conduct of the two other belligerents, the Ottomans and the Russians. In this context, the measures taken by the Austrian army were remarkably humane. In some cases, neither the Turks nor the Russians bothered to take prisoners at all. Cossacks on the Russian side and Tartars on the Ottoman side were famous for their cruelty. There were countless examples of brutality. The Russians under Prince Potemkin massacred the Turkish garrison of the Fortress of Ochakov during the final assault on the night of December 16, 1788. During the capture of Ismail, the other Russian commander, Suvorov, had his troops to kill everyone in the fortress on December 10, 1790. 4,000 enemy soldiers were massacred in a few hours. 83

Europeans believed that the Turks generally killed and beheaded their Christian prisoners on the spot because their officers would reward them for every decapitated head. Many memoires and official reports mention this habit, which may not have been simply “barbarism,” brutality or religious fanaticism. A certain Prussian officer, J. E. G. Hayne, explained the Turkish “barbarity” by religious hatred, and, most importantly, lack of discipline. Hayne contended that European troops were also inclined to commit such acts when, after a bloody and chaotic fight, discipline and the control of the officers had been shaken, as happened during and after the final assault on Buda in 1686. The Turkish commanders might also have used this as a means of compensating their men for the lost ransoms, since otherwise the soldiers would have been busying themselves with their prisoners instead of doing their military duty. 84

If someone nevertheless survived the first minutes of captivity, then came the real ordeals. On September 21, 1788, 822 Austrian soldiers of the Austrian rearguard at Karánsebes were taken prisoner, among them a young Hungarian first-lieutenant, György Görgey.85 His vivid account provides a clear picture of their suffering on the long death march to Constantinople. In the end of the 822 men, only 125 prisoners arrived to the capital alive. The rest perished because of inadequate supplies and bad treatment during the 70-day march. Those who were no longer able to walk were killed immediately. Their heads were chopped off and their bodies were left to rot. The heads were shown as trophies, while “our companions severed the ears of the dead to account for the prisoners.”86 Nevertheless, Görgey also witness some humane conduct and saw examples of kindness by the captors, but usually they were simply either unable or unwilling to organize the provision of sustenance and accommodation for several hundred men. It was also embarrassing for the Turkish commanders that instead of the promised 4,000 prisoners, they only had 125 to show to the people of Constantinople.

In this context, one can understand the angry words of Joseph in reply to the protest of the Turks held in Szigetvár: “We have to make it clear to these agas that prisoners in our hands are treated more humanely than prisoners on the other side, so they had better stay calm.”87

 

Archival Sources

Österreichisches Staatsarchiv (Vienna), Haus- Hof und Staatsarchiv, Kriegsarchiv. Zentralstelle, Wiener Hofkriegsrat, Hauptreihe.

HM Hadtörténelmi Levéltár, Budapest [War History Archives, Budapest] Documents of the k. k. General Commando in Ungarn.

Bibliography

Acsády, Ignácz. “A karloviczi béke története 1699” [The History of the Peace of Karlowitz]. Értekezések a történelmi tudományok köréből 18. Budapest: Magyar Tudományos Akadémia, 1899. 

Aksan, Virgina H. Ottoman Wars 1700–1870. An Empire Besieged. London: Pearson Education, 2007.

Beer, Adolf, ed. Joseph II.: Leopold II. und Kaunitz. Ihr Briefwechsel. Vienna: Wilhelm Braumüller, 1873.

Creveld, Martin van. The Transformation of War. New York: The Free Press, 1991.

Criste, Oskar. Kriege unter Kaiser Josef II. Vienna: Seidel, 1904.

Dávid, Géza, and Pál Fodor Ed. Ransom Slavery along the Ottoman Borders. Leiden: Brill., 2007.

Duffy, Christopher. Sieben Jahre Krieg. 1756–1763. Die Armee Maria Theresias. Vienna: Heeresgeschichtliches Museum–Militärwissenschaftliches Institut, 2003.

Görgey, Albert. “Görgey György kapitány jelentése ezredéhez török fogságából” [Report of Captain György Görgey to his Regiment from Turkish Captivity]. Hadtörténelmi Közlemények 15 (1914): 639–43.

Gyalókay, Jenő. „Šabac vára 1787-88-ban” [The Fortress of Šabac in 1787–88]. Hadtörténelmi Közlemények 25 (1924): 205–19.

Hayne, J. E. G. Abhandlung über die Kriegskunst der Türken. Vienna: Trattnern, 1788.

Hochedlinger, Michael. Austria’s War of Emergence. 1683–1797. London: Longman, 2003.

Kahraman Şakul. “What happened to Pouqueville’s Frenchmen? Ottoman Treatment of the French Prisoners during the War of the Second Coalition (1798–1802).” Turkish Historical Review 3 (2012): 168–95.

Lenkefi Ferenc. Kakas a kasban. Francia hadifoglyok Magyarországon az első koalíciós háború idején [Cockerel in the Stomach: French Prisoners of War in Hungary during the First War of Coalition]. 1793–1797. Budapest: Petit Real, 2000.

Mayer, Matthew Z. Joseph II and the Campaign of 1788 against the Ottoman Turks. Master’s Thesis, McGill University, 1997.

Smid, Stefan. Der Spanische Erbfolgekrieg. Vienna: Böhlau Verlag, 2011.

Smiley, Will. “Let Whose People Go? Subjecthood, Sovereignty, Liberation, and Legalism in Eighteenth-Century Russo–Ottoman Relations.” Turkish Historical Review 3 (2012): 196–228.

Smiley, Will. “The Meanings of Conversion: Treaty Law, State Knowledge, and Religious Identity among Russian Captives in the Eighteenth-Century Ottoman Empire.” The International History Review 34 (2012): 1–22.

Vaníček, František. Specialgeschichte der Militärgrenze. III. Band. Vienna: Kaiserlich-Königliche Hof- und Staatsdruckerei, 1875.

Domagoj Madunić

Taming Mars: Customs, Rituals and Ceremonies in the Siege Operations in Dalmatia during the War for Crete (1645–69)

 

The main question of this study is how seventeenth-century European societies attempted to regulate the conduct of warfare. It deals with a peculiar aspect of seventeenth-century siege warfare, namely the customs, ceremonies and rituals that regulated various aspects of a siege, such as the observation of truces and immunities, the negotiation of surrenders, the treatment of prisoners etc. So far, most historians dealing with Early Modern siege warfare have been more concerned with its technical and operational aspects: the digging of trenches, the development of various elements of fortifications, wastage rates of combatants, hardships brought about by lack of food and epidemics, and so on, than they have been with these “decorative elements” of engagement. Nevertheless, these activities, although usually without any obvious operational military value, provided a medium for a discourse between the besieger and besieged and thus, as I argue, played an important role in the final outcome of a siege. Through descriptive analyses of three cases, each dealing with one siege operation in the Dalmatian theater of operations during the War for Crete (1645–69), this inquiry provides an account of customs, rituals, ceremonies and rules of “proper” conduct of a siege, with particular emphasis on the most critical part of a siege: the surrender of a fortified site.

 

Keywords: Republic of Venice, Dalmatia, Ottoman Empire, military history, War for Crete, siege warfare.

 

Introduction

The main general question of this study is how seventeenth-century European societies attempted to restrain and regulate the conduct of warfare. As the title says, this study deals with a peculiar aspect of the seventeenth-century siege warfare, namely the customs, ceremonies and rituals that regulated various aspects of the siege, such as observing truces and immunities, negotiation of surrenders, treatment of prisoners etc. In its scope, my inquiry is limited to the siege operations conducted in Dalmatia during the longest war ever fought by the Republic of Venice and the Ottoman Empire, the war known as the War for Crete (1645–69).

In an attempt to somehow regulate the chaos and destruction or to at least create some appearance of control over the violent forces of war, societies have always striven to define rules for proper conduct and behavior during war and develop a set of mechanisms in order to ensure that these rules are actually obeyed. Over the centuries, these mechanisms have evolved, and a few have become widely accepted customs. Some of them survived throughout the centuries and are even today widely recognized and used, of which, probably the most well-known is the practice of waving the white flag as a sign that one is ready to lay down one’s weapons and began parleys. By the middle of the seventeenth century, “siege warfare in Europe was waged within the framework of a number of restraints and rules which were derived from civil and canon law and the code of medieval chivalry.”1 The restraints and rules manifested themselves during the siege operations as the collection of customs, ceremonies and rituals which were more or less respected across European battlefields.

So far, most historians dealing with Early Modern siege warfare have been more concerned with its technical and operational aspects: the digging of trenches, the development of various elements of fortifications, wastage rates of combatants, hardships brought about by lack of food and epidemics, and so on, than with these “decorative elements” of engagement.2 Rituals and ceremonies involved in siege warfare have mainly received significant coverage in works dealing with the development and codification of European laws of war in general, as is the case with Geoffrey Parker’s “European Laws of War” or Randall Lesaffer’s “Siege warfare in the Early Modern Age,” or in studies focusing on a single conflict, for example works by Barbara Donagan on the English Civil War.3 Nevertheless, these activities, although usually without any obvious operational military value, by providing a medium for a discourse between the besieger and besieged, as this paper argues, played important role in the final outcome of a siege. Through descriptive analyses of three cases, each dealing with one siege operation in the Dalmatian theater of operations, this inquiry provides an account of customs, rituals, ceremonies and rules of “proper” conduct of the siege, with special emphasis on the most critical part of the siege: the surrender of a fortified site.

Legal Context: Seventeenth-Century Laws of War

As Barbara Donagan pointed out, by the middle of the seventeenth century (1) natural law or the law of nations, (2) international laws of war, and (3) military law provided a sort of framework for codes of conduct and behavior, which were intended to institutionalize and put some constraints on the conduct of warfare between states. Of these three, the first two were international and rather general in nature, with slight local variations concerning the laws of war, while military law regulated the conduct of one particular army for which its articles were written and publicly announced.4 However, this vague constellation left the borderline between legitimate and illegitimate conduct in armed conflict very unclear. It was not considered legitimate to sack a town that had formally surrendered, but it was not illegitimate to sack it if it refused the call to surrender. Killing noncombatants, especially the weak and harmless, those who could do no harm, was nominally prohibited, since it was considered to be against Christian morality. Similarly, widely recognized conventions of the laws of war also implied protection and mercy for prisoners of war. However, Early Modern European conflicts abounded with examples of atrocities, when civilians and prisoners were declared (by authorities) a potential risk or liability and consequently eliminated under the pretext of military necessity. For the soldiers of the sixteenth and seventeenth century the doctrine of the obedience to the authorities in command trumped any moral or ethic reservations they could have. The prominent sixteenth-century Spanish soldier Francisco Valdés accurately summarized departure from Christian ethics by the practitioners of the art of war, who were subject to the imperative of obedience to their superiors, when he wrote: “The day man picks up his pike to become a soldier is the day he ceases to be Christian.”5

Furthermore, at the time, no international organization or agency existed that could enforce the application of the laws of war or punish offenders. Responsibility for their enforcement was solely in the domain of the army commander and his superiors. Apart from acquiring a bad reputation and losing honor, all of which in the end could lead to disgrace and destroy a commander’s professional carrier,6 the only immediate effective mechanism that could be used against an offender was a threat of retaliation by the other side.7 Only military law was backed by coercive mechanisms that could be used to enforce it. However, the problem with military law was that it was totally dependent on the willingness of one side to apply it, and in particular to apply it to its own members. The role of military law was not to protect and enforce some “high moral ground” or ethical principles (such as the protection of civilians, the weak and the harmless), but rather to maintain discipline within the army and prevent the disruption of social order by unruly soldiers.8

The majority of the researchers in the field agree that of all the social, legal, political and cultural factors involved, what most effectively promoted restraint in the conduct of warfare in Early Modern Europe was the self-interest of professional soldiers and their instinct for self-preservation. In protracted warfare fought by two equally strong sides, both parties very quickly discovered the advantages of maintaining “honorable” standards and practices. Honoring surrenders, sparing the wounded, and respecting the flags of truce and envoys all reduced the chaos of conflict and significantly increased personal chances of survival.9 In that regard, it is not surprising that one of the main characteristics of seventeenth-century laws of war was their professional character. They were intended to be shared primarily by the combatants and granted “as soldiers to one another.”10 As Barbara Donagan concludes, “The primary function of the laws of war by the seventeenth century was as a kind of contractual etiquette of belligerence. They provided each party with a framework of expectations as to the conduct of others, and as a kind of contract, written and unwritten, into which they would enter.”11

Since the days of the destruction of Jericho by the Israelites, siege operations have counted as one of the most ferocious and bloodiest aspects of armed conflict. Siege can be successfully brought to an end by an attacking force either by storming the fortress or by compelling the defenders to surrender. Seen from the perspective of the defenders, the difference between the two was that of life and death. Defenders willing to fight till the end, waiting until the last moment, when fortifications had been breached, were usually denied any quarters and were put to the sword without mercy, or if they were lucky they were taken as prisoners in order to be ransomed later or sold as slaves. On the other hand, a commander who would surrender the entrusted fortification at the first sight of an enemy risked the wrath of his prince. Since not all of the princes were as courteous as the French kings and provided their commanders with more or less clear instructions regulating their behavior in this matter, the surrender of an entrusted fortress or town turned out to be very dangerous and slippery ground for fortress commanders.12 In this regard, both the Most Serene Republic and the Grand Signor of the Turks were almost equally unforgiving to commanders whom they judged incompetent and cowardly. In short, when there was a clear sign that no relief force would arrive in the near future, the key to survival for the defending commander lay in timely surrender, neither too soon, because of reasons previously mentioned, nor too late, lest the commander and those with whom he fought faced the even deadlier and more imminent danger of enraged attackers.

Seventeenth-century laws of war recognized two types of surrender: yielding to mercy and honorable surrender. In the case of yielding to mercy, no guarantees were given, and the decision to slay all, none or some of prisoners lay solely in the hands of a victorious commander. In the case of honorable surrender, depending on the outcome of negotiations defenders were granted life, freedom and the right of passage, protection from plunder, beating and wounding, the right to carry limited amounts of personal properties, and similar favorable terms. According to the widely accepted laws of war, if the town had rejected the call to surrender, it was permissible for the attacker to punish it. The longer the town offered resistance, the more sever the punishment would be, until the point in the siege was reached which allowed attackers to slay all prisoners (combatants and non-combatants alike). According to customary practices of early modern warfare, attackers should offer defenders two chances for surrender; the first one upon the encirclement of a town when the artillery pieces were brought up and the second when the breach was made in the walls. In the case of the first, defenders had rather good chances of negotiating favorable terms of honorable surrender. However, once the walls had been breached, everything depended on the negotiating skill of the defending commander and operative restraints of the attacking force, but in general the more siege was prolonged the harsher were the terms of surrender.13

Seen from the perspective of a besieging force commander, capture of the fortress by its surrender was a highly favorable outcome. Not only did it represent the safest and least costly way of successfully concluding the engagement, there were also long term benefits. A commander with a good reputation, one who was known to keep his word and who had proven himself capable of controlling his troops and preventing them from committing atrocities once the defenders had laid down their weapons, could expect others, when faced with overwhelming superior force, to follow this path and offer their surrender more easily and with less hesitation. In a prolonged campaign mainly composed of series of sieges, as was the case with the majority of seventeenth-century campaigns, the question of balance between clemency on the one hand and strict enforcement of the rules of war on the other (which allowed attackers to slay all the defenders after certain point in a siege) was of crucial importance. Obviously, exercise of this right was a two edged sword. Certainly, it could provide short-term benefits. By making an example of a single enemy stronghold, an army commander could have reasonable hopes that others would be intimidated and would lose courage and the will to fight when faced with the threat of such brutality. On the other hand, it could also easily backfire and produce the reverse effect. If convinced that surrender was not an option, defenders would be left with no other choice but to fight to the last man.14

The question of how this legal/customary framework actually work in practice brings us to the topic of the siege operations in Dalmatia during the War for Crete.

