Balkan Wars

Balkan Wars

Habsburg Croatia, Ottoman Bosnia, and

Venetian Dalmatia, 1499–1617

James D. Tracy

ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD

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Names: Tracy, James D.
Title: Balkan wars : Habsburg Croatia, Ottoman Bosnia, and Venetian Dalmatia,
1499–1617 / James D. Tracy.
Description: Lanham : Rowman & Littlefield, 2016. | Includes bibliographical references
and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016004970 (print) | LCCN 2016022198 (ebook) | ISBN
9781442213586 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781442213609 (electronic)
Subjects: LCSH: Balkan Peninsula—History—16th century. | Croatia—History—
1527–1918. | Bosnia and Herzegovina—History—1463–1878. | Turkey—History—
Ottoman Empire, 1288–1918. | Borderlands—Europe—History—16th century.
Classification: LCC DR41 .T73 2016 (print) | LCC DR41 (ebook) | DDC 949.6/03—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016004970

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 Contents

Maps vii
Introduction 1
Prologue: Ottoman Expansion in the Balkans, 1453–1499 29

1 Hungary and Venice Defeated, 1499–1526 51

2 The Ottoman Advantage: Advances in Slavonia, Croatia, and
Dalmatia, 1527–1541 91
3 Diplomacy and Kleinkrieg, 1542–1556 145
4 War by Consultation vs. War by Command, 1556–1576 197
5 War in a Time of Peace, 1576–1593 247
6 Two Wars and Three Borders, 1593–1618 307

Conclusion 367
Glossary 385
Bibliography 413
Index 437

v
 Maps

Europe South of the Carpathians, Topography 4

Europe South of the Carpathians, ca. 1480 34
Akinci Attacks from Bosnia, Fifteenth Century 37
Hungary and Croatia under Matthias Corvinus 65
Croatia under Ottoman Pressure, ca. 1525–1550 98
The Contado of Zadar in the Sixteenth Century 211
Hungary Divided in Three Parts, ca. 1570 218
The Six Sectors of the Hapsburg Monarchy’s
Ottoman Frontier 274
Europe South of the Carpathians, ca. 1590 324

vii
 Introduction

This book describes a long-term clash between the Habsburg Monarchy and
the Ottoman Empire. From 1527 until 1699, the two mega-states were separ-
ated by a six-hundred-mile war frontier running from the Adriatic north
through Croatia and Hungary and as far east as what is now Ukraine. The
need for such an account is suggested by the fact that recent scholarship has
tended to look away from the actual conflict between Habsburgs and Otto-
mans in the Early Modern era. 1 Recent books that do deal with the fighting
have focused on the later phase of the conflict, which began with the Otto-
man siege of Vienna in 1683. 2 Here, the focus is on the first phase of the
struggle, culminating in the 1606 Peace of Zsitvatorok. Geographically, the
focus is on the southern or Croatian sector of the frontier, in the western
Balkans. In this region, the Habsburg province of Croatia faced off against
the Ottoman province of Bosnia. Understanding their confrontation will re-
quire bringing in a third party, because the history of both Bosnia and Croatia
was deeply entwined with that of their neighbor to the south, the Venetian
province of Dalmatia.
The story has to begin earlier than 1527, because the Hungarian-Croatian
monarchy that had held off the Ottomans for two generations was beginning
to weaken by about 1500. Its successor, the Austrian Habsburg Monarchy,
inherited what was left of Hungary and Croatia after a great Ottoman victory
in 1526 and was thenceforth central Europe’s bulwark against Ottoman and
Islamic power. After repeated Ottoman victories, the Habsburg government
and its Austrian provinces finally established, from the 1570s, a stable mili-
tary frontier in what remained of Croatia. Even if there was no winner in the

