1241-1526 1683-1790






Slovakia 1526-1683



In 1526 the Hungarian army suffered a disastrous defeat at the hand of the Ottomans in the Battle of Mohacs. King Louis of Hungary fell in battle, and years of struggle over succession were ended in the peace of 1541 which foresaw the partition of Hunhary in the larger Ottoman core, Royal Hungary under the Habsburgs, in the west and north, and the Principality of Transylvania in the east. Most of Slovakia lay within Royal Hungary.
Internal war and the partition of Hungary not only had caused damage, but triggered internal migration (i.e. within the Kingdom of Hungary); the territory of Slovakia experienced an influx of Hungarian and Croat refugees. The Hungarian diet moved to Bratislava (Pozsony, Pressburg). As many Hungarian nobles had fled their estates, they required new bases of revenue - which were acquired by increasing the economic burden of the (mainly Slovak) peasantry. Among novel privileges of the nobility was the monopoly on the sales of alcoholic beverages (beer, wine) which came with a required level of consumption on the side of the peasants (Kovac p.13). Slovakian cities sich as Bratislava and Kosice became trilingual, Hungarian being added to the traditional languages of German and Slovakian. The Archbishop from Esztergom and his cathedral chapter moved to Trnava in Slovakia in 1543.
In this tumultuous period, the Lutheran Reformation reached Slovakia, first establishing a foothold among the German communities in the mining cities. Many nobles (mostly ethnic Hungarians) also favoured the Lutheran Reformation, because it provided them wirh the opportunity to appropriate church land and thus provide them with desparately needed revenue.
In the years immediately following the German Peasants War, Moravia was a haven for refugee Anabaptist communities. In 1535, persecution of Anabaptists began there, and some groups of Anabaptists moved across the border into Slovakia, where they established isolated communities. Later, a number of communities converted to Calvinism.
Following the Council of Trent, the Jesuits came into the country and established themselves at Trnava (1561), where they ran a school and, in 1577, opened a printing shop. The Jesuits pressurized the protestant communities to such an extent that some protestants fled into Transylvania or Ottoman Hungary. From 1592 to 1606, Habsburg Austria and the Ottoman Empire were at war; in 1604 the nobility in Royal Hungary, lead by Transylvanian Prince Stephen Bocskay, rebelled against a combination of Habsburg and Jesuit repression. The peace treaty of 1606 included guarantees for religious toleration in Royal Hungary and the (Hungarian) indigenate. Calvinist synods were held for western Slovakia in 1610, for eastern Slovakia in 1614.
In 1618 Bethlen Gabor, Prince of Transylvania, headed a revolt of Hungarian nobles against Habsburg rule and took temporary control of Royal Hungary, which included modern Slovakia. After the Bohemian Nobles' Republic was defeated, the conspirators against the house of Habsburg were sentenced and executed, and the Counterreformation introduced in Bohemia and Moravia. Numerous political and refugees fled the country, many of them taking up residence in Slovakia.
The 30 Years War affected Slovakia, as in 1626, Wallenstein and his Imperial army defeated Mansfeld and pursued him through Silesia and Slovakia to the fortress of Neuhäusel (Nove Zamky), where he was to link up with Bethlen Gabor. Slovakia also suffered from Turkish and Swedish incursions. In 1643, Prince George Rakoczi of Transylvania, as Swedish ally, lead his army through Transylvania to Austria proper. In 1647, the Habsburgs ceded lands in eastern Slovakia to Transylvania.
During the 30 Years' War, in 1635, the Jesuit college at Trnava was elevated to the rank of university, the only one in Hungary at that time.
A brief Habsburg-Ottoman War 1663-1664 brought few border changes, among them the Ottoman conquest of the border fortress of Nove Zamky (Neuhäusel). The Hungarian nobility sensed lack of determination on the Habsburg side to pursue territorial gain or military victory; an anti-Habsburg plot was uncovered and the conspirators executed (1671). The nobles were supported by anti-Habsburg sentiment among the Slovak peasantry, which had suffered much from Turkish raids. In 1671 Habsburg forces prevailed, and another effort was made to implement the Counterreformation. Political-religious repression caused the emergance of the Kuruc (crusader) resistance movement (1672). In 1678/1679, lead by Imre Thököly, the Kuruc Rebellion broke out full scale; he quickly established control over eastern and central Upper Hungary (Slovakia). He achieved a number of concessions from Vienna, among them religious toleration. Yet the relation between the rebellious Hungarian nobles and the Habsburg Dynasty lacked mutual trust; Thököly called on the Ottoman Empire for protection, and thus an Ottoman army laid siege to Vienna (1683).






EXTERNAL
LINKS 		Slovakian History, from Slovakia.org
History of Bratislava, from Bratislava Region
History of Kosice, from Kosice Region; from Kosice.sk
History of Trnava, from : City of Trnava
DOCUMENTS
REFERENCE Peter A. Toma, Dusan Kovac, Slovakia - from Samo to Dzurinda, Stanford : Hoover Institution Press 2001


This page is part of World History at KMLA
First posted on September 8th 2003, last revised on November 11th 2004

Click here to go Home
Click here to go to Information about KMLA, WHKMLA, the author and webmaster
Click here to go to Statistics