Historical Setting: Venetian Dalmatia and the Eyalet of Bosnia

When the war broke out in 1645, the Ottoman–Venetian frontier in Dalmatia had been unchanged for more than 70 years. Although the period from the end of the Cyprus War up to 1645 could not be called peace in the strict sense of word (due primarily to the relentless pirate activity of Uskoks of Senj, subjects of the Austrian Habsburgs, which was the main cause of strains in relations between Venice and the Ottomans), nevertheless the two empires were at least ready to cohabit and restrain from any major military incidents.15 Seen from the military point of view, in case of a renewal of hostilities all the numbers favored the Ottoman side. After more than a century of a conflict, due to wars, hunger, plague and loss of the larger part of its territory, by the middle of the seventeenth century Dalmatia had been reduced to a thin strip of land with no more than 75,000 inhabitants.16 Equally small were the Venetian forces charged with the defense of this strategically important province. In the pre-war years they counted no more than 2,250 infantry and 370 cavalry.17 On the opposite side stood the forces of the Bosnian eyalet, one of the largest Ottoman provinces in the European part of the empire. The number of sipahis who could be mobilized from this province amounts to ca. 8,000.18 Furthermore, from the 1580’s on, the Ottomans began to organize their border territories facing the Republic of Venice and the Habsburg Empire as a sort of military frontier area.19 Defters for this border zone from the year 1643 recorded ca. 15,000 salaried troops stationed as garrisons in border fortresses, and of those 2,950 were deployed in the sandjaks of Klis and Lika, which directly faced Venetian Dalmatia.20

When the war started in 1645, the Dalmatian theater of operations was peaceful throughout the entire first year. No major incursions were undertaken by either side in the conflict, and trade between Sarajevo and the Venetian port of Split remained uninterrupted. Venetian extraordinary governor in Dalmatia Nicolò Dolfin called the situation “war without war.”21 Both the Bosnian land-holding elite and the merchant community were convinced that conflict would be resolved quickly and without major confrontation in their part of the world. Unfortunately this was not to be the case. When in summer of 1646, after long preparations, the forces of the Bosnian pasha crossed the Dinaric mountains that divide Dalmatia from its hinterland, hostilities started for real, and they would continue for the next 24 years.22

Two types of warfare were dominant in the Dalmatian theater of operations during this war: 1) siege operations by regular forces and 2) raiding activities, performed by Venetian irregulars (Morlacchi) or in the case of the Ottomans, by cavalry raiding parties. In the course of an entire war only two major engagements were fought in the open field. The first one took place in 1648, when the Venetian forces besieging the fortress of Klis defeated the forces of the Bosnian pasha coming to relieve the siege. The second took place in 1654, when the Ottoman forces relieved the besieged fortress of Knin and in the open field routed the Venetian army, inflicting heavy casualties. Seen from the operational point of view, this was a rather repetitive war. Military operations closely followed the change of seasons. The script for an entire war could be summed up as follows: in early spring, when the Dinaric mountain passes were still closed by snow and two Dalmatian sandjaks were practically cut-off from the rest of the Empire, the Venetian army would enter the field, destroying and conquering as many Ottoman strongholds as possible. With the coming of summer, the army of the Bosnian pasha would descend from the north and Venetian forces would fall back behind the walls of Dalmatian coastal towns. After 1654, when the Ottomans fully regained the initiative in this battlefield, the Venetian regular forces ceased their incursions into the Ottoman lands completely and left the task of harassing of the enemy entirely to their irregular forces, units of the so called Morlacchi, former Ottoman Christian subjects who had defected to the Venetian side in the first years of the war.23

During the spring offensives of 1647 and 1648, the Venetian forces achieved their greatest successes, capturing all major Ottoman strongholds south of the Dinaric mountains. Three siege operations from these campaigns, each of which ended with the surrender of the Ottoman garrison, serve as the focal case studies for this paper.

The Capture of Zemunik and Novigrad (March, 1647)

Il s(igno).re Dio miracolosamente operando, ha fatto posso dir un pigmeo gigante, …

(Governor-general Lunardo Foscolo, April 1647, after the capture of the strongholds of Zemunik, Islam and Novigrad)24

The first case of this paper deals with the capture by the Venetian forces of the town of Zemunik (Zemonico) in March 1647. Zemunik was the seat of the sanjak-bey, and it functioned as an Ottoman forward base threatening the Venetian provincial capital of Zadar (Zara). The town’s fortifications, though strong, had not been improved with modern bastions and were outdated by the time of the war for Crete, unable to resist concentrated artillery fire. However, the town was well provisioned with stocks of food, arms and ammunition and defended by a strong garrison commanded personally by sanjak Halil-bey. Halil-bey was one of the most powerful Ottoman notables on this frontier. He was the lord of Vrana (a prosperous Ottoman stronghold in the vicinity of Zadar) who in the decades before the war had been the most prominent member of the party of Ottoman frontier lords hostile to the Venetian Republic and advocating its expulsion from Dalmatia.25 Conquest of this Ottoman stronghold in March 1647 was the first major Venetian success in Dalmatia in the war and represented a sort of the turning point, since from that moment on it was Venetian forces that were mainly on the offensive for the next seven years.

The Venetian campaign started on March 14, 1647, when the force of 4,000 foot and 600 horse left Zadar carrying a battery of three siege guns. According to Venetian estimates, in addition to the town garrison of 1,700 men, Halil-bey could also count on some 6,000 local sipahis. However, the Venetian commander’s bold move paid off. Upon seeing the Venetian force approaching, Halil-bey dispatched his son Durak-bey with instructions to assemble as large a force of regional sipahis as possible and bring them to his aid. But fortune favored the Republic, and Durak-bey and his entourage ran into a unit of Venetian light cavalry scouting the countryside and were killed in a short encounter. With Durak-bey’s death, any chance of quick relief perished. So far, the plan had worked perfectly, and the Ottomans were completely caught off guard. Venetian forces quickly captured a town suburb (borgho) most of the inhabitants of which had scattered to the surrounding countryside. The town was swiftly encircled and Venetian guns began to bombard its walls. After two days of bitter fighting and several repulsed assaults, the town walls were finally breached by artillery fire and the defenders were forced to retreat to the inner line of the town defenses. At this point, the commander in charge of the Venetian forces, Marc’ Antonio Pisani, the governor-general of the cavalry (Provveditore Generale della Cavalleria), sent his envoys to the defenders with the call to surrender and a stern warning that if they failed to yield, no mercy would be shown. The Venetian envoys were also instructed to inform the defenders of the death of Durak-bey.26

With the prospect of the timely arrival of a relief force gone, panic struck the remaining defenders, and not even the sternest measures taken by the Halil-bey, who slayed a few of the loudest, could maintain discipline. Facing open rebellion in his ranks, Halil-bey agreed to let all who wished to do so leave. Soon, the majority of the defenders and civilians, some 500 souls, 200 of which were able-bodied men, came to terms with the Venetian commander. General Pisani allowed them to leave the town, but only with their lives, refusing to allow them to take any personal possessions or arms. Additionally, the defenders were forced to hand over six hostages, who were to be taken to Zadar for a period of one month. On the other hand, Halil-bey remained resolute not to yield to the Venetians, and he retreated to the town castle (castelo) with 200 of his most faithful guards.27 Though Ottoman refugees did leave the town unhindered and headed toward Ottoman-held territory, they were ambushed by a group of Venetian soldiers who were convinced that they were carrying valuables. Upon hearing of this, the Venetian general personally intervened in order to protect the Ottoman refugees and reestablish discipline among the troops by putting some of the offenders to death. Furthermore, in order to prevent any further similar incident, general Pisani dispatched a unit of reliable cavalry to escort the refugees to the safety.28

After resisting for two more days without any hope of relief, Halil-bey finally decided to give up, and by waving the white flag he signaled to the besiegers that he was ready to begin parleys. Halil-bey offered to surrender the fortress of Zemunik under the following terms: (1) safe passage for himself and his companions and (2) the right to leave the fortress with personal possessions and armaments. These conditions were rejected by the Venetian commander, who was not willing to grant the defenders the honor of leaving the fortress with their arms and personal property, but was only ready to spare them their lives and freedom. General Pisani also demanded that the fortress be given up intact, and in good order and in order to ensure that these conditions would be met, Halil-bey and twelve aghas were to accompany him to Zara as hostages for a period of one month. In the end, Halil-bey agreed to the Venetian terms and requested that the general send him his personal ring as a guarantee of his word. Upon receiving it, the sanjak-bey surrendered to the Venetians and ceremonially handed over the keys of the city. Halil-bey, although regarded as one of the most ferocious enemies of the Republic, was treated well and escorted to Zadar in the company of the nephew of the Venetian general Pisani.29

Yet misfortune continued to befall the old sanjak-bey, and one more unexpected event sealed his fate. After the defenders laid down their arms, permission was given to the troops to plunder the town. However, not all of the Ottoman defenders surrendered with their commander. A few dozen hid in the caverns below the fortress in order to avoid being captured. Eventually, when the Venetian troops began looting the town they were discovered and in the ensuing combat some were killed, but most of them were taken as prisoners, with the exception of captured Christian renegades, who were promptly executed. Unfortunately for Halil-bey and his companions, the Republic used this incident as an excuse in order to avoid releasing him. Halil-bey was accused of “breach of contract,” and the terms of his surrender were declared void and not binding for the Republic. Accordingly, all 108 captured defenders were sentenced to gloomy and deadly service aboard the Venetian galleys, while the fate of sanjak Halil-bey and the twelve hostages remained undecided for some time.30

At the beginning of the April, governor-general Lunardo Foscolo, governor of the province and commander in chief of all of the Venetian forces in Dalmatia, urged the Senate to come to a decision concerning the fate of this enemy of the Republic, warning that he could not stay in Zadar, where he: “sempre sarà pietra di scandalo, cagione de mali.”31 The Senate was divided on the question of which course of action to take with regard to Halil-bey. A few days later, governor-general Foscolo, who was rather alarmed, wrote to his superiors that rumors had reached the province according to which the question of Halil-bey’s execution was being discussed in the Senate, including the exact names of the senators in favor and against this decision, warning that the circulation of such rumors was highly perilous.32 But reason prevailed, and on March 30, 1647, the Senate ordered governor-general Foscolo to release the Ottoman hostages after the expiration of the agreed period, though Halil-bey was to be sent to Venice with the first available galley.33 In spite of Halil-bey’s reputation as a vicious enemy of the Republic, he was not maltreated. On April 21, 1647 the Senate ordered this “Turco di gran auttorità, e stima à Confini di Zara” to be transferred to the castello in Brescia, where he was to be guarded “con le sicurrezza dovuta”. The Senate also ordered that he be given a moderate monthly stipend, “onde riceva ogni honesto trattamento”.34 Thus it came to pass that the old sanjak-bey spent the last years of his life imprisoned in Brescia, until he died in 1656.

A similar course of events transpired two weeks later with the recapture of Novigrad. The fortress port of Novigrad (Novegradi), which had been captured the previous year (1646) by the army of the Bosnian pasha, was the northernmost fortified port in the Adriatic in Ottoman hands. Governor-general Foscolo, encouraged by the successful progress of the campaign (with the sanjak-bey and several prominent Ottoman leaders in his hands and the local Ottoman forces in disarray), decided to press forward and attempt to recover this strategically important stronghold. After a short respite and a chance to resupply his troops, Foscolo dispatched a force of 3,000 foot and 700 horse overland north to Novigrad, while he personally proceeded at the head of the naval squadron, which consisted of four galleys and a dozen smaller warships. Though the initial Venetian attempts to storm the fortress were repelled with heavy casualties, on the third day of the siege (March 31 1647), combined bombardment from land and sea opened a breach in the walls. At that point, the defenders, aware that no relief force was coming to their aid, decided to start negotiations with the aim of surrendering the fortress.35

The Ottomans requested to be granted a so-called “honorable surrender” meaning to be allowed to leave with their arms and possessions, yet this time, due to the heavier casualties, the Venetian commander turned out to be less forthcoming. The governor-general demanded an unconditional surrender and was willing to grant the defenders only their lives. In expectation of the imminent Venetian assault, the remaining defenders, 90 in number, conceded and surrendered the fortress to the Venetian forces.36 Governor-general Lunardo Foscolo proved to be a man of his word, and in spite of the complaints of the angry Venetian troops, who demanded that the Ottomans be cut to the pieces, he personally intervened and ensured secure transfer of prisoners to the galleys. Moreover, Foscolo also continued to demonstrate consistency in his treatment of captured Ottoman notables. Though all male able-bodied Ottoman prisoners were chained to the galley benches according to the standard Venetian practice to serve as oarsmen, an exception was made for the eight captured aghas, who were exempt from this.37

The Siege of Klis (March, 1648)

The last case this paper concerns with is the most famous of Lunardo Foscolo victories: the capture of the fortress of Klis (Clissa) in March, 1648. Klis was a strong and famous fortress overlooking the Venetian port-town of Split and the seat of the sandjak-bey. Because of its excellent position atop the ridge, it enjoyed the reputation of being impregnable. Due to its fame, the siege and subsequent capture of the fortress by Venetian forces were described in detail in several contemporary chronicles and reports from various Venetian officials in Dalmatia.38 In short, after a two-week siege, five repelled Venetian assaults, and the defeat of the force of Bosnian Pasha (who came to provide relief for the Ottomans), on March 30, 1648, the defenders raised the white flag to signal that they were ready to open negotiations. Accordingly, an Ottoman delegation of five men came out of the fortress and was received by the Venetian commander, governor-general Foscolo. According to Venetian chronicles, the Ottomans first demanded that in exchange for surrendering the fortress in undamaged condition with all the artillery and ammunition they were to be given the same terms “that Christians have previously given to the Turks, in accordance with the customs of warfare at this frontier,”39 meaning that combatants and civilians alike be allowed to leave the fortress carrying arms and their personal possessions. In spite of the good rhetorical figures used by the Ottoman envoys and allusions to Christian morality and mercy, these terms were rejected by governor-general Foscolo, who replied that if such a proposal had been made on time, when the Ottomans had been in a more advantageous position, they would have found him more forthcoming than now, when the fortress had been destroyed, the relief force of Bosnian pasha routed, and the Ottomans left with little or no remedy for their situation. With this answer governor-general dismissed the Ottoman envoys and broke the negotiations for the day.40

The negotiations continued the next day, and the Venetians remained persistent in their willingness to accept only an unconditional surrender, assuring the Ottoman leaders that they should have no fear, that everyone would be treated well and according to his position and rank. In turn, the Ottomans replied that they did not see why the same favorable and honorable conditions of buona guerra that had been given to the Venetians during the siege of the fortress of Canea at Crete should not be granted to them, since the status of Klis was in no way lower than that of Canea.41 After an entire day of dramatic negotiations which almost ended in failure, since the sandjak-bey was unwilling to give up his request to be allowed to leave the fortress bearing arms, the Ottoman negotiators finally yielded and agreed to surrender the fortress under the following terms:42

 

1. all the defenders together with their families would be allowed to leave the fortress freely but without any arms, horses or baggage;

2. the defenders would be escorted to safety by the Venetian forces;

3. all Christians or any other Ottoman subjects who were willing to stay and accept the Serene Republic as their new lord would be able to do so without any hindrance from anyone;

4. all Christian slaves imprisoned at the time in the fortress would without any exception be handed over;

5. the Ottoman side would return 12 distinguished Venetians who were being held as prisoners;

6. the Ottomans would provide six hostages (including the brother of the sanjak-bey) to ensure safe handover of the fortress and return of the requested Christian prisoners, after which they were to be set free.

 

When all the terms had been agreed upon, general Foscolo sent his personal envoys to the sandjak-bey bearing his own ring, to be given to the sanjak-bey as a symbolic guarantee that he would uphold his part of the bargain. Upon receiving the envoys and the ring, the sandjak-bey in turn confirmed his agreement with the terms of surrender and gave the envoys two silver decorated handjars. With this ceremony, negotiations were formally finished and the surrender was scheduled for the morning of March 31, 1648. At the appointed time everything was ready for the investment ceremony, general Foscolo arranged his troops in two columns along the road leading from the fortress as a sort of an honor guard, and the defenders began leaving the fortress in the procession.43 But again, one unpredictable incident almost turned the entire event into a wholesale bloodbath.