1
2 Introduction

Long Turkish War of 1593–1606, the Habsburgs demonstrated a military

capacity that was roughly equal to that of the Ottomans.
The Habsburg-Ottoman frontier was also the boundary between (Latin)
Christendom and Islamdom. 3 Are we to understand the Habsburg-Ottoman
conflict as a clash of civilizations? Most scholars would say no. In a book
published in 1996, Samuel Huntington, a political scientist, envisioned con-
flicts of the post–Cold War era as occurring along civilizational “fault lines”
reaching deep into the past. In particular, he foresaw a coming “clash of
civilizations” between the West and the Muslim East. 4 In the ensuing debate,
Huntington found little support among political scientists and historians.
The present study swims against the current by making an argument
similar to Huntington’s: the Habsburg-Ottoman struggle was at the same
time a confrontation between two fundamentally different systems of govern-
ment. As will be seen from the chapters that follow, the Sublime Porte
regulated its military affairs by decree; though soldiers at remote posts might
not always obey, a provincial governor or fortress captain who disobeyed
orders would lose his post if not his head. By contrast, Vienna presided over
a composite state in which the sovereign shared authority with the elites of
his kingdoms and provinces. National diets and provincial estates not only
authorized and collected taxes for the dynasty, but they also pursued local
agendas in allotting funds for the defense of the frontier. Not surprisingly, the
result was a lack of coordination that often made for a painful contrast with
the coherent strategy that Ottoman commanders pursued on orders from
above. On the other hand, once the Habsburg princes were finally able to
rally their provinces behind a common plan, the composite Habsburg Monar-
chy showed a capacity to mobilize the resources of the state that was argu-
ably superior to what Ottoman centralization had achieved.
Did a clash between two fundamentally different systems of government
amount to a clash of civilizations? Not necessarily, because a civilization is
broader and more diffuse than its prevailing form of government. 5 A civiliza-
tion may also continue under a very different form of government; Alexander
the Great and his successors imposed monarchical rule on city-states long
accustomed to a quarreling autonomy, but they did not bring Greek civiliza-
tion to an end. The Habsburg Monarchy itself was more centralizing in the
seventeenth century (and thus more comparable to the Ottoman state) than it
was in the sixteenth century. 6
A prevailing religion is perhaps the fullest expression of a civilization, yet
civilizations can also change religions. In the centuries before the Common
 Introduction 3

Era, Indic civilization became Buddhist, and missionaries from India spread
the Buddha’s teachings to China and Southeast Asia. But after the emergence
of classical Hinduism roughly five centuries later, Buddhism gradually van-
ished from the subcontinent. 7 In sixteenth-century Europe, religion was not
so clear a marker of civilization as one might imagine. Under the Catholic
Habsburgs, many regions had a Protestant majority, and the aristocrats who
held command along the frontier were usually Lutheran or Calvinist. In the
Ottoman sultan’s European provinces, most of his subjects were Orthodox
Christians, not Muslims. One might note as well that Habsburgs, Venetians,
and Ottomans all competed to recruit the Orthodox Vlachs, who made good
soldier-colonists. 8 In my opinion there is nonetheless a case to be made for
the idea of a clash of civilizations during this period. 9 But this larger issue is
not (again, in my view) integral to the descriptive account given here and will
thus not be taken up for discussion.
The balance of this chapter outlines the argument of the book. It then
briefly describes the three mega-states that will be of interest here—the Otto-
man Empire, Venice’s commercial empire, and the Habsburg Monarchy—
and, likewise, the three provinces: Ottoman Bosnia, Venetian Dalmatia, and
the Croatia that became a Habsburg territory in 1527.

THE ARGUMENT OF THE BOOK

In the western Balkans, three adjoining provinces were each subject to the
authority of a distant capital. From 1463, Bosnia was ruled by the Ottoman
sultan in Istanbul. Dalmatia—that is, the coastal sector of the modern Croa-
tian province of that name—was from about 1440 controlled by the Republic
of Venice. Croatia, a part of the crown of Hungary since 1102, answered to
the king in Buda until 1526, and thereafter to the Habsburg sovereign of the
Austrian lands, who was king of Hungary from 1527 and Holy Roman Em-
peror from 1558. Despite conflicts among their governments, the three prov-
inces shared a common history.
From time immemorial, the Dalmatian coastline and its mountainous hin-
terland were linked by trade: horse caravans took Balkan minerals and other
raw materials down to the sea and brought back Mediterranean sea salt as
well as cloth and other manufactured goods from Italy. After 1463, Bosnian
silver was destined for the sultan’s mints, not for markets in Italy. But the
Republic of Dubrovnik (Ragusa), an Ottoman tributary from 1438, took up
the slack by creating trading colonies throughout the sultan’s European prov-
4 Introduction