Among the first to leave the fortress was Ahmet-agha Barjaković, a well-known Ottoman sipahi who allegedly, upon seeing some of the Venetian irregulars from Poljica (Poglizza), a region that had recently changed sides and gone over to the Venetians, called them traitors to the Sultan and threatened that due punishment would catch up with them. Enraged both by his behavior and what they thought were too generous terms of surrender, Venetian irregulars attacked and killed Barjaković and his family. After this first shedding of blood a wholesale attack on the Ottomans began. What followed were scenes of atrocities that could match the most brutal moments of the Thirty Years War. A contemporary, Dalmatian historian Franjo Difnik (Francesco Difnico), recorded the behavior of the Venetian troops with open disgust, stating that they took children away from their mothers’ breasts and from the hands of their unfortunate fathers and noting how the corpses of murdered Turks were opened with inhuman brutality and greed and searched for hidden money and jewels. Difnik concludes his description of the incident with the following gruesome description: “Some enjoyed skinning the bodies of dead Turks and using their skin as tracks or belts. Rape was also committed, without any concern for age or gender, and all in all, no act of mindlessness was missing.”44

By the time order and discipline had been restored, some 200 defenders had perished. The sanjak-bey and his entourage were saved only by the personal intervention of the Governor-general, who approached him with great embarrassment and in distress. In the presence of the sanjak-bey and other Ottoman dignitaries, Foscolo publicly proclaimed that all Ottomans taken as slaves by private persons must be set free and prohibited any further attacks under the threat of capital punishment. All in all, Foscolo reported to his superiors that he had “accarezzando in tanto il Sangiacco, et ben trattengolo, quanto so è posso, per farli conoscer il dispiacere grande che si ha dell’ accidente.”45 Furthermore, in order to compensate at least partially for the damages this incident had had on his personal reputation and that of the Republic as well and ensure that no further harm would come to the Ottomans, the Venetian general ordered the surviving Ottomans to be transferred to the galleys and transported by sea to the Ottoman-held territories, providing them with enough food for the duration of voyage, for all of which he obtained written expression of gratitude from the sanjak-bey.46

However, this was not the last breach of the terms of surrender. On the night after the surrender, Jusuf-bey Filipović, one of the Ottoman hostages, fled the Venetian camp. When this was discovered in the morning, the sandjak-bey of Klis rather chivalrously offered himself as a substitute for the missing hostage. Governor-general Foscolo gracefully accepted this proposal and left for Zadar aboard the galley in the company of six Ottoman notables, who were to be detained there until all Christian prisoners specified in the articles of surrender had been handed over.47 As it turned out, this took quite a long time. Due to the experiences of previous campaigns, governor-general Foscolo was well aware of the negative effects on the Ottoman military capabilities of having in Venetian captivity prominent Ottoman frontier lords, and he chose the Christian prisoners who were to be returned with great care. In order to keep Ottoman hostages in Venetian hands for as long as possible without however giving rise to any possibility of an accusation of breach of faith, Foscolo named several Christian prisoners whom he knew had been imprisoned in Constantinople and who would therefore require considerable time to be found and brought to Dalmatia.48

Closing Remarks: How to Surrender a Fortress Successfully

The series of vignettes presented so far allow us to reconstruct how in the Ottoman–Venetian context an ideal case of the surrender of a fortified place in the mid seventeenth century would look. First, by waving the white flag defenders would signal that they were ready to begin parleys (as took place at Klis, Zemunik, and Novigrad). Then delegations from both sides would meet and work out the terms of the surrender. When both commanders had agreed upon these terms, the general of a besieging force would send envoys bearing his ring or some other similar personal item. The item served as a symbol confirming that the envoys were speaking in the general’s name and also as a guarantee that the general would keep his word. Then, hostages would be exchanged by both sides, and in cases of major military engagement in which persons of the higher ranks were present the envoys would receive gifts. In the end, the attacker would be invested as the new lord of the fortress by ceremonial handover of its keys. Finally, in a case in which the defenders were granted safe conduct, they would be escorted to the border and when all the terms of surrender had been fulfilled the hostages would be released.

As can be deduced from the cases discussed above, even if the right moment to surrender the fortress was chosen, the process itself was neither simple nor straightforward. On the contrary, the act of opening the gates, leaving the protection of the fortress and surrendering oneself to the mercy of one’s enemy represented the most critical moment of the siege for the defenders.49 Of the three cases presented in this study, only one (Novigrad) ended without any major incidents, while both the surrender of Klis and the surrender of Zemunik involved attacks on the surrendering Ottomans. It would be wrong to attribute these outcomes to the personal incompetence of the Venetian commanders, or to their negligence. They were the product of the heterogeneous character of Early Modern European armies, which consisted of multinational mercenary units, as well as their loose command structure, which limited the command and control that European seventeenth-century commanders could exercise over them. These factors produced an environment in which the interests of the commander-in-chief of the besieging force (a member of the Venetian administration in Dalmatia and as such a representative of the interests of the state) were not always same as those of his subordinates: mercenary colonels, captains, or at the lowest level the ordinary soldiers, for whom war was in the first place a business enterprise and who almost always put their financial interests above anything else.50 This was essentially what occurred at the siege of Zemunik, where in direct breach of the warranted safe conduct, the defenders were still attacked and robbed by a faction of the Venetian army eager to put its hands on additional plunder. A similar incident took place in the wake of the exit of the Ottoman defenders from the fortress of Klis. Though this time the attack was started by Venetian irregulars, it still had damaging consequences for the Venetian war effort. For the commanding Venetian general, Lunardo Foscolo, in addition to the stain it put on his personal reputation and possible accusations of incompetence by his superiors, the most frustrating consequence of this incident was the plunder of the fortress granaries by Venetian soldiers, who exploited the breakdown of order and discipline, leaving him without these much needed provisions.51

Functioning within these operational limitations, Venetian field commanders followed all customary practices of siege conduct employed on European battlefields at the time. At the start of the siege, defenders were called on to surrender. Then, even at a later stage of an engagement, if requested quarters were granted, and if no “obstinate resistance” was met, defenders were usually given an opportunity to surrender under favorable conditions, as was the case, for example, with the sieges of Zemunik (1647), Klis (1648) and Risan (1649). In most cases (but still with a few exceptions, for example the case of the aforementioned “perfidious” Halil-bey), the terms of surrender on which the two parties had agreed were upheld by both sides, within the limits of their abilities. In their reports to the Senate, the governor-generals in Dalmatia often stressed the need to keep their word and honor the terms upon which they had agreed. In this, governor-general Foscolo was not exceptional. Other Venetian governor-generals also stuck to this policy. For example, after the surrender of the small Ottoman fortress of Zadvarje/Duare (1652), governor-general Girolamo Foscarini personally attended to the protection of the 200 defenders, to whom safe conduct was granted, from the Venetian irregulars (Morlacchi), who aimed to kill and rob them. In his letter to the Senate governor-general Foscarini felt the need to assure his superiors that “I know very well that good faith should be practiced at all times and with everyone, even if they are barbarians and infidels.”52

Like the Early Modern diplomatic practices, in accordance with which the utmost attention was devoted to the question of etiquette and upholding the honor and status of a particular prince, military affairs also demanded similar attention for ceremonial matters. In a diplomatic ceremony a diplomat, an envoy, represented a prince who was not present. On the battlefield this was the role of an army commander. The conduct of an army under his command directly reflected on the reputation and status of the sovereign under whose banner it fought. Every Early Modern army commander was well aware of this fact, and special attention was paid to questions of etiquette, status and honor. As illustrated by the cases above, Venetian commanders did not hesitate to impose capital punishment on soldiers who attacked the Ottomans once they had surrendered. The prisoners were considered to be under the protection of a commanding general, and any harm done to them not only represented a breach of articles of war, but also reflected on both the commander’s personal honor and that of the prince he served. Moreover, the conduct of Mehmet sanjak-bey of Klis, who offered himself as a substitute for Filipović-bey (one of the designated hostages who had fled the Venetian camp) aptly demonstrates that the principle of upholding a pledge, which had consequences for one’s personal honor in case of a breach, was one shared by both sides in this conflict.

In terms of etiquette, ceremony and status, probably the most remarkable thing is the role played during the negotiations by the granting of permission to leave the fortress bearing arms. In almost all of the cases the first set of terms put forward by the defenders included the request that they be allowed to leave the fortress armed. The value of this request was purely symbolic and psychological, since, armed or not, once out of the protection of their fortifications the defenders had virtually no chance to put up any struggle against the numerically superior attackers. To be allowed to leave the fortress armed was considered an act of honor and respect, and one not granted easily, since the concession of this kind made to the enemy was perceived as a decrease in the value of the victory that had been won. The case of the siege of Klis serves as a very good illustration of the importance of this term for both sides. The Ottoman commander, sanjak-bey Mehmet, refused to give up on this demand until the very last moment, risking the breakdown of negotiations and Venetian general assault, which would almost certainly have resulted in a wholesale bloodbath once the attackers breached the walls. However, while governor-general Foscolo appeared to be in a more favorable position, his troops had endured almost a month of the hardships of the siege and bad weather, with casualties numbering hundreds of dead and wounded, were already reaching the limits of their obedience. Thus, the outcome of an assault with an anticipated high rate of casualties and fought by such troops against resolved defenders without any choice but to fight to the last man was far from being a sure thing. Yet, both sides were willing to put everything at stake merely to achieve this purely symbolic victory. In the end, Foscolo got the upper hand and the defenders submitted to all of his demands, but the story has an interesting epilogue that deserves to be mentioned.

A few weeks after the capture of Klis, in April 1648, a pamphlet entitled “Vittoria ottenuta dalle Armi Feliciss.(i)me della Ser.(enissi)ma Republica. Nell’ impresa dell’ inespugabile fortezza di Clisa,” began to circulate in Venice. When some of the copies reached governor-general Foscolo in Dalmatia, he promptly, with great displeasure, wrote to the Senate, stating “Si è veduto alla stampa qui una narrativa dell’ accaduto, et stabilito nell’ acquisto di Clissa, che essendo quasi tutto lontana dal vero il raconto pregiudicando all’ essenza delle conclusioni, et che avantaggiano indebitamente, et contro il vero, il partito di turchi.” Foscolo asked the Senate to ban the pamphlet immediately, since it falsely claimed that the Ottoman defenders had been allowed to leave the fortress bearing their arms, while in reality, Foscolo reminded his superiors, they had left with only their lives and freedom.53

One more question peculiar to the cases examined in this paper needs to be addressed: did the fact that the participants in the conflict (the Republic of Venice and the Ottoman Empire) came from different sides of the religious divide (Islam and Christianity) in any way influence the rules of engagement?54 While at the middle of the seventeenth century the Ottomans were still considered by the majority of Europeans as the “other,” i.e. an enemy, they had nevertheless become an integral part of the European state system.55 The arguments presented so far show or at least support the proposition that the acceptance and integration of the Ottomans went further than the acknowledgment of their membership in the European state system of power. As we have seen, codes of conduct of warfare respected by European Christian states were both applied to and accepted by the Ottoman forces. Captured Ottoman commanders were treated with the dignity and respect befitting any Christian commander, while the social status and ranks of the Ottoman prisoners were equally respected, with persons of higher social status protected and given better treatment than others. For example, when in March 1647 the defenders of the fortress of Novigrad were forced to an unconditional surrender, the entire garrison, 137 men in total, was sent to Venetian galleys with the exception of the eight aghas, who were spared this fate and were instead taken to Zara as prisoners. There was a similar case in 1649, when the Ottoman fortress of Risan in the bay of Kotor surrendered after a twenty-day siege. While the aghas where allowed to leave with both their arms and baggage, all the others were granted only their lives and personal freedom.56 Additionally, acts of civility and courtesies, such as offers of personal protection, the issue of letters of gratitude for good treatment and the exchange of gifts (in this case rings, handjars or kaftans) common among the European commanders were also part of the interactions between Ottoman and Venetian commanders.

However, this study is in no way intended to imply that this was a benign war, far from it. The Dalmatian theater of operations was not lacking in brutality and atrocities. As was mentioned, two dominant modes of warfare in this war were siege operations and guerrilla raids, both of which fall into the category of military activities that are by definition hard to control and restrain. Guerrilla warfare by its very nature is a dirty business. The targets are not combatants, but rather resources that support an opponent’s military infrastructure, in this case civilians on both sides of the frontier. On the other hand, Early Modern siege operations were notorious because of the hardships suffered both by besieger and besieged, and consequently their high cost in human lives. After enduring weeks or months of trench warfare, bad weather, diseases and high casualty rates, Early Modern commanders had great difficulty imposing strict discipline and control over badly paid troops once they were inside the fortified place. What I do intend to suggest is that the cases discussed above do not offer evidence of excessive acts of violence or atrocities the motives of which could be ascribed solely to religious enmity. Rather, the incidents did not fall far from contemporary European practices and were products of the nature of Early Modern warfare and the limits of the control seventeenth-century military commanders could exercise over their forces.

 

Archival Sources

Archivio di Stato di Venezia

Senato Mar

Senato Rettori

Senato, Dispacci, Provveditori da Terra e da Mar

 

Bibliography

Primary Sources

Brusoni, Girolamo. Historia Dell’Ultima Guerra Tra Venziani e Turchi. Venice: Presso Stefano Curti, 1673.

Čaušević, Ekrem, ed. Autobiografija Osman-age Temišvarskog [Autobiography of Osman Agha of Temesvár]. Zagreb: Srednja Europa, 2004.

Difnik, Franjo. Povijest kandijskog rata u Dalmaciji [History of the Candian War in Dalmatia]. Split: Književni krug, 1986.

Novak, Grga. Mletačka uputstva i izvještaji: od 1621–1671 godine [Venetian Instructions and Reports: from Years 1621–1671]. Vol. 7. Zagreb: JAZU, 1972.

Solitro, Vicko. Povijesni dokumenti o Istri i Dalmaciji [Historical Documents Concerning the Istria and Dalmatia]. Split: Splitski književi krug, 1989.

 

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Donagan, Barbara. “Codes and Conduct in the English Civil War,” Past and Present 118 (1988): 65–95.

Donagan, Barbara. War in England. Oxford University Press, 2008.

Duffy, Christopher. Siege Warfare: The Fortress in the Early Modern World 1494–1660. London–Henley: Routledge–Kegan Paul, 1979.

Faroqhi, Suraiya N. “The Venetian Presence in the Ottoman Empire, 1600–30.” In The Ottoman Empire and the World Economy, edited by Huri İslamoğlu-İnan, 311–44. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.

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Jačov, Marko. Le guerre Veneto–Turche del XVII secolo in Dalmatia. Venice: Società dalmata di storia patria, 1991.

Jurin-Starčević, Kornelija. “Vojne snage Kliškog i Krčko-Ličkog sandžaka pred Kandijski rat – osmanska vojska plaćenika [Military Forces of Sancaks Klis and Krka just before the Candian War – Ottoman Army of Mercenaries].” In Zbornik Mire Kolar-Dmimitrijević, edited by Damir Agičić, 79–93. Zagreb: FF Press, 2003.

Kosor, Karlo. “Drniška Krajina za turskog vladanja [Drniš Krajina during the Ottoman Rule].” In Povijest Drniške Krajine [Hisotry of Drniš Krajina], edited by Ante Čavka, 103–79. Split: n.p., 1995.

Lesaffer, Randall. “Siege Warfare in the Early Modern Age: A Study on the Customary Laws of War.” In The Nature of Customary Law Legal, Historical and Philosophical Perspectives, edited by Amanda Perreau-Saussine and James B. Murphy, 176–202. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.

Lynn II, John A. “The Other Side of Victory: Honorable Surrender during the Wars of Louis XIV.” In The Projection and Limitations of Imperial Powers, 1618–1850, edited by Frederick C. Schneid, 51–67. Leiden: Brill Publishing, 2012.

Madunić, Domagoj. “Capi di Morlacchi. Venetian Military Policies During the War for Crete (1645–1669) and the Formation of the Morlacchi Elite.” In Türkenkriege und Adelskultur in Ostmitteleuropa vom 16. bis zum 18. Jahrhundert, edited by Robert Born and Sabine Jagodzinski, 29–47. Leipzig: GWZO, 2013.

Mayhew, Tea. Dalmatia between Ottoman and Venetian Rule. Contado di Zara 1645–1718. Rome: Viella, 2008.

Moačanin, Nenad. Turska Hrvatska: Hrvati pod vlašću Osmanskog Carstva do 1791. [Turkish Croatia: Croats Under the Rule of the Ottoman Empire until 1791.] Zagreb: Matica Hrvatska, 1999.

Naff, Thomas. “The Ottoman Empire and the European States System.” In The Expansion of International Society, edited by Hedley Bull and Adam Watson, 143–69. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984.

Parker, Geoffrey. “Early Modern Europe.” In Laws of War, edited by Michael Howard, George J. Andreopoulos, Mark and R. Shulman, 40–58. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994.

Parker, Geoffrey. The Grand Strategy of Philip II. New Haven–London: Yale University Press, 1998.

Parker, Geoffrey, ed. The Thirty Years’ War. London–New York: Routledge, 2006.

Parrot, David. Business of War: Military Enterprise and Military Revolution in Early Modern Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012.

Praga, Giuseppe. History of Dalmatia. Pisa: Giardini, 1993.

Rhoads, Murphey. Ottoman Warfare, 1500–1700. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1999.

Samarđić, Radovan. “Kandijski rat (1645–1669) [Candian War (1646–1669)].” In Istorija Srpskog Naroda [History of the Serbian People], vol. 3. no. 1, edited by Radovan Samarđić, 336–424. Belgrade: Srpska književna zadruga, 1993.

Sassi, Feruccio. “Le Campagne di Dalmazia durante la Guerra di Candia (1645–1648).” Archivio Veneto 20 (1937): 211–50.

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Spaho, Fehim Đ. “Organizacija vojne krajine u sanđacima Klis i Krka u XVII stoljeću [Organization of the Military Frontier in Klis and Krka Sandjaks].” In Vojne krajine u Jugoslovenskim zemljama u novom veku do karlovačkog mira 1699 [Military Frontiers in Yugoslav Lands in Early Modern Period up to the Peace of Karlovac 1699], edited by Vasa Čubrilović, 101–12. Belgrade: SANU, 1989.

Stanojević, Gligor. “Dalmacija u doba kandiskog rata [Dalmatia in the Age of the War of Crete],” Vesnik vojnog muzeja 5, no. 2. (1958): 93–182.

Stanojević, Gligor. Jugoslovenske zemlje u mletačko turskim ratovima XVI–XVIII vijeka [Yugoslav Lands in the Venetian–Turkish Wars]. Belgrade: Izdanje istorijskog instituta, 1970.

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Vrandečić, Josip. Borba za Jadran u ranom novom vijeku: Mletačko–osmanski ratovi u venecijanskoj nuncijaturi 1524–1797 [Struggle for the Adriatic in the Early Modern Period: Venetian–Ottoman Wars in the Records of the Venetian Nuntio Archival Documents]. Split: Filozofski fakultet u Splitu, 2013.

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Cristina Bravo Lozano

Madrid as Vienna, Besieged and Saved.

The ceremonial and political dimensions of the royal cavalcade to Atocha (1683)*

 

This paper focuses on the festive practices in the Spanish court and the diplomatic problems of etiquette and personal position in the planta of the procession that emerged in relation to both the Count of Mansfeld, imperial ambassador, and the Cardinal-Nuncio Savo Mellini. It also examines the opposition of the royal authorities to any kind of “innovation,” in the ceremony, the different interpretations of the image of Carlos II, and the political discourse of this public cavalcade to the Royal Convent of Our Lady of Atocha. The ceremonies were used to celebrate and elevate the position of this king, who had not taken part in the victorious siege of Vienna. An analysis of the celebratory representations allows one to establish an interpretative framework in which to consider the political functions of the rituals surrounding concerning the triumph of the allied Christian armies over the Turks. The symbolic language of the festivities, which included visual images, the meaning-laden choreography of the events, and the composition of works of imaginative literature, was intended to emphasize the majesty of the Spanish monarch, his devotion to the Christian faith, and the tremendous debt of thanks he was, implicitly, due.

 

Keywords: cavalcade, diplomacy, ceremonial, Ottomans, Madrid, Vienna, Carlos II, Count of Mansfeld, Savo Mellini.

 

From the Turkish camp, in the very tent of the defeated Vizier Kara Mustafa, the king of Poland Jan III Sobieski announced to the Marquis of Grana, General Governor of Low Countries, that his victory was the opposite of a departure “in silence” or “disappointing unjustly to the common people of Christianity.” On September 12 1683, the coordinated military intervention of the imperial, Polish and Lorraine armies forced the Ottoman army and Hungarian rebels to abandon the siege of Vienna.1 The newsletters disseminated word of the liberation of the city to all European monarchies and republics. The shared success was celebrated with luminaries, religious processions and various forms of rejoicing.

This singular triumph meant the retreat of the Sublime Porte from the Austrian territories in the face of determined action by the allied powers. The aid to the imperial capital, begun earlier in the summer of that year, served as an incentive to intensify the joint military interventions against the Turks. With the liberation of one of the main threatened bastions, the Christian princes started to recover territories and consolidate this geostrategic space. The religious significance and subsequent political implications of this success strengthened the emperor’s authority as defender of the Catholic faith in Central Europe and the Balkans. One of the repercussions of this was that Leopold’s prestige eclipsed that of Carlos II: the emperor now stood as the secular sword of Catholicism, while the Spanish monarch represented the main branch of the House of Habsburg, the dynasty to which both sovereigns belonged.

The public procession of the Spanish king through the streets of Madrid to the convent of Atocha was a majestic event the function of which was to reinforce the political discourse of the monarchy. This paper offers an analysis of the ritual and courtly ceremonial programs that were used by the parties to commemorate the Turkish retreat from Vienna. Thus, they are studied the effects and the diplomatic interests of the participants in this most solemn cavalcade as reflected in the controversies over etiquette generated by the Count of Mansfeld, imperial ambassador, and the Cardinal-Nuncio Savo Mellini. The examination of baroque language and the symbolism of the iconographic program stress the celebrative messages and the ideals they advanced. These symbolic expressions were intended to reinforce specific meanings of the Carolinian crown at the delicate moment of conjuncture of 1683.

“De este menguante, no es fácil que sus Lunas tengan creciente.” Reception of the News and the First Manifestations of Celebration

The gazette Nuevas ordinarias de los sucesos del Norte published the extraordinary news from Flanders, together with two other letters sent by the aforementioned Polish king. It communicated the Christian triumph to Pope Innocent XI, accompanied by the captured Ottoman banner, and the Venetian doge.2 In the Spanish court, there was an avid interest in the news and a public expectation for further information about the course of events. As of September 1683, a range of notices about the progress of the campaign was received. Thus, an enormous amount of information emerged in the proliferation of “true” accounts of events, the regular publication of newsletters and a panegyric literature dedicated to the siege which extolled the glorious actions of the Christian heroes.3 The void left by La Gazeta ordinaria de Madrid, which had been discontinued after the death of Juan José of Austria, created a demand for other “media outlets” and channels of information providing news on a variety of political topics and developments in European conflicts.4 In a number of different editions, the Nuevas ordinarias set out the events of the Austro–Turkish war in great detail. These accounts constituted a sort of proto-war journalism in the last decades of the seventeenth century.5

Yet, paradoxically, as the advances of the Christian flag against the Crescent Moon became known, the Spanish monarchy found itself at a crossroads. Carlos II was the “Catholic king” and a member of a dynasty committed to a religious cause. As such, he might have been thought of as destined to take part in the “crusade” of his time. However, the military realities in the Southern Low Countries, threatened by the expansionist designs of Louis XIV, limited his capacity for maneuver to purely symbolic participation.6 Under these conditions, the contribution of Spain to this confessional counteroffensive was limited by the resilience of the “Flanders wall” and the necessity of sending soldiers to defend it. Thus, Carlos II could only contribute with a pecuniary assistance of 125,000 escudos to the supply of materials, the maintenance of allied troops, and saying of prayers and masses for Christian success.7

After the siege, and despite the military circumstances and the perennial shortages affecting the royal finances, the Madrid court enthusiastically partook in the celebrations and demonstrations of delight that were held in the main European cities. The first festivities occurred on October 2, following the arrival of the Burgundian Jean-Claude Prudhomme, who announced the victory to the king. This cavalry captain had previously been sent by the Marquis of Grana to the imperial army with the aim of informing him of the “end-point of the battle.” By informal arrangement, this initiative by the General Governor provided an almost immediate account of events, faster than the postal service. According to different accounts, the messenger returned to Flanders the very night of the liberation of the city. Without delay, the marquis sent him on, with the imperial news, from Brussels to Madrid.8 Upon arrival, this extraordinary emissary met the Duke of Medinaceli, the king’s first minister. Afterwards, he was dispatched to the king, who was returning from a journey to the countryside.9

The notice of the lifting of the siege of Vienna spread like wildfire through courtly circles. On receipt of the happy news, Carlos II went in search of his two queens, Maria Luisa of Orleans and Mariana of Austria, who now resided in the convent of Atocha. During this time, the palatine rooms and the royal antechambers were filled by “lords and the nobility, who out of curiosity and the desire to assure themselves of the truth of the news, had gathered together without having actually been eligible for any congratulatory office.” The news also quickly spread to the streets, where no one seemed inclined to follow custom and wait for the official announcement. With an outpouring of festive pleasure, information regarding the success was received with great joy and praise. The climate of opinion had been created in the course of the previous weeks by the reports and newsletters that had been printed, which had fed popular clamor. Many subjects expressed their joy by running to ring village church bells and disseminating news to the adjoining settlements. Balconies and windows were suddenly lit up by torches and candles as mute voices made manifest the “faith, glory and indisputable conviction found in the hearts of Spaniards.” Bonfires were lit in the squares, sometimes fueled with belongings taken from neighbors who destroyed their own “possessions as they leapt into the night.” Fireworks were set off and shotguns were fired into the air, so that “Madrid seemed Vienna, besieged and saved.”10

These first demonstrations of delight, which lasted for some three days, were not echoed in the royal households. The absence of any public sign of festivity and the retreat of the royalty after the initial celebrations in the palace gave an indication of the official stance. Without any discussion of the news carried by Prudhomme, the desire for royal prudence complied with the customary practice of waiting for the imperial gentlemen or a letter with the formal announcement of the news from Austria. This decision silenced courtiers and contained the enthusiasm of the people of Madrid, despite the fact that the missive sent by Leopold I was intercepted at Bayonne.11 Twenty-one days later, the much anticipated letter was finally received in the king’s palace. Immediately, Carlos II commanded three days of official celebrations and festival bonfires, beginning on Saturday 6 of November, and announced a royal cavalcade through the streets of Madrid, to be held on Monday 8.12

 

 

Ceremonial Controversies Surrounding the Ritual Accompaniment: Diplomacy, Planta and Etiquette

The traditional style of the Madrid court for demonstrations of religious fervor to commemorate the triumphs of the House of Habsburg decreed that the Spanish monarch would proceed through the streets before the public to the Convent of Atocha.13 The organization of the ceremony represented a solemn ritual for the monarchy, centered around Carlos II and his pleiad of ministers and palace courtiers, a combination of royal power and sacred values, and accompanied by the singing of the Te Deum hymn. The Viennese celebration aimed to strengthen the image of the sovereign through the political and religious elements expressed in the royal cavalcade. The triumph thus was reconfigured and claimed as his own or, alternatively, as one belonging to a shared Habsburg dynastic identity and mission. It emerged as a favorable opportunity to undermine or at least counterbalance the popularity that Leopold I had won as he had come to be seen as the leader of Christendom and also to stress Spanish preeminence and the links between the branches of the Habsburg House.14 The projection of Carolinian magnificence would transform this splendid parade into a spectacle with which to express symbolically the majesty of the Spanish king to his subjects and, indeed, the other European representatives.

The procession on horseback portrayed the court system as a baroque theater.15 As a commemorative festival it was conceived as open to popular participation. This was a way for the monarchy to legitimate and integrate in the same celebration the different members of the body politic and the public of Madrid. As part of an extensive itinerary, the cavalcade would pass by distinguished spaces which underlined the attendance of the people.16 This deliberate rejection of the concept of a hidden majesty, an idea expressed by the monarchs in a number of ceremonies celebrated in the Royal Chapel, was intended to reinforce the authority of the sovereign through an extraordinary occasion of collective festivity.17

During the ritual, the exaltation of royal dignity and the political meaning of the festival were made explicit in its arrangement around Carlos II, who emerged as the central axis of the cavalcade.18 The ceremonial traditions and the rigidity of palace etiquette determined the forms and order of the courtly accompaniment and the duration of the procession. The component parts were arranged according to their hierarchy and social position.19 This ritual codification of prestige meant that the planta of the entourage (the specific order of the participants, which was regulated by the code governing such ceremonies) gave symbolic and public expression to the hierarchy of the various political circles.20 In a culture which valued appearance, in which the place that someone held in the royal parade represented a definite sign of socio-political status and personal distinction, it was necessary to have strict and clear regulations in order to prevent any controversy over protocol.21

These rules and the royal decisions, which enabled ambassadors of chapel to convene, did not prevent bitter disagreements, which began with a remonstrance from the Cardinal-Nuncio Savo Mellini, the Count of Mansfeld, ambassador of the emperor, and the French envoy, the Count of the Vauguyon. These complaints concerned their position in the entourage, which they saw as an affront to their prerogatives and standing. Taking the disputes over the cavalcade of 1678 on occasion of the surrender of Messina as the basis for their arguments (the first time that Carlos II had been seen on horseback in public), the foreign ministers found cause to justify their complaints about their respective locations in the planta.

As of his consecration as cardinal, the nunciature of Savo Mellini encountered a variety of problems over ceremony and etiquette in the royal celebrations.22 The interest provoked by his diplomatic participation worried the nuncio with respect to his place and influence in any intervention and the “custom” that he would be expected to enforce. Moved only by the aim of clarifying his position, he requested that he be shown the plans for the entourage. He warned his court intermediary and the chief chamberlain of the Queen Mother, the Marquis of Astorga, that the planners of the ceremony should consider not only his status as a representative of the pope, but also his high ecclesiastical position.23 He thus attempted to prevent the appearance of the “irregularities” which had obliged the monarch to order that in the future, in the course of festivities involving a royal procession on horseback the ambassadors should form a separate body.24 In similar terms, but in conversation with the conductor of ambassadors Juan de Idiáquez Isasi, Mansfeld also asked to be shown the planta. However, Idiáquez was unable to give it to him, stating it was not yet available and he could not provide it without a royal order to do so.25 Apart from this, there was no controversy regarding the order of the carriages of the ambassadors in respect to that of Juan José of Austria, as had been the case in Messina during a previous dispute over precedence.26 Rather, the complaints came up in relation to the coach of chamber and of the monarch himself. As the Constable of Castile, Íñigo Melchor Fernández de Velasco y Guzmán, put it, the carriages “form an inseparable body and all of them [must] go for the service of his royal person and all are necessary.”

Given these arguments over the cavalcade, the council of State discussed the qualms presented by the nuncio and Mansfeld, to which were added the complaints presented by Vauguyon, the French ambassador. The counselors were unanimous in their refusal to show them the planta. The Constable contended that it brought “demasiada y poco decorosa satisfacción”. It was a matter that belonged properly to the royal household and any novelty in the matter was regarded as a potential source of conflict. Etiquette had to be defended. For his part, the Marquis of Astorga fully understood the intentions of Mellini, which had been communicated to him in an informal conversation when the news of Vienna had arrived. Deeming it dangerous to trust Mellini on account of his well-known shrewdness, the aristocrat recognized that the nuncio only would yield if his coach proceeded directly behind that of the king. However, the other foreign ministers, in particular Mansfeld, argued that the cardinal-nuncio should serve as the voice of everybody on account of his double condition as prince of the church and representative of the papacy. Vincenzo Gonzaga added, after having spoken with the imperial ambassador, that he was not very convinced he should be behind the cardinal. Considering these observations, the Count of Oropesa concluded that their places should be explained to them in detail and that they should know the rank afforded to their rivals, “with whom they compete so that they do not fail to understand this in the procession.”27

While the decisions of the counsellors were pending, Mellini offered an explanation to cardinal Alderano Cybo, secretary of pontifical State, of how he had conducted himself in the matter. He had adopted two parallel approaches to negotiation. On the one hand, he raised his complaint with Astorga; and, in turn, he discussed the matter with both Cardinal Primate Luis Fernández de Portocarrero and Mansfeld, deciding “that they would have to undertake these offices separately.” The Frenchman Vauguyon joined them in this. He was interested in finding out about discussions over the planta. Likewise, it seems that the nuncio sounded out Portocarrero and proposed a prospective agreement to him. The concurrence of both cardinals in the religious functions caused certain problems concerning the question of their precedence.28 Mellini noted that the archbishop of Toledo was recovering from an illness at the time and contended that he should be excused from participation in the ceremony. Instead, he suggested that he be entrusted to preside over the ceremonies to be held in Atocha. In view of the difficulties, the Castilian cardinal decided to exempt himself, and he retired to the country. Thus, the nuncio remained as the only candidate to celebrate the Te Deum. The veiled suggestions of the secretary of the royal chamber, Sebastián de Vivanco, persuaded him to recommend an improvised solution, “it being fitting that I take part, or at least that I represent the [papacy], because any other solution would be an insult to His Holiness.”