inces. 10 In Dalmatia, salt still paid for goods brought down from the moun-
tains, although Venice’s state monopoly commandeered most of the local
production for customers in Italy. 11 In Croatia and Bosnia, even in time of
war, merchants regularly visited fairs on both sides of the border.
Language was another common denominator. Around 1500, evidence for
national identities in a modern sense is scant. While inhabitants of southern
Croatia often called themselves Croats, northern Croatia was known as Sla-
vonia, and people called themselves Slavonians, not Croats. 12 Yet, political
boundaries notwithstanding, most people of the region spoke different di-
alects of the South-Slavic language family, ancestral to modern Serbian,
Croatian, and Bosnian. Social customs too did not change as one crossed
state boundaries. The zadruga system, in which an extended family collabo-
rated in tilling their fields, was found throughout the region. 13 Religion was a
more divisive source of identity, but back-and-forth conversions between
Christianity and Islam—and between Catholicism and Orthodoxy—were not
uncommon. Families did not break ties with kinfolk who followed a different
“law.”

Europe South of the Carpathians, Topography

 Introduction 5

In the sixteenth century, what these provinces shared more than anything
was the experience of war. Almost every year there was fighting or raiding
back and forth between Bosnia and Croatia. Croatian forces did their best to
wreak havoc in Bosnia, but the resources of the sultan’s empire were vastly
superior, and his troops were better disciplined; it was thus the Bosnians who
steadily advanced until about 1580. By then, the Ottomans controlled two-
thirds of Croatia, and Habsburg rule was confined to a western rump of the
territory. 14 Venice and the Ottomans were usually at peace, but they nonethe-
less fought three wars during the sixteenth century, and even in peacetime the
Dalmatian countryside was harassed by raiders from Ottoman Bosnia or
Herzegovina. War-related manpower shortages provided another common
thread. Vlach herdsmen from the Velebit Mountains (along Bosnia’s south-
ern border) moved in on land vacated by the fighting, with official encour-
agement or on their own initiative. 15
The story of three kindred provinces caught up in wider struggles be-
tween their respective governments calls for comparative treatment. Readers
from what was once Yugoslavia will be familiar with comparative histories,
perhaps too familiar. Under a communist government that subscribed to an
ideology of “Yugoslavism”—meaning a common South-Slavic identity that
transcended local loyalties—history textbooks had separate sections on the
economic, social, political, and cultural history of each of the six provinces. 16
More promisingly, scholars from the now independent nations have begun to
pool their efforts for a joint study of the “triple border” between Ottoman,
Austrian, and Venetian dominions. To date, work has focused on cross-
border contacts that flourished in the eighteenth century once the Treaty of
Passarowitz/Požarevac (1718) ushered in a lasting peace among the three
imperial governments. 17 The turbulent sixteenth century is perhaps more
resistant to such an approach, but there is now a good joint history of early
modern Bosnia and Croatia to show the way. 18
Sanjay Subrahmanyam has suggested that historians should work toward
“connected history”—a joint study of regions that had different political and/
or religious affiliations but nonetheless shared in wider “conjunctural move-
ments.” 19 If connected history means giving a rounded account of all aspects
of life, this study falls short, because it leaves economic and cultural history
to the side while concentrating on military and political history. But in this
case a political and military history of the three provinces seems complicated
enough for one book. To get this story right, one must follow internal devel-
opments in each province while also taking account of the fact that its leaders
6 Introduction