For the reasons set out above, another problem emerged: the position of Juan Gaspar Enríquez de Cabrera y Sandoval, Admiral of Castile and master of the king’s horse, and the constable of Castile, chief chamberlain. In his own words, the pontifical legate explained the negative response to the counselors as an indication of the fact that they did not want to “go against these principal lords.”29 However, in the Council of State the question of the royal procession and the respective places of each of the participants within it were again discussed. This debate concerned a plan that had been drawn up. It was decided not to show this draft proposal to the ambassadors (Fig. 1).30

At the same time, the location of the offices of the house was not set down. In order not to spend more time on the question, the recommendation of the ministers was to announce it to the ambassadors individually. Sticking to etiquette, they were allocated the same places that they would have had in a procession on foot, while the members of the royal household took up their positions according to their posts and their length of service. The carriages would form an indivisible body, following those of cardinals and ambassadors, in compliance with their rank of precedence. To follow any other plan, the Admiral argued, “would be to risk casting into doubt what they know or what they want to give to understand that they do not know.”31

Another delicate point, and cause of diplomatic discontent, was the entry and mounting of horses in the palace hall. According to the etiquette of 1650, in this part of the palace only the horse of the king and the mount of the master of king’s horse could enter.32 This rule was clearly codified in the court ceremonial regulations. A discussion was begun in the Council on how to respond to their proposals about the planta. In order to “have less reasons for controversy,” it was convenient to do this in writing. Thus, in his resolution, the sovereign determined that

 

the cardinals have to enjoy the same place in this royal procession that they have held in those on foot and the ambassadors are going to adopt the position that rightly befalls them behind my royal person in an equal queue. To the master of the king’s horse and chief chamberlain I have given commands concerning what they should do [in this matter]. The coaches of my person and family have to form a body and proceed united, without interruption, and these must be followed by the cardinals and ambassadors, to whom we should respond with news of my resolution in the form that the Council believes best, anticipating that in the hall of the palace there should be no more horses than those by my royal person and the mount of my horse master, as is the style and as etiquette decrees.33

 

Astorga, Gonzaga and the Marquis of Balbases transmitted this decision to the nuncio, the imperial ambassador and the French minister.34 The strict, narrow margins of the order did not make these representatives particularly happy, and they vented their doubts regarding it, according to the historical records of the nunciature.35 Both Mellini and Mansfeld responded by exhorting the Council and Carlos II to examine the planta “set out in [the] paper of [a] geographer.” These responses revealed their particular interests in the function, as well as their concerns about the nature of the plans and their disregard for historical precedents, as they understood them.

The cardinal analyzed how, if his position was the same as in processions on foot, he should have to move just a step behind the royal person. With the difficulties already encountered and the handful of changes made by the king in their favor, he proposed that he himself celebrate the mass in Atocha. This would be a role in line with both his ecclesiastical status and diplomatic character. His informal influence in the court was made evident on November 4 on the occasion of the festival held in El Retiro to celebrate the king’s saint day. Mellini dealt with the royal officials hoping to secure the right to celebrate the liturgy of thanksgiving. After representing his case to the Duke of Medinaceli, he “thanked him for sending the file and for responding to me that I could celebrate this function and that the Lord Patriarch would be sent to invite me.”36 With this decision, which was formally communicated by Antonio de Benavides, the dispute with the cardinal-nuncio was resolved without damage to his prerogatives.37

For his part, Mansfeld justified his decision to request the planta “for a fixed and reliable rule” regarding how he was to conduct himself. He wanted to know his position and to understand those of the other of ministers, “so the difference of the others would alter the meaning of mine.” He also made clear his disagreement with his being granted only limited access to the palace hall and presented a certified document belonging to one of his predecessors, dated 1657. It indicated how the legates led their horses “very close to the place where the king mounts his horse” and that they alighted next to the door of Atocha, not in the street, as the courtiers did.38 This testimony acquired more weight in an incisive discourse. The determination to “maintain the representation of the emperor, your uncle and my lord,” in his prerogatives and the fact that Leopold I was one of the leaders of the siege of Vienna led the ambassador to remind the Spanish how “everything results in the grandeur and greater glory of His Majesty [Carlos II].”39

Referred again to the Council of State, the problem was resolved by the king and the ministerial organism did not permit any more discussion. The counselors rejected the validity of the records, which indeed had remained unknown to them until then. Moreover, the Constable stressed how Mellini and Mansfeld were wrong in their proposals, not Vauguyon, who had not made any other contention on this matter. In his vote, he made no effort to disguise his annoyance: “the matters of the royal house belong only to the knowledge of the bureo and deliberations of Your Majesty, which he has ordered be viewed in the Council to remove any doubt and keep them recognized with this honor.” Considering the etiquette, the other ministers agreed with him, and they proposed to Carlos II that it was not necessary to add anything to the existing decrees so as not to provoke new pretensions, since “there [would be] nothing worse than to halt the plan that has been established by [submitting it to] the judgement of nobodies,” meaning figures with no say on the matter.40 Taking into consideration the prospective problems, they thus decided that the cavalcade would be celebrated without the assistance of the cardinals and ambassadors and thus without them having to bother with any alterations in these matters, as the Admiral observed. Having renounced his prerogative of master of the king’s horse in favor of Medinaceli, he proposed that a new planta be fixed for the future.41

Carlos II was convinced by this reasoning, so the arguments over the procession were concluded. No additions were made and the royal opposition to any alteration was communicated to the ambassadors.42 The aristocratic and diplomatic ethos having been questioned, Mellini, Mansfeld and Vauguyon felt that their place in the planta somewhat undermined their status, as did the order of the coaches and the entry into the hall. However, the validity of the etiquette and the stylized ceremonial praxis in the Spanish court was of more significance than the complaints of the European ministers who had been invited to the function. Their presence at the festivities was not required, although they gave more luster to a ritual in which the main actor was to be the “victorious” Carlos II on horseback.

Although Mansfeld eventually declined to participate in the procession, he considered his absence enough to repair the damage that he felt had been done to his diplomatic standing. On the morning of Sunday 7, he made his public entry in Madrid. From the old residence of the imperial legates, the minister traveled to the Buen Retiro, where he had his official audience with Carlos II. The accounts tell of how the count was received according to the royal protocol, “with signs of his true love for the august blood of the lord [Leopold I] whom he represented.”43 The intervention of Vauguyon in the dispute was indirect and circumstantial, following the endeavors of the imperial representative and the nuncio to put more pressure on the king. In the last moment, however, he decided to excuse himself from the celebration and, apparently, he attributed the failed diplomatic initiative to the separate negotiations undertaken by Mellini, which meant that the ambassadors did not act as united body.44 However, in the letter with which he informed Louis XIV of the organization of the cavalcade, he admitted that did not involve himself decisively in the diplomatic debates because he had not taken part in the negotiations from the outset and he lacked orders from Paris on how to conduct himself in this matter.45 Unlike his colleagues, Mellini believed that it was beneath him to officiate over the religious function in Atocha, so “one hour before the start of the cavalcade, he passed through all the streets through which the [royal entourage] had to pass, accompanied by a large entourage.”46

Riding to Atocha: Iconography and Ostentation of Austrian Maiestas

With certain wit, the poet José Pérez de Montoro described the courtly feast of that Monday in one of his works. He observed that, “from Madrid they tell, how they went / to Atocha with elegance, / giving thanks for the triumph, carrying / calzas atacadas / and in this applause / men went without them / very atacados.”47 The absence of cardinals and the refusal of the diplomatic corps to participate in the cavalcade deprived the ceremony of much of its splendor and caused great consternation in the court.48 At two o’clock, six bugles and kettledrums announced the emergence of the royal entourage, as etiquette dictated.49 Together with his cohort of courtiers, Carlos II, dressed in a rich embroidered garment “in the usual custom,” began his parade with gallantry and vigor. He left the royal palace on a magnificent Andalusian mount named Quijarudo.50 With great pomp, he was accompanied by the Duke of Medinaceli, master of the king’s horse, on his right hand side and the Constable of Castile, chief chamberlain, to his left. They rode a short distance behind the king. The prime equerry, Pedro de Leyva, count of Baños, proceeded on foot and close to the person of the king.51 In his delineation of the royal outing, Bernardo de Robles, a servant of Queen Mariana, defined it as a “circular table,” meaning the royal entourage was composed of the Spanish and German guards, two majors of House and Court (Juan Antonio de León and Manuel de Arce), gentlemen of the Royal Bedroom and de la Boca, three secretaries of State (Joseph de Veitia, Crispín González Botello and Manuel Francisco de Lira, who held a prestigious position in the ceremonial space that, until then, had been occupied only by an aristocratic elite), Grandees of Spain according to their position within this hierarchy, and others lords and nobles of the first rank.52 Following the planta, a number of “carriages of respect” accompanied the sumptuously decorated royal coach and its symbolic portrayal of the “Sun of Spain,” the lions of the monarchy and both of the crowns which Carlos wore, the first denoting his status as king of Spain and the second his title of “emperor of America”.53

This spectacle of the court coincided with the feast day of the Santi Quattro Coronati. Thus, the exaltation of Christian unity found physical expression in the representation of the four tiaras: the pontifical tiara of Innocent XI, the imperial tiara “who has played the greatest role in this scourge”; the Polish tiara was located at the exit to the Plaza Mayor and alluded to in the portrait of Jan III Sobieski; and the Spanish tiara, “column of the faith.”54 Though he had not actually taken part in the campaign, the representative culture and rhetoric of the images lauded Carlos II as the “victorious” king, thus explicitly including him as a protagonist in these narratives. The visual reading of gestures and the court system were intended to legitimize his authority and strengthen his political position in Europe. For instance, over the main door of the church of El Salvador linen representations of Felipe IV, Mariana of Austria, Carlos II and Maria Luisa of Orleans were hung, and on the door of the Atocha’s college the portrait of the Virgin, “patron saint of the monarchy,” was placed. It was guarded by a representation of the pope and the monarchs of Spain at the time.55

The politicization of this laudatory feast was also intended to win the hearts of the king’s subjects.56 The intervention of the highest courtly circles in the plans for the festivities was designed to direct the popular jubilation in favor of the dynasty and its prestige. The active and noisy participation of the people in the royal functions was accompanied by joyous demonstrations and reverential allusions to the monarch.57 According to the accounts, the streets echoed with harmonies, the sounds of oboes, and the applause and the cheers of subjects, “who were keen to see such a great monarch, their king and natural lord; [these people] were not few in number and filled many streets, and they were not averse to [running around] to catch a second glimpse of His Catholic Majesty, even if this made them hot and sweaty.”58

With this opulent display of courtly representative culture, the streets and squares of the city were embellished in a manner that harmonized well with baroque decorative models. The attraction of this sensationalist iconographic program was clear in the draperies and images hung from balconies and illuminated with torches. In the palace’s square, “tapestries depicting the battles of the unconquered Carlos V were displayed.” This was a series of representations depicting his campaign in Tunis, a powerful reminder of the operations of the king-emperor against the Ottoman Empire in the Mediterranean and an event that was intimately related to the first siege of Vienna of 1529.59 The palace of Mariana of Austria was also covered for this function with “an intense light of gold.” According to the plans, the royal parade would stop in front of this spectacularly-adorned building. From one of its balconies, the queen mother and the Queen Maria Luisa waited to review Carlos II on horseback, “tribulando both their hearts before the eyes of Carlos, which defeated the soul.”60 Accounts also described how the church of Saint Mary of Almudena resembled a sky, and the square of the Villa was a paradise of taffetas and tapestries.61

The spectacular nature of the ornamental program that decorated the royal route was accompanied by “inventions of fire” of the merchants of the Gate of Guadalajara and the castle and pyrotechnic machines of the Tower of Santa Cruz which, in addition to being adorned with banners and flags, boasted a statue of the Hungarian “rebel” Thököly that was set aflame in the night. The following day the same procedure was repeated with a portrayal of the vizier, who went up in flames in Postas street.62 These events were accompanied by temporary constructions, such as the hill of flowers provided by the council and the town gaol, where a number of prisoners were released as a result of the general pardon issued by the king to commemorate the success.63 Musical compositions, dances and theatrical pieces were performed on different stages across the city. To this end, platforms were erected in specific places where entertainment was arranged for the crowds while they awaited the arrival of the king. The rhetoric of these representative tools and cultural mechanisms was used by the royal court as a means of persuasion. They stressed the imago of the prince and his deep religious zeal. They extolled the virtues of the Pietas, and Habsburg devotion to the Christian faith was highlighted along the route of the cavalcade.64

The destination of the entourage was the convent of Atocha, the traditional center of public devotion and a point of reference in the ideology of Spanish sovereigns for the expression of their dynastic and religious values.65 Within this festive milieu, the courtly ritual of thanksgiving was displayed in the Te Deum, the central feature of these festivities. Intoned by Mellini and accompanied by musicians of the Royal Chapel, this hymn conferred even greater solemnity to the liturgical celebration. The armed uprising of Vienna, the grandeur of the dynasty and the political power of Carlos II were all celebrated with prayer, music, fervor, and pomp. After the ceremony had come to a close, the king came back to the palace following the same itinerary. In line with royal instructions, these festivities, with their clearly structured temporal and spiritual dimensions, concluded with bonfires and fireworks in the palace square.66

Publishing and Court Epithets on the “Great Lion of Spain”

In his prologue to El sitio de Viena, Pedro de Arce referred to the popular acclaim in Madrid for the success of the allied armies. He also described some aspects of the cavalcade of November 8. In a dialogue, he used three anonymous characters to express how “Everybody comes to the Palace, then the king goes out to the chapel, / because it begins with the worship / his religious happiness. / Other.- He is also going about the streets / to be at the front of the day / that the Sun should illuminate the hills, / just as he inspires hearts. / Another.- Go out, and we will see him on horseback, / which is the required outcome, / that he who was born to the throne / holds the success of the See.”67

On December 22 (coincidentally the queen mother’s birthday), the companies of Manuel Vallejo and Fracisca Bezón, la Bezona, presented this play in the Golden Chamber of the Royal Alcazar.68 The use of the theater as an expression of power and a reflection of the political society was recognized. Arce himself must clearly be interpreted in the context of these mechanisms.69 Author of a variety of literary plays and publications, knight of Santiago, councilor of Madrid and aposentador of House and Court, he was designated to write a festive comedy dedicated to Mariana of Austria.70 The historical nature of a celebrative play, composed ex professo and set in the present-day, determined its contents and final form. It commemorates Christian triumphs that had happened only two months earlier and provided the title of the composition. Given the proximity of the events discussed by characters both historical and fictional, the comedy was developed around three journeys and was accompanied by a prologue, two one-act farces and a dance ending in a feast. Reproducing the events that taken place in Vienna in great detail upon the stage, the play was performed over the course of two days, and the playwright was widely praised for his great success in framing the narrative.71

The storyline had an obvious propagandistic orientation, with the aim of showering praise on the royal figure. The author relates the imperial and Polish campaign in detail, using an epic tone and presenting the narrative as if it were a chronicle and also making use of the gazettes and letters that had arrived from Austria.72 In a panegyric and theatrical language, he involves Carlos II in the final triumph, including him in an allegorical manner as the character of Spain. In the prologue, Arce tries to link the Carolinian court to the events in Vienna and thereby demonstrate the centrality of the Catholic Monarchy in the defense of religion and the exercise of political authority. Despite his exiguous contribution to the war effort, Spain assumed the role of victor, sharing it with Germany. In the praises showered upon these figures, the playwright conferred upon the Spanish monarch a pivotal (purely metaphorical) role, and the writer even raised Carlos II to the same level as Leopold I. It underlined and reinforced the dynastic identification and the general projection of the Habsburgs as guarantors of Christianity. Thus, referring to the royal Household in an encomiastic manner, the Fame character asks itself: “Generous Spain? / Great Germany? My care does not like to find them together / because they are two united souls.”73

The link between the Spanish and imperial branches of the family was one of the distinctive aspects of the Madrid celebrations. The reasoning for the assimilation (or appropriation) of the achievements of the Austrian Habsburgs was imagined in the allegorical artistic representations that played out after 1683. In the anonymous painting La victoria de los aliados contra los turcos en Viena, a portrait of the actors who took part in the siege of Vienna, one discerns the figure of Carlos II (Fig. 2). According to the inscriptions, the king is the man wearing black, in the Spanish fashion, and kneeling in front of the Pope. Thus, following the traditional iconography of triumphs, he is portrayed as monarch victorious, presenting the Turkish capitulations to Innocent XI in place of the emperor, the Polish king or the Duke of Lorraine, also included in the scene but in secondary positions.