took orders from different metropolitan capitals. Keeping track of policy

making and execution in each empire 20 may try the patience of readers. But it
is the only path to a “connected” military/political history of a region where
outposts of three mega-states jostled one another.
The distinctive feature of this book will thus be an attempt to link events
in the provinces to decisions made in distant capitals. In slightly different
terms, the focus will be on the local ramifications of efforts by two very
different European Christian states to contain the seemingly irresistible impe-
tus of Ottoman power, advancing from Bosnia. In Habsburg Croatia, decades
of military defeat, accompanied and partly caused by dispiriting internal
squabbles, were at last succeeded by the establishment of a stable military
frontier. The critical change came when German-speaking nobles who con-
trolled the estates of neighboring Austrian duchies agreed to arrangements by
which needed money and manpower were supplied to key fortresses in Croa-
tia. In Dalmatia, the Venetian government made concessions in order to
preserve what was essential. Since the Adriatic sea-lanes were vital to Vene-
tian trade in the Ottoman lands of the eastern Mediterranean, Dalmatia’s
ports had to be protected with state-of-the-art fortifications. The rural hinter-
land of these cities, not of great importance to Venice, was ceded to the
Ottomans bit by bit. This background helps explain why Croatian adventur-
ers known as uskoks, raiding into Ottoman territory, were often welcomed by
Dalmatian peasants whose lands they crossed, to the great annoyance of the
Venetian and Ottoman governments. Meanwhile, Bosnia’s campaigns of
conquest, waged with great success for many decades, ran up against two
problems after about 1580: a firmer line of defense in Croatia and a home
government in Istanbul that was, for the first time, concerned about high
expenditures. The solution was to change Bosnia’s role in the Ottoman sys-
tem; around 1600, it ceased to be a platform for conquest and became a major
conduit for Venice’s trade with the Ottoman capital.
In terms of power and prestige, each mega-state followed a different
trajectory. Venice had been a great power in 1500, but after losses of territory
both in Italy and its overseas dominions, it was from about 1540 a secondary
power, facing an Ottoman Empire that controlled all the Mediterranean out-
lets of Venice’s trade with Asia. Hence those Venetians who hoped to see the
republic join other Catholic powers in a war against the infidel never made
headway in local politics, except when the Ottomans directly attacked Vene-
tian possessions. The Ottoman Empire, having reached a high point under
Sultan Suleyman the Lawgiver (r. 1520–1566), encountered new problems in
 Introduction 7

the final decades of the sixteenth century. The sultan’s incomes, still large
enough to dwarf those of any European monarch, no longer sufficed for
every contingency. Shi’ite Iran offered stiffer resistance from the east, as did
the Habsburgs from the west. Finally, the weakness of the Habsburg Monar-
chy was clear from a 1547 treaty that obliged Vienna to pay an annual tribute
to the Ottoman sultan. A first turning point came in 1555, when the Peace of
Augsburg, granting parity to Lutheran princes in the Holy Roman Empire,
opened the purse strings of the imperial diet. A second came in the 1570s,
when delegates from the hereditary provinces met with Habsburg officials to
produce a seven-hundred-page defensive plan that was more or less carried
out in subsequent years. By 1606, the Habsburgs achieved a position of both
diplomatic and strategic parity with the Ottoman Empire.
In the end, not one but two Christian states played a role in halting the
Ottoman advance in the western Balkans: Venice by holding its Dalmatian
bridgehead in the Adriatic, the Habsburgs by establishing a defensible fron-
tier in Croatia and Hungary. They did so not as partners in a campaign
against the infidel, but separately, each acting in its own interest. In fact,
Venice and the Habsburg dynasty were rivals and potential foes. Following a
long war against Venice under Emperor Maximilian I (d. 1519), Habsburg
policy in Italy was guided from Spain by Emperor Charles V (r. 1520–1556),
who was no friend of Venice. Under Ferdinand I (r. 1556–1564) and his
successors, Veneto-Austrian relations steadily deteriorated, in part because
of the uskok problem. During the second half of the sixteenth century, there
was only one occasion when Spain and Venice overcame their mutual hostil-
ity to join forces against the Ottomans. On this occasion, Vienna, fearful of
provoking the sultan, held back from the fray. 21

THREE MEGA-STATES

The Ottoman Empire

In 1071, the eastern boundaries of the East Roman or Byzantine Empire,

under pressure from Turkish warrior states, collapsed in the wake of a catas-
trophic defeat. The Seljuk Turks, known as sultans of Rum, 22 controlled most
of Asia Minor for the next two centuries. Toward the end of this period, in
northwestern Asia Minor, a certain Osman became chief of his tribal federa-
tion in 1281. By the time of his death in 1326, he was honored as the first
sultan of a new dynasty, the Osmans or Ottomans. 23 In 1354, taking advan-
8 Introduction