Literary works were also composed in which Carlos II was directly involved in the events of the victory over the Turks. His participation, indeed, was stressed in the introductory and contextual parts of different accounts presented in the public cavalcade.74 Laureate and immortal, the House of Habsburg was represented bearing the cross against the Sublime Porte. The contributions of the Polish army, to which this event “will give sacred renown,” and the Lorraine troops were not forgotten. Pride of place goes to the imperial eagle, which, having flown from its nest, wanted to search for another globe “because it would achieve this in two worlds.” With this poetry, Bernardo de Robles alluded to the dynastic unity between the branches of the House of Habsburg. In his discursive outline of the events, the author praised the pious figure of Carlos II, who would be remembered by History, while he congratulated the king’s uncle Leopold “in public festive digressions.” Thus, the unconquerable Habsburgs were presented and their successes were trumpeted.

The reputation of this lineage, which had been chosen by God (as a range of other prints clearly suggested), came from the long service of its members “eulogizing the faith and defending the Church against both Heretics and Turks.” The victory of the emperor and the allied powers in Vienna had prompted the Catholic king to emphasize the assistance he had allegedly given, since it was a military conflict with extremely pronounced political and religious connotations. In allegorical terms, “when the empire was more distraught, [the great lion of Spain] win not consolation but rather the applause of Fame.”75 The Spanish king had provided neither material means nor soldiers, but rather had been able, merely with the power his religious zeal and the claws of his faith, to finish off the Ottoman enemies and deal them a mortal blow. The heightened panegyric of the anonymous author of this Verdadera y nueva relación drove him to recreate an apparent confrontation that allowed him to locate the Habsburg of Madrid among the array of heroes, and this decision can be seen as a reply to the logical process of extolling Leopold’s virtues in works published across Europe.76

In the symbolic discourse about the royal emblem, a metaphorical mention of Carlos II as “our Spanish sun” in Salida en publico invites us think about the usefulness of iconographic language in shaping political reality in this period (Fig. 3).77 The wars of Louis XIV, le Roi Soleil, can be understood in relation to his policies of territorial expansion across the continent.78 His advance in the north and up to the Lombard wall increased his hegemonic position to the detriment of the interests of the Spanish monarchy. The war of Luxemburg and the French threat that hung over the southern Low Countries conditioned the Carolinian participation on the Austrian front. However, the refusal of the Bourbon monarch to become an ally of the emperor, Poland and Lorraine or to provide any kind of support for their counteroffensive against the Ottoman Empire contrasted with his pontifical title of the Most Christian King.79 His decisions led to the neutrality of France, an ambiguous posture towards an enemy of Europe that earned Louis XIV the name “the most Christian Turk,” as had happened with Francis I and his alliance with Suleiman the Magnificent in the 1530s and 1540s. This name was coined by anti-Bourbon pamphleteers and seriously undermined the image of the French Sun King.80

The political use of such epithets was a crucial element in influencing public opinion regarding the absence of the Catholic king from one of the main campaigns undertaken in defense of Christendom. At the same time, some elements of this court propaganda set critics against Louis XIV at the beginning of a new period of conflict, the Guerre des Réunions. Nevertheless, the power of words and their aesthetic purpose made the different celebrations a spectacle of political and religious dimensions “that exceeded in many circumstances the Roman triumphs.”81 Salida en publico concludes with the following sonnet:

 

To the dawn of Atocha lit up, / to the queen sovereign of Heaven, / Carlos, king and Sun (with human form) / to give thanks ventured out (happy outing!) / With happy soul and pure goodwill, / august nobility, between Christian loyalty, / for the fright and terror of the Ottoman, / Victory acclaimed with united glory. / In plain black with reddish hairs, strong Atlas, / of confidences and tormented enthusiasms, / so relieved that it is enjoyed / another invincible and inimitable Alexander, / to whom the Crescents their death provide / anticipate without defense, in their care.82

 

Conclusions

The celebrations of thanksgiving for the end of the siege of Vienna were shaped by the paradigm of the baroque festival in the Madrid court. With its traits and idiosyncrasies, it became one of the most distinctive and memorable courtly spectacles in the history of the Spanish monarchy. The political significance and religious connotations of the Te Deum celebrated in Atocha were proportional to the “media” interest that preceded the war against the Ottoman Turks. News, notices, periodical gazettes, accounts and panegyrics circulated in great numbers in the royal city. Attention focused on the siege of the imperial capital, awaking political concern and the curiosity of private readers of these concise snippets of news. Its spectacular emergence in the late months of 1683 caused an informational phenomenon that increased its impact on public opinion with the campaigns of Hungary and the capture of Buda three years later.

With a ceremonial program heavily shaped by the etiquette of the court, the function, form or method of the eventual festivities corresponded to established models inherited from previous decades. In essence, the public image of the king did not differ from images projected at other times. The significance of the celebrative model transcended the palatine cannons of behavior and the rules of protocol. The effective application of these regulations did not prevent it from causing a diplomatic controversy over different aspects of its codification, however. The pretensions of the Cardinal-Nuncio Savo Mellini, the Count of Mansfeld, and the French Count of the Vauguyon reaffirmed the validity of the style and the cultural uses of the court. Planta, coaches and palace hall offered vindications, cited examples based upon precedent, or offered documentary proof of the validity of their claims. In each case, personal aspirations and the aspirations of respective embassies were set out. On the one hand, the nuncio avoided the problem of precedence with the Cardinal Portocarrero and he acquired a pontifical office by own petition as an honor for which he seemed to have negotiated since the beginning of the dispute. Mansfeld, for his part, referred to the rhetoric of the House of Austria as a means of preserving his prerogatives and participating in a festivity the basic purpose of which was, after all, to commemorate the success of His Caesarean Majesty. Remembering his absence, and trying to prevent any further inconvenience during the preparations for the Buda cavalcade, he warned that “for being so dissonant that in this function, [and] most exposed to the view of the world, [this ceremony] lacks a clear representation of the emperor.”83 The case of the Bourbon envoy was more peripheral, and his offices did not have the presence or significance of the others, principally due to the relatively low level of commitment of Louis XIV to the Austro–Turkish war and Vauguyon’s limited interest in the matters under discussion. Considering the respective positions of these ambassadors as a form of currency in political influence, the Council of State did not accept any of their judgments. In many discussions during the preparations for the celebrations the ministerial organism referred back to the established etiquette and traditional thinking, focusing on the exaltation of the majesty of Carlos II and therefore recasting the victory over the Turks as a shared triumph that belonged to the armies of Spain.

The spectacular stages, machines and ornaments that decorated the street of the villa therefore constituted a laudatory iconographic program set out in strategic public spaces. The sensationalist and sumptuous array extolled the magnificence of the king, strengthened the dynastic element and values, and thereby underlined the gratitude due to Carlos II for having defended Christendom. The second public procession of the monarch on horseback highlighted the political dimension of a ceremony with religious connotations that transcended the sacred rituals to offer different interpretations of the original success: the defense of Vienna. They each betrayed one basic intention: to celebrate the victory of the dynasty, and with the mediation of power to strengthen the image of the Spanish sovereign and his authority as the head of the main branch of the House of Habsburg in a Europe that was applauding the “unconquered” Leopold in Vienna. The courtly theatrical effects of the accounts represented an attempt to attenuate the increasing influence of Vienna and re-equilibrate the political reality by presenting Carlos II as the triumphant Catholic king and victorious Habsburg.

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* This study was undertaken within the framework of the program Juan de la Cierva-Formación (FJCI-2014-21225) and the project of the Dirección General de Investigación del Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad, Gobierno de corte y sociedad política: continuidad y cambio en el gobierno de la Monarquía de España en Europa en torno a la Guerra de Sucesión (1665–1725) (HAR2012-31189). It has also benefited from help from the project of the Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst (DAAD), Die Kunst der guten Regierung in der Spanischen Monarchie (Projekt 57050251). I must thank Phillip Williams for the English translation of this paper and Luis Tercero for his suggestions. For additional perspectives and ideas on Buda’s cavalcade, see Cristina Bravo, “Celebrando Buda. Fiestas áulicas y discurso político en las cortes de Madrid y Londres,” published in Vísperas de Sucesión. Europa y la Monarquía de Carlos II, ed. Bernardo García and Antonio Álvarez-Ossorio (Madrid: Fundación Carlos de Amberes, 2015), 354–71.

Abbreviations: AGS (Archivo General de Simancas, Simancas), E (Estado); AHN (Archivo Histórico Nacional, Madrid), Cód. (Códices); and ASV (Archivio Segreto Vaticano, Vatican City), Arch. Nunz. Madrid (Archivio della Nunziatura di Madrid) and Segr. St. Spagna (Segreteria di Stato. Spagna).

Fig. 1 AGS, MPD, 7, 161. Diagram of the cavalcade that accompanied the king on the day of his public procession. Madrid, s. f., October 1683.

Fig. 2 Anonymus, Alegoría de la victoria contra los turcos en el asedio de Viena de 1683. Museo Nacional de Artes Decorativas, Madrid.

Fig. 3 Pedro de Obregón, Carlos II y su madre ante el Alcázar. Engraving to illustrate the work Nudrición Real, of Pedro González de Salcedo (Madrid: Bernardo de Villa-Diego, 1671).

Krzysztof Brzechczyn

The Reliability of “Files” and Collaboration with the Security Service (SB) in Poland: An Attempt at a Methodological Analysis

Over the course of the last decade, the disclosure in Poland of information regarding the secret collaboration of public figures with the Security Services (SB) has triggered emotional discussions on the reliability of the archival records stored in the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN). Analysis of these discussions enables one to draw a distinction between two opposing views. According to the first, documents stored in the archives of the IPN are incomplete and devoid of accurate information. According to the second, documents produced by the repressive apparatus of the communist state constitute a new type of historical source and contain reliable information.

However, these discussions concerning the reliability of “files” lack methodological rigor and precision. I consider the reliability of the “files” in the light of Gerard Labuda and Jerzy Topolski’s concepts of historical sources. According to this analysis, the “files” do not constitute a new type of historical source requiring a radical rethinking of existing classifications and new interpretive methods. However, one precondition of an adequate interpretation is the acknowledgment of the purpose for which they were created and the functions they played in the communist state. The repressive apparatus collected, selected and stored information on society if they considered this information useful in the maintenance of political control over society. Ignorance of or failure to acknowledge this specific social praxis (and its different forms: manipulation, disintegration, misinformation, etc.) performed by the secret political police is one of the reasons for methodical and heuristic errors committed by historians: the uncritical application of the vision of social life and processes presented in these sources for the construction of the historical narrative.

Keywords: adaptive interpretation, reliability of the historical sources, Gerard Labuda, Jerzy Topolski, surveillance, Security Service, secret political police

The Issue of the Reliability of “Files” for the First Time: An Analysis of an Example

After 2000, as the Institute of National Remembrance (hereinafter the “IPN”) commenced its activity, sources pertaining to or compiled by the communist apparatus of repression became widely available to researchers who study the history of Poland in 1944–1989. However, as soon as some of the findings of research conducted on the basis of archival records of the IPN were published, some journalists, ordinary people and professional historians rejected the historiographical credibility of the documentation created by the Security Service (SB) and its related authorities in the times of the People’s Republic of Poland (PRL).

A symptomatic opinion was expressed by Antoni Pawlak, an oppositional activist, poet and journalist, at the panel discussion arranged at the Chamber Scene of the “Polski” Theatre in Wrocław:

There is something that as we lived in the 1970s, 1980s and earlier—the times the fundamental rule of which (the rule around which our lives were organized) was a lie—books, press, yearly books, economic reports—I do not understand how we can claim that the only base of truth was the Security Service. It boggles my mind.1

More systematic charges were formulated by Karol Modzelewski, nota bene a prominent historian of the Middle Ages, who claimed that the minimal usefulness of these sources to historians was a result of, first, the incompleteness of the source database.

General Kiszczak and his people were the sole masters of the files for as long as six months and they already knew that they would have to hand over the ministry, together with those documents, to their political opponents. From the very beginning it was naive to believe that they left anything in the files that was not appropriate to be read.2

Second, he emphasized the minimal reliability of the archival documents, “In the mind of a person who would seek to conjure the truth about the agency on the basis of unreliable remnants of documentation experience and logic has been replaced with wishes.”3

On the other hand, historians and researchers who used the archival records of the IPN generally believe that this type of archival resource, which is essential to the study of the recent history of Poland, is quite reliable. Joanna Siedlecka, who researched the lives of writers living in the People’s Republic of Poland, made the following observation:

There is a huge and priceless knowledge about writers. After all, the Security Service left us the priceless material. Thanks to it, we know what Herbert said at an author’s meeting in Pcim or in Rzeszów because detailed notes were taken. In my opinion, there are documents, the reliability of which simply cannot be challenged.4

Those who support the use of the resources compiled by the apparatus of repression of the People’s Republic of Poland insist on the usefulness of these materials to scholars of the apparatus of repression itself and those parts of the past that were of interest to the authorities and the police forces.5 In this context, it is stated, inter alia, that it is possible to reconstruct details of many significant events of the political history of the People’s Republic of Poland,6 the history of the opposition and of the Independent Self-Governing Trade Union “Solidarność,”7 and the process of making decisions by authorities of the People’s Republic of Poland.8

This opinion regarding the relatively high reliability of the sources is associated with a warning against a specific vision of the world represented by their authors:

…these archival records have a specific nature (my italics K.B.) that reflects the activity of the Security Service. Therefore, the knowledge included in the documentation made by the communist security apparatus is neither a complete nor a reliable image of the People’s Republic of Poland, but rather constitutes only a glimpse at the reality of the People’s Republic of Poland from the perspective of the interests of the Security Service.9

On the other hand, according to Paweł Piotrowski, “We have to realize that this documentation was created for a specific purpose and portrays the image of the world that the authors saw or wanted to see.”10

The issue of the reliability of the Security Service’s sources was broadly discussed by Adam Leszczyński, who in a chapter of a book published in 2006 and entitled “How Did the Authorities Themselves Lie: The Documentation of the Security Service and of the Polish United Workers’ Party as a Source on the History of the ‘Solidarność’ Trade Union” makes the following assessment:

The reliability of the written sources created by various institutions of the government and of the party, from the Polish United Workers’ Party (PZPR) to the Security Service, leaves a lot to be desired. Since they distort the reality that they try to describe both at the factual level (their authors frequently and intentionally lie) and at the level of interpretation, they are saturated not only with gobbledygook, but also with a specific type of the party’s glimpse of reality.11

Leszczyński refers to the case of the death of the miner Jan Siminiak at the Civic Militia (MO) station in May 1981. In the “Details on Circumstances” cited by the author, the Security Service reported his death as an accident, “At the Civic Militia station, J. Siminiak fought with a Civic Militia officer, fell, and hit his head against the bench. The doctor declared him dead.”12

Leszczyński comments on this description in the following way:

It is impossible to state whether the audience of this report really believed this odd explanation (...). In view of this report, the death of Siminiak was a regrettable accident that befell a habitual drunk and troublemaker (...). It is worth emphasizing that the “Details on Circumstances” is an internal and top-secret document, but a Security Service officer was unable to make a less unilateral description of the event. He provided exactly the same version propagated by the State’s papers, radio and television.13

The document became the basis for a broad assessment of materials made by the Security Service.