tage of warfare between rival claimants for the Byzantine throne, the Otto-
mans established a beachhead in Europe, across the Dardanelles. Edirne
(ancient Adrianople), taken in 1361, became the Ottoman capital. Most of
Serbia came under Ottoman rule after the battle of Kosovo Polje in 1389, as
did Bulgaria in 1396. Though Constantinople remained as yet beyond their
reach, the military power of the Ottomans already had no equal in the re-
gion. 24
The sultans governed their growing empire through a council or divan,
which normally met in the council chamber of the palace. The divan included
three chief ministers or vezirs, 25 two chief judges, a treasurer, and a chancel-
lor. The two supreme commanders, one beglerbeg for Anatolia and another
for Rumelia (the European provinces), might also participate. In the sultan’s
absence, the grand vezir presided. The fullest European accounts are from the
sixteenth century, when Istanbul was the capital. In these descriptions, the
divan had at its beck and call cadres of lesser officials, ready to execute
payment orders or dispatch messengers to distant points. The seat of govern-
ment is always referred to as the Sublime Porte, from the impressive gateway
to the second courtyard of the imperial palace in Istanbul, where both the
council chamber and the reception room for foreign ambassadors were locat-
ed. 26
That the Ottoman Empire of the fifteenth century had what one may call a
grand strategy is by no means clear 27; the early sultans seem mainly to have
responded to opportunities for expansion as they arose, whether in Anatolia
or in Europe. What the empire did undoubtedly have was an administrative
system that was responsive to orders from the central government and well
designed for military mobilization. Provinces or sancaks, formed as the em-
pire expanded, were usually coterminous with and named after territories
formerly ruled by now-conquered princes. 28 Each sancak was governed by a
sancakbeg appointed by the sultan and subject to dismissal at his will. San-
cakbegs were seldom natives of the territories they ruled and could expect to
be transferred after two or three years. By comparison with the proud aristo-
crats who served as provincial governors in Europe, 29 sancakbegs were more
likely to follow orders. 30 A sancakbeg was answerable for what happened on
his watch, but he did not directly control the civil officials serving under him.
Judges (kadis), treasurers (defterdars), and customs officials (emins) were,
like the sancakbeg himself, appointed and sent by the Porte. The sancakbeg’s
primary duties were military; he appointed the commanders of local military
districts, for which the term in Rumelia was vojvod. In frontier provinces, in
 Introduction 9

Europe, or along the borders of Shi’ite Iran, 31 sancakbegs commanded size-

able military establishments composed of three elements: units of the elite
Janissary infantry, sipahi cavalry supported by timars (allotments of peasant
land rents), and unpaid irregulars who lived from the proceeds of their
raids. 32 From around 1400, sancaks were grouped into larger territories
known as eyalets or paşaluks under a governor-general, a paşa or beglerbeg.
Initially there were only two, for Anatolia and Rumelia, but as the empire
expanded, many more paşaluks were organized. 33

The Venetian Republic

Along with Genoa, Venice took the lead in Italy’s commercial expansion into
the eastern Mediterranean, a process that was accelerated by the Crusades.
Since Venice was a main sponsor of the Crusade that ended with the over-
throw of the Byzantine Empire in 1204, 34 rival Genoa was favored by the
restored Byzantine Empire after 1261. 35 The Genoese were thus able to
establish colonies all along the coast of the Black Sea, which was at that time
the principal terminus for East–West trade. 36 Venice retained a string of
naval bases to support its Mediterranean operations—including the islands of
Corfu and Crete and the ports of Methoni (Modon) and Koroni (Coron) at the
southern tip of the Peloponnesus. For access to spices and silks from the
East, Venice cultivated ties to the Cairo-based Mamluk sultans, who con-
trolled traffic through the Red Sea. Over time, this maritime route supplanted
the route across the steppes as the main conduit for goods from Asia. Espe-
cially after their acquisition of Cyprus in 1489, Venice became Europe’s
principal supplier for spices and silks. 37 At this time, however, Venice’s
commercial hegemony in the eastern Mediterranean faced two different
threats: the Ottomans began building a war fleet, and Portuguese mariners
reached India. 38
In its governing arrangements, Venice maintained a stability that was
unique among the city-states of northern Italy. Historians have poked holes
in a cherished Venetian myth—namely, that La Serenissima Republica em-
bodied in its institutions a formula for overcoming the causes of political
strife. It is nonetheless remarkable that there was, over many centuries, noth-
ing comparable to a revolution in a city that maintained rigid distinctions
among its people: a patrician elite eligible for office, a citizen class whose
members were eligible only for appointive posts, and a much larger popula-
tion of mere inhabitants. 39 The doge was elected for life, but by the four-
teenth century he was more a presiding officer than a monarch. In theory, the
10 Introduction