This complies with the norm observed by numerous researchers: the Security Service’s documents almost never make mention of any acts committed by their officers that infringed on the law of the People’s Republic of Poland, such as beating or harassing people who were politically inconvenient. These drastic methods are passed over in silence, and when impossible, they are presented in a way that shows the officers in the best light, even if the entire story seems ridiculous.14

The document is criticized in terms of the postulated ideal historical source that includes any and all information on the topic that has captured the researcher’s interest: supports a “proper” interpretation (i.e. an interpretation that conforms with the researcher’s objectives) and contains no evasive or misleading statements. These expectations are not met by any of the sources created by the Security Service, or by other institutions. Leszczyński himself remarks on this, noting that the documents of the Security Service and the Polish United Workers’ Party exaggerated differences in the internal views of the Independent Self-Governing Trade Union “Solidarność,” whereas trade union documents omitted any mention of these internal divisions.15

If the contentions contained in a source are knowing lies (as is indicated by the title of the chapter) made to superiors by subordinates, clearly they cannot be regarded as reliable. However, whether or not these statements can be regarded as knowing lies has not been established. A statement can be characterized as a lie when it does not conform to the known details, the person who made the statement was aware of this inconsistency, and he or she intended to mislead the person to whom the statement was addressed. Leszczyński does not support his conjecture with any arguments based on the source data. Yet in order to substantiate the claim that the statements in question were deliberate lies, it would be necessary to prove that the authors of the report on the Siminiak case were aware of inconsistencies with the facts and intended to mislead their superiors. In order to do this, it would be necessary to identify the authors of the report.

In addition, the following sentence is vague, “the Security Service’s documents almost never make mention of any acts committed by officers of the Security Service that infringed on the law of the People’s Republic of Poland, such as beating or harassing people who were politically inconvenient.” It is not clear how the expression “almost never” should be interpreted. Is it a general quantifier or an existential one?

The “Details on Circumstances” cited by Leszczyński was a document made in the Office of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (hence strictly speaking it was not made by the Security Service, as Leszczyński claims) on the basis of daily reports sent from individual voivodeships and departments of the Ministry, e.g. the Civic Militia, Border Defense Troops (WOP), etc. The key role in the presentation of information was played by a group of people (the so-called distribution list) to whom the reports were sent. If information was addressed to people holding the most prominent positions in the country (a list that came to several dozen names), it referred to general matters. For example, a schedule entitled “Assessments of Establishing the Citizens’ Committee with Lech Wałęsa,” which contained opinions of the “Fighting Solidarity” organization and the Liberal-Democratic Party “Independence,” was addressed to 44 people in the country, including Alfred Miodowicz, whose son Konstanty was an opposition activist of the Freedom and Peace Movement.16 The “Daily Information” was permanently scheduled with the “Events with the Participation of the Civic Militia Officers,” which generally contained information on violations of the law by employees of the Ministry and members of the uniformed services. This schedule was usually addressed to one person in the State, Władysław Pożoga or Czesław Kiszczak (at least in the late 1980s). It seems (although this would be a matter for further research since Leszczyński omits this question) that the document was addressed to a larger group of people, and hence it contained a description of the event on the basis of generally available information. Schedules exclusively addressed to the Minister of Internal Affairs contained information on crimes (or suspicions regarding the commission of a committing crime) committed by the officers of the ministry.

Example 1: On the 5th day of this month, at around 1:00 a.m., the Provincial Office of Internal Affairs in Leszno was informed of a burglary of a shop run by citizen Kuczkowska in B. Chrobrego Street. A tracker dog led officers to the flat, where Paweł Stefański, age 20, was caught. In the flat the officers found the loot (jackets). The arrested was drunk. It turned out that he was a private of the 6th Company of the Operating Battalion of the Motorized Reserves of the Civic Militia (ZOMO) in Poznań (1st year of service) and was on holiday. He confessed that he had broken into the shop.17

This following description was included in the “Information on the Present Operational-Political Situation” sent on 20 May, 1982 from Poznań to Warsaw.

Example 2: On 18 May of this year in the hospital in Lutycka Street, a 19-year-old named Piotr Majchrzak, a student of the Secondary Technical School of Gardening in Poznań, died. The mother of the deceased, Teresa Majchrzak, a teacher in kindergarten no. 39, claims that his death resulted from him having been beaten by officers of the Motorized Reserves of the Civic Militia on the 12 May at 12:00 p.m. in Fredry Street near the church. She managed to find witnesses to the incident who claim that the Civic Militia patrol stopped him when he was running towards tram no. 8, which was arriving at the time. They claim that there was a heated exchange between the officers and P. Majchrzak. The officers allegedly clubbed him. The witnesses claim that P. Majchrzak defended himself with karate (he was a member of the “Feniks” karate club). When he lost his consciousness, the officers called the ambulance, which took him to hospital. The witnesses spoke with Majchrzak’s mother and warned that they would not present their version of the event because they were afraid of possible repressions.18

The Security Service’s documents also contain information on the “harassment of people who were politically inconvenient,” or at least information on plans to do so.

Example 3: In the “Tram Driver” operational verification the following actions were planned to be taken against Jan Lutter, vice-chairman of the Inter-Enterprise Founding Committee “Solidarność” of the Greater Poland Region in 1980: 3) A relevant false story will be used to talk with selected individuals (...) in order to learn more about a figurehead, his/her contacts (...) and learn about his/her interests, weaknesses and tendencies (...). 6) Check the figurehead in the following available records: the Personal Data Office, general registry, Passport Department, criminal record, Traffic Department, Sobering Station (...) 7) Examine the figurehead’s family, his/her past, places of residence and employment in order to determine his or her motives and learn more about his/her personality (...). 9) Use “B” to examine further (...) and document his/her possible hostile activity or situations that discredit him/her (...). 10) By using any and all possible operational measures and possibilities and any and all possible materials that discredit the figurehead, his/her position, among other things, in the workplace and place of residence will be weakened and his/her possible hostile activity will be neutralized.19

These plans and deeds of the Security Service, plans and deeds that could result in violence against or endangering the life of the people targeted, were enigmatically called “disintegrating actions,” “destructive,” “harasser,” or “special actions” according to a “separate plan” or an “annex to such plans,” but such plans could never be made in writing, or if made in writing, they were destroyed.20

The Issue of the Reliability of “Files” for the Second Time, in Light of Jerzy Topolski’s Concept of the Dynamic Historical Source

Opponents in the debate regarding the “low” or “high” reliability of the archival records of the apparatus of repression adopt several common assumptions. They implicitly assume that the reliability of documents is a constant property of historical sources and this property is independent of the problem under discussion or the research questions posed. I contend that this assumption is unfounded. According to Topolski’s concept of the dynamic historical source, “a historical source is (...) any and all sources of historical cognition (direct and indirect), i.e. all information (including theory and information) on the social past, irrespective of its place, together with its communication (channel of communication).”21 Moreover, Topolski differentiates between a potential source and an effective one. He claims that the potential source is everything on the basis of which a historian is able to gain knowledge of the past, whereas the effective source is the group of information that is actually used by a historian.

This manner of apprehending the concept of the historical source implies that its reliability is relative, id est it is affected by the research question actually posed by the historian. The same source may be relatively highly reliable in the case of one research question and less reliable in the case of another. It is worth citing Topolski again:

Therefore, one of the keys that shapes the mechanism of the use or interpretation of source information (in other words, the study of a source) is the research question to which the source is supposed to provide an answer. Without such a question, the source does not tell a historian anything. It remains silent, even if a historian is able to read it. By posing these questions, obviously structured by the historian’s knowledge, which expands beyond the individual source under scrutiny (and the entire methodological consciousness), the historian preliminary models the reality that is the subject of his/her research.22

To characterize the information structure of the source, Topolski used the notion apparatus of Jerzy Kmita’s theory of a sign.23 The Polish philosopher of logic and history assumed that a sign is an activity or a product of human activity that is a result of the intentional communication of a given state of affairs. In addition to signs, there are symptoms that can be divided into humanistic and natural. Humanistic symptoms are human activities or products that are not intentionally created for the purpose of communication by their creator. For example, smoke coming from the chimney means that people are at home and they are making a meal, but this message is not the intentional outcome of the dwellers.

Topolski distinguished three layers of the source information structure. A surface layer of the information structure of the source is a collection of “information that may be extracted from it in the simplest way, id est it is clear without posing questions other than the questions directly included in this collection of information.”24 This refers to the most fundamental questions, such as what, who, where or when. A sign layer of the information structure of the historical source means the possibly intended purpose of the information originally communicated. In contrast, a symptom layer of the information structure contains the possible pieces of information that were not intended to communicate directly with their audience. These pieces of information may reveal the author’s worldview, his/her vision of the social world, or hidden assumptions regarding the political, cultural and economical situation.

Example 4: After October 1956 the Communist party toughened the policy towards the Catholic Church. One of the symptoms of this was the decree of the Ministry of Education of August 1958 that provided for removing crosses from school classes in all schools in Poland. This decision was met with protests of parents and children. In the Zielona Góra voivodeship, such protests were held from 31 August to 15 September 1958 in several dozen rural schools.25 The daily information on protests signed by lieutenant colonel Bolesław Galczewski, 1st security deputy of the commander of the Voivodeship Civic Militia Station, was sent to colonel Marian Janica, a deputy of the director of the Office of the Minister of Internal Affairs. This information included a detailed description of protests in individual places and harsh criticism of the authorities: “what October gave us, September will take,” “we demand religion in schools, we demand crosses, we are not in captivity, Gomułka does not govern himself,” “Poland is a Russian colony,” “What are you doing with this Poland: a Russian republic?” “Gomułka made it but he will be removed as well,” “Crosses were in schools in the time of Hitler, Stalin and Beirut, and now you are removing them.” These statements explicitly show that the conflict was politicized and the protesters’ demands to restore crosses in schools changed into criticism of Gomułka, the system, and Poland’s dependence on the Soviet Union. However, in a collective report of 17 September, 1958 to the Office of the Minister of Internal Affairs lieutenant colonel Galczewski omitted mention of the size of the protest and claimed that, “by analyzing the Catholic clergy, it is said that priests do not officially partake in conflicts arising in individual gatherings. In addition, outside churches the clergy clearly does not stir up people to manifest and protest against the secularization of schools. (...) We still do not have any indications of any reactionaries who have become active because all previous conflicts in the rural areas involved mostly fanatics and women. Moreover, these conflicts are not clearly hostile because these protests are frequently limited to demands to restore religion and crosses in schools.”26

By posing the question of who protested against the removal of the crosses and also where and how, we come to the surface layer of the information structure of the source, id est the aforesaid report. By posing a question regarding what the 1st security deputy of the commander of the Provincial Civic Militia Station in Zielona Góra wished to communicate in his report to the Director of the Office of the Minister of Internal Affairs by omitting mention of the political dimensions of the protests, we come to the sign layer of the information structure of the source. Further on, by posing a question regarding why the 1st security deputy of the commander of the Voivodeship Civic Militia Station in Zielona Góra emphasized that the protesters “were mainly women” (although 3 out of 8 of the people arrested people were men), we come to the symptom layer of the information structure.

One can formulate a preliminary hypothesis that the report omitted the political aspects of the protests in order to communicate to the Office of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in Warsaw that the author of the report was in complete control of his territory. On the other hand, the emphasis of the key role of women in the protests might be a symptom of the belief (hypothetically) shared by the author and his superiors that the proper places for women were the private and religious spheres, hence the collective participation of women in the protests proved the non-political character of the acts.27

The Content of “Files” According to Topolski’s Source Classification

In order to determine more precisely the specificity of the secret collaborator’s denunciation and other operational files, it is necessary to have a more general system of classifying the sources. Topolski accepts the conventional division of historical documents into direct and indirect sources. This division is based on the assumption that direct sources should “directly” reflect the past reality, whereas indirect sources should do it through an informant. This informant can take many forms, such as a chronicler or a diary keeper who informs a historian about a certain fragment of the past reality. The use of indirect sources requires the study of their authenticity and reliability or their internal criticism. As for direct sources, there are no such informants because the direct sources themselves are elements of the historical reality. In this case, only the authenticity of the sources is examined.28 Differences between both types of sources are shown in the following table:29

 

Direct sources	Indirect sources
(1) direct cognition (2) no intermediary (3) no need to examine their reliability (authenticity must be examined)	indirect cognition presence of an intermediary necessity of examining the reliability of the informant

 

Another way of classifying sources is according to the division between addressed sources and non-addressed sources. The mode of division here is based on the existence of information that directly links the participants of the communication process (type: addressor–information channel–audience), in this case between a source author and a historian (or another recipient). This division does not refer to the material aspect of sources (information carrier), but only to information included in sources.30 Topolski claims that “addressed sources are directly intended as forms of communication, whereas non-addressed sources are not.”31 The intention of communicating information implies that addressed sources contain an element of persuasion that is addressed to the audience, whereas the source itself includes the interpretation of information that it carries.32 According to Topolski, this means that, “A historian who wishes to extract information from such sources must have his own interpretation, i.e. he or she interprets the interpretation already included in the source. The examination of the reliability of the informant, that is to say, whether or not he tells the truth in a given situation (…) is not enough here.”33 In order to extract information on facts from this type of source, a historian must strip the source of its rhetorical, persuasive and interpretative elements.

The addressed sources can be classified into certain categories, depending on whether or not they are addressed to: (1) an audience that is contemporaneous with the source author (e.g. letters, reports, announcements); (2) posterity (funerary inscriptions, documents on a person’s rights); (3) historians (numerous memoirs are kept for this purpose, occasional publications, etc.).34

By combining these two classifications, we obtain the following typology of sources:

 

Intended or not intended to convey information Existence or non-existence of the informant	Addressed	Non-addressed
Indirect	Indirect addressed (article published in a daily paper)	Indirect non-addressed (intimate diary)
Direct	Direct addressed (Egyptian pyramid)	Direct non-addressed (scaffolding after the pyramid)

 

In terms of the source classification developed by Topolski, it is possible to detect what the secret collaborator’s denunciations mean: they are indirect addressed sources. The specific nature of this type of source is its narrative structure, which is comprised of informative, rhetoric, and ideological-theoretical layers.35 The ideological-theoretical layer covers the interpretation and/or the explanation of facts presented by the source author. This narrative aspect controls the remaining rhetorical and informative layers as well. This control aims to select and hierarchize information carried by the historical source and adequately to apply rhetorical clues that are intended to convince a potential reader of the document to interpret the reality presented by the author (authors) of the source. This interpreter is the historian, who uses knowledge obtained from other sources and various heuristic procedures to strip the source of the theoretical-ideological and rhetorical layers and obtains information regarding relevant historical facts. Therefore, the so-called source optics comprising, among other things, a specific vision of the world and humankind, is not the specificity of the secret collaborator’s denunciations or documents of the Security Service, but rather a general feature of any and all indirect addressed sources.

The secret collaborator’s denunciation as an indirect addressed source is included in category (1), which means that it is addressed to an audience that is contemporaneous with the source (information) author. Hence, I have determined the nearest type to which the secret collaborator’s denunciation belongs. Now, I am going to identify the specific differences of the collaborator’s denunciation. In order to do this, I have to expand Topolski’s classification. I divide indirect addressed sources into sources addressed unlimitedly and limitedly.

An article in a daily newspaper is available to all people who know a given language. However, papers in Studia Logica, for example, are in principle available to everyone who completes a form and orders this journal in a relevant library, but it is doubtful whether these articles are equally comprehensible by everyone. The mode of distributing the source of information constitutes another means of limiting the audience. The state documents classified as “top secret” do not distinguish themselves by their sophisticated terminology (they need to be understood by democratically elected authorities), but access to them is strictly restricted.

In the extreme case of a source that is only addressed to its creator (e.g. a personal memoir) represents a non-addressed source. In this case, it is better to replace the dichotomous division (addressed and non-addressed sources) with a gradable division, depending on the number of persons in the audience to which the source (according to its author’s intentions) is addressed.

Thus we arrive at an understanding of another aspect of the secret collaborator’s denunciation: this is the indirect addressed source addressed to a limited audience. A secret collaborator of the Security Service who made a denunciation, whether handwritten or not, was convinced that his or her cooperation with the Security Service would remain secret and the authorship of the denunciation would remain anonymous to strangers and more specifically to anyone to whom he or she was close or was tied. In an extreme case, the secret collaborator could even be convinced that the information was exclusively provided to the Security Service officer to whom he or she reported. The distinctly outlined group of recipients affected the source language and posed problems with regards to reading the source information (decoding). Topolski distinguished the informant’s ethnic language code, epochal language code (terminological), psychological code and graphical code. The language in the Security Service’s documents pertains to the terminological code: a specific language that needs to be understood and decoded.36 This, however, is not only peculiar to the police denunciation, but a characteristic of all the indirect addressed sources, whether limited or not, including the explicit or implicit ideological vision of the world of its creators.

The question is whether such considerations mean anything concerning the reliability of the denunciation itself and other materials based on it and made by the Security Service. Is an anonymous opinion on Smith expressed by a person who was convinced that Smith would never know its content more reliable than an official opinion on Smith expressed by a person who was aware of the fact that Smith may learn its content?37 It seems that it is impossible to provide general answers to this question. Understanding that Smith will not learn the content of the denunciation of him may affect the conveyance of both misleading information, gossip, and unverified hearsay and reliable information. On the other hand, the possibility of misleading the Security Service by the secret collaborators was limited. As a rule, in a given social environment the Security Service used more than one Security Serviceman. This enabled them to verify the reliability and utility of the information that the agents provided.

The Role of “Files” in the Political Enslavement Practice

Gerard Labuda says that a historical source is

…any psychophysical or social relic that, as a product of human labor and at the same time an object that participates in the development of social life, acquires through this participation the capacity to reflect that development. Because of these properties (i.e. being a product of labor and having the capacity to reflect phenomena), a source is a means of cognition that enables us scientifically to reconstruct social development in all its manifestations.38

Since, according to this concept, “sources are a result of the action of the entire historical process,”39 they should reflect all its fundamental elements, including economic, social, political, and cultural.40 A given historical source should reflect those aspects of the historical process that are the most actively involved in its creation “with particular distinctness.” According to the directive provided by Labuda, “in order to understand the role of a document, an analysis conducted with respect to the historical sphere that contributed to its creation is of fundamental significance.”41

Information collected by the Security Service was used for a certain type of social practice: the political enslavement and enforcement of social control over the whole society. Therefore, the process of recruiting personal sources of information and the collection and selection of knowledge obtained through these sources did not constitute the aim in and of itself. Rather, these processes were used to achieve a certain social practice: the control of individual social milieus. It is worth noting that the forms and methods of this control changed over time. In the early period of the People’s Republic of Poland, open forms of repression were used, including the liquidation of independent civic social environments, whereas in the late period of the People’s Republic of Poland other means were used, as described by Filip Musiał:

not repression, but manipulation, not arrests, but inspiration and disintegration were the fundamental weapons in the Security Service officers’ fight at the close of the People’s Republic of Poland. Therefore, with regards to the activities of the Security Service, a benchmark of success was not the liquidation of a given form or circle of opposition, but rather the acquisition of control over it, either in whole or in part, or the successful dismantling of it. In simple terms, it would be necessary to consider the change that took place in operations of the Security Service as consisting in a shift away from functioning as the “punishing arm” of the Party in the 1940s and 1950s and becoming a specific demiurge whose basic task was to hold all aces behind the scenes on the stage of the Polish opposition in the 1980s. One of the tools that allowed the Security Service to perform these acts was the logistic and informative advantage that resulted from the operation of the informant network. This perspective arises from an analysis of changes in the operational work: we will be able to examine the Security Service’s real effectiveness only on the basis of practical cases, games and combinations.42

It seems that the instructions of the Security Service’s operational work to which Filip Musiał refers were somehow delayed in recording the change that took place in the manner in which social life was controlled in the mid-1970s.43 The core criterion of the recruitment process of the secret collaborators, who operated in various social circles, was first and foremost the ability to exert effective control over them, and not to have broad knowledge of them.

Example 5: A work schedule for the 4th Section of the 3rd Department of the Regional Internal Affairs Office in Wrocław made a plan regarding personal sources of information recruitment consisting of recruiting two secret collaborators in the literary circle, one secret collaborator in the fine arts circle, two secret collaborators in the theatre circle, two secret collaborators in the music circle and two secret collaborators in the culture promotion circle. The section’s work schedule did not, however, stipulate the recruitment of secret collaborators in the Wrocław filmmakers’ circle because there were already as many as eight secret collaborators operating in that sphere, which justified the decision: “since the group of filmmakers and people dealing with the production and distribution of films is flooded with personal sources of information who sufficiently control this circle, new recruitments are not scheduled for this year.”44

As the operational documents of the Security Service demonstrate, there was nothing in which this organization was not interested. The assessments of works by Ryszard Krynicki, which were done, along with similar operations, as part of the “Renegat,” “Sosna” and “Lingwista” operating inquiries, offer telling examples.45

Example 6: Ryszard Krynicki’s political poetry from the early 1970s aroused drew the attention of the Security Service to the poet himself and hence it had to acquaint itself with his poems. In February 1973 the 3rd Department of the Regional Committee of the Civic Militia in Krakow, where Krynicki studied, decided to have an “operating talk” with the poet. In order to prepare for that talk, the Security Service officer who was in charge of the case asked the 3rd Department of the Regional Committee of the Civic Militia in Katowice (previously the poet had lived in the Katowice voivodeship) to describe the poet. The “Opinion,” dated 30 January, 1973 read as follows: “The local literary circle considers Ryszard Krynicki one of the best followers of the ‘poetic linguistic school, the spiritual father of which was Karpowicz, and this fact was, among other things, depicted in two books of poetry (Pęd pogoni, pęd ucieczki, published in 1968, and Akt Urodzenia, published in 1969. Thanks to these books, he was accepted as a member of the Polish Writers Association in June 1971 [...] However, Krynicki’s opinions can be determined primarily by his poems published in the “Odra” monthly, No 10/71, and the “Poezja” monthly, No 12/71, which can be read as anti-party and unmoral.46 The application for the operating talk held on 1 March, 1973 contains much stronger characteristics of Krynicki’s poetry, which “are mainly depicted in political poems that strike our reality in a anti-party and unmoral way. In March 1972, he wrote the poem ‘Podróź pośmiertna,’ a lampoon ridiculing the present reality, which he wanted to publish in the press.”47 The survey records concerning Krynicki include the following description of his poetry: “He writes poems that hostilely ridicule the present reality and alliance with the Soviet Union. Some of them, the poems, are published abroad, e.g. by the Poets’ and Painters’ Publishing House in London.”48

Further assessments of Krynicki’s works were made by Security Service officers from Poznań, to where he moved. The “Information on Ryszard Krynicki” addressed to the Chief of the 3rd Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, dated 28 February, 1974, specifies that poems by Krynicki are “imbued with hatred towards the system, the social and political relationships in the People’s Republic of Poland, and the party apparatus and the Ministry of Internal Affairs.”49 The “Notice on poet Ryszard Krynicki,” dated 12 March, 1974 states that the poet, “through his works protests, criticizes, expresses his pessimism, and negates all undeniable achievements of our reality.”50 These assessments are repeated and amplified in the “Notice on inspection of the ‘Renegat’ operating inquiry,” dated 30 September, 1974, which states that poems by Krynicki “are imbued with furious hatred towards the system, social and political relationships in the People’s Republic of Poland, the party apparatus, and the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Soviet Union.”51

It is noteworthy that expressions repeated in the first part of the opinion such as “can” and “can be read” may be interpreted as a sign of hesitation on the part of the Security Service officers regarding how to qualify the Krynicki case: opposition features in his poems are a display of poetical extravagance or an intentionally chosen political attitude. Further assessments of poems by Krynicki do not express these doubts, and the assessors accused the poet of being extremely hostile towards the system: showing “furious” hatred towards the system, the party, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and the Soviet Union.

Can these opinions be interesting and useful for a historian of Polish literature or a literary critic? No, or at most with qualifications. However, this is not because of the primitivism of the analyses (or at least this is not the key factor), but rather because of the established objective. In general, two types of interpretation are used in the humanities: historical and adaptive.52 Interpretations aim to establish the meaning of a literary work, which is usually regarded as the product of the intentional activity of the author of the work. If the interpretation reveals the purpose of the author of the piece of literature, then it pertains to the historical interpretation. In this case, we ask what the author had in mind (what he wished to achieve) when writing this poem and not another. In turn, when the interpreter attributes a specific meaning to the work based on the socio-cultural background of the author, i.e. his or her voice is interpreted as the expression of certain group interests and thus an expression of an objective adapted by a certain group, then this interpretation is called adaptive. Normally, this is the dividing line between the task of a historian of literature who does historical interpretation and that of a literary critic who performs adaptive interpretation.

If this division is applied, then the analysis on Krynicki’s poetry conducted by the Security Service would be rather similar to the adaptive interpretation.53 Their aim was not to seek aesthetical or axiological values of his poems, but to reply to the question as to whether and to what extent they constitute a threat to the system of the People’s Republic of Poland. The prepared plan for an operating talk included a question about the possible directions of Krynicki’s poems and their aims. During his interrogation, the poet replied to this question and said that he wrote love poetry, but his reply was not approved by a Security Service interlocutor because, as the officer stated, further analyses of his poetry did not follow that path. The Security Service’s analysis is useful in a reconstruction of the following: whether and to what extent Krynicki’s poetry represented a threat to the service’s control over social life in the People’s Republic of Poland. The analyses of poetry were only intended to meet this objective.

 

Conclusions: From the Source Optics to the Historian’s Optics: Methodological Remarks

As a result of the massive introduction of sources once produced by the apparatus of repression into scientific circulation following the establishment of the IPN, historians who had access to those sources were tempted to commit “seven deadly file sins” as described by Włodzimierz Suleja, director of the IPN, Wrocław Branch.54 The discovery and initial scientific circulation of sources which were hitherto unknown and which in principle allowed historians to challenge previous historiographical findings led to pride. Pride was accompanied by greed, expressed by the willingness to introduce “into scientific circulation newer and newer documents, miscellaneous documents, or articles without proper consideration of critical analysis or skills-based processing.”55 There was a certain gluttony in the handling of topics for which a historian is unprepared in terms of his or her skills. This sin was complemented by sloth, i.e. reluctance on the part of the historian to verify findings by consulting sources and the historiography. The formal findings were accompanied by wrath, expressed by giving moral evaluations that undermined the reliability of the findings. When these findings were not accepted by historians, this was met with envy: though wearing a prosecutor’s gown, the historian, subjected to scientific criticism, was forced to prove and still verify his or her findings. This is why, according to Włodzimierz Suleja, history became a field of science subjected to the sin of lust, “scientists take actions to meet political orders so as to use random and partial findings in the utilitarian and short-term power play.”56

It may be true that it is difficult to find a historian who had literally committed the aforementioned “deadly file sins,” but this does not mean that Włodzimierz Suleja’s description is completely groundless. If it is considered as an ideal type of the research attitude, this description more or less accurately summarizes the practice of the empirical historians. It is worth wondering what the origin of this practice is and whether it is an escalating phenomenon.

It seems that one of the reasons behind the commission of these deadly sins is the failure to adhere to the standard rules adopted in the interpretation of historical sources (internal and external criticism, establishment of a list of questions, the use of contextual knowledge, including historiographical findings, etc.). The failure to adhere to these rules in the use of these sources results in the uncritical acceptance of a mode of perceiving the social world as presented exactly by these sources: details concerning facts, the global interpretation of events and processes, the failure to contrast information included in these sources with information drawn from other types of sources and contextual knowledge.

These failures are neither necessarily inscribed in the sources gathered in the IPN nor are they the outcome of a lack of methodological rigor. The IPN’s archival records are not defective, whatever their opponents may claim. They are neither worse nor better than sources that have been collected in other archival records. Nor do they constitute a fundamentally new type of source that requires the profound rethinking of conventional classifications of sources. Their only novelty is that they must be understood in terms of their content because they shed light on the backstage of political power: the mechanisms with which the control and surveillance of society was maintained on a massive scale.

The transgressions specified by Włodzimierz Suleja, which have been committed by historians from and outside of the IPN, were intensified through the circulation of new content-based types of sources on a massive scale. First, heuristic rules of interpretation did not develop because as of yet they have been unable to do so. Second, this novelty effect led to the emergence of the erroneous belief according to which the introduction of the sources made by the apparatus of repression of the People’s Republic of Poland into circulation within the historiography is in and of itself enough to foment a historiographical revolution. In this respect, Sławomir Cenckiewicz’s statement from 2005 is characteristic, “in light of more and more unrestricted access to a new type of source, namely documents of the Security Service, most of the previous studies [about Solidarity – K.B.] (made before 2000) should be considered incomplete, insufficient, outdated or simply unreliable.”57

The revolution in historiography, however, is not only a result of the discovery of new types of sources, but needs also to be associated with new interpretations of these sources and a separate explanation of previously known historical facts. In addition, only a relevant accumulation of historiographical works stimulates methodological reflection on the mode of using the sources, construction of the historiographical narration and explanatory rules. The critical discussion between historians and researchers representing other fields of the sciences and having various theoretical opinions also plays an important role.58

One can find hope for the future in the growing number of works that were written over the course of the past ten years concerning criticism of the sources held by the Institute of National Remembrance,59 and to a lesser extent the methodological and theoretical reflections that have been raised.60 As Włodzimierz Suleja observes:

The security services’ materials are specific sources that yield exceptionally little when processed on a critical and analytical basis. To read this symbolic file, it is not enough only to have standard equipment without essential knowledge of the government structure, its people, directions and techniques of operational actions. It is true that as a rule the Security Service did not forge its documents. This however does not mean that the information included in these documents is the truest truth. But if the researcher, irrespective of his or her field of expertise or experience, does not have any knowledge of the present objectives of the ministry (these objectives have changed) or the system of values professed in this environment (real, not declared, even during meeting of the POP), if he or she does not break this hermetic language code, this specific kind of the Security Service newspeak, then the researcher will fail.61

 

Archival Sources

AIPN = Biuro Udostępniania i Archiwizacji Dokumentów Instytutu Pamięci Narodowej [Archives of the Institute of National Remembrance], Poznan.

AIPN Po 06/215/14/1, 8. Informacja dot.[ycząca] aktualnej sytuacji operacyjno-politycznej [Information on the Present Operational-Political Situation].

AIPN Po 08/923,115. Informacja dotycząca Ryszarda Krynickiego [Information on Ryszard Krynicki].

AIPN Po 060/44/55, vol. 85, 110. Informacja nr 61/58, 17 IX 1958 [Information no. 61/58, 17 IX 1958].

AIPN Po 08/923, 200. Kwestionariusz ewidencyjny [The Survey Record].

AIPN Po 08/923, 194. Notatka dotycząca literata Krynickiego Ryszarda [Notice on Poet Ryszard Krynicki].

AIPN Po 08/923, 271. Notatka z kontroli operacyjnego rozpracowania kryptonim „Renegat”, 30 IX 1974 [Notice on the Inspection of the Renegat Operating Inquiry, 30 IX 1974].

AIPN Po 08/923, 227. Wniosek o przeprowadzenie rozmowy operacyjnej z obywatelem Krynickim Ryszardem, 24 II 1973 [The Application for the Operation Talk with Citizen, Ryszard Krynicki, February 24, 1973].

AIPN Po 08/923, 212. Opinia [Opinion].

Biuro Udostępniania i Archiwizacji Dokumentów Instytutu Pamięci Narodowej [Archives of the Institute of National Remembrance], Wroclaw.

AIPN Wr, 054/960, vol. 8, 58–79, mps. Plan pracy Sekcji IV Wydziału III WUSW we Wrocławiu [The Action Plan of the 4th Section of 3rd Department of the Provincial Internal Affairs Office in Wrocław in 1989].

Biuro Udostępniania i Archiwizacji Dokumentów Instytutu Pamięci Narodowej [Archives of the Institute of National Remembrance], Central, Warsaw.

AIPN, BU 1585/2301, 48. Ważniejsze wydarzenia z udziałem funkcjonariuszy MO. Załącznik do informacji dziennej, 1989-01-05 [More Important Events with Participation of the Civic Militia Officers: An Appendix to Daily Information 1989-01-05].

AIPN, BU 185n/16, 97. Informacja sytuacyjna [The Situational Information].

AIPN, BU 1585/2301, 47. Oceny powołania Komitetu Obywatelskiego przy Lechu Wałęsie. Załącznik do informacji dziennej. Załącznik do informacji dziennej 1989-01-05 [Assessments of Establishing the Citizens’ Committee with Lech Wałęsa. An Appendix to Daily Information 1989-01-05].

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