republic was ruled by a Grand Council open to all men of patrician rank over
the age of twenty-five, of whom there were, by 1550, about 2,500. In prac-
tice, important questions were decided by the Senate, a smaller body chosen
from the Grand Council. Executive authority rested with a Collegio, which
included the doge and his six councilors, the three heads of the criminal
court, and sixteen “sages” drawn from administrative bodies with authority
in particular spheres. Collectively, the government was known as the Signor-
ia (the lordship).
During the first half of the fifteenth century, in the course of wars against
the duchy of Milan, Venice significantly expanded its dominion in the rich
and populous Lombard plain (Terraferma). 40 In all of the republic’s posses-
sions, in Italy or overseas, the Signoria sought to govern in such a way as to
cultivate the loyalty of subjects. The Collegio handled overall policy for all
the territories, and for difficult questions it sought advice from the Senate or
from the Council of Ten, a body that specialized in matters of security. The
Venetian strategy of empire was to preserve existing institutions as far as
possible. Rectors, chosen from among Venice’s patricians, built a clientele
among patricians of their appointed cities. More important, they kept the
populace content by curbing the hated privileges of local patricians. But
Venice’s Italian neighbors grew jealous of her success. 41 Statesmen in Flor-
ence, Milan, and Rome suspected that San Marco’s calculating merchants
were pursuing a plan for hegemony in the peninsula. 42 Once France invaded
the kingdom of Naples in 1494, drawing the envy of crowned heads in Spain
and Germany, the battle for the Po watershed became a European struggle.

The Habsburg Monarchy and the Kingdom of Hungary

In the sixteenth century, the Habsburgs seemed to bestride Europe like a

colossus. Charles V (d. 1558) was Holy Roman Emperor, king of Castile and
Aragon, king of Naples and Sicily, and archduke of the rich and populous
Low Countries provinces. His brother Ferdinand (d. 1564), Archduke of
Austria, succeeded Charles as Holy Roman Emperor. Seventy years earlier,
in the time of their great-grandfather, Archduke Frederick III of Austria (d.
1493), no one could have imagined such a future for the dynasty. Fifteenth-
century Austria included six separate duchies, five of which were ruled from
1439 by Archduke Frederick III. Upper Austria and Lower Austria, his
wealthiest and most populous lands, 43 lay along the Danube. His court re-
sided in Vienna, in Lower Austria, the largest city of the realm. To the south,
Carinthia (Klagenfurt) and Styria (Graz) occupied the western chains of the
 Introduction 11

Alps. Still farther south, Carniola (Ljubljana) extended eastward to the Karst
plateau and the Dolomites. These three “Inner Austrian” duchies also formed
part of the Danube watershed. Two major tributaries, the Sava and the Drava,
flowed west through Carinthia and Carniola. Graz lay on the Mur, a tributary
of the Drava. The sixth duchy was Tirol, rich in silver and copper and
endowed with a strong local administration; in 1490, Frederick III inherited
Tirol from a cousin. 44
In each Land or duchy, the chief civil administrator, the Landeshaupt-
mann, was elected by the estates and confirmed by Frederick III. Only the
archduke had the right to convene a meeting of each territory’s estates, but he
could not infringe on the long-standing privileges of the nobles and the
higher clergy who dominated these assemblies—notably their exemption
from taxation. 45 He could not find lenders for large loans unless the estates
agreed to serve as guarantors, 46 and he also needed the consent of the estates
to levy taxes on his non-privileged subjects, the peasantry. The estates shared
in the administration of justice and finance, and in their view the archduke
ruled by their consent, not just by hereditary right. 47 Military organization
reflected a similar sharing of authority. As a result of invasions from Hun-
gary and Bohemia during the first half of the fifteenth century, each duchy
had procedures for calling out a peasant militia: when so ordered by the
estates, parish priests would see to it that every ten men maintained one of
their number as a foot soldier. To supplement the traditional feudal levy with
mercenary cavalry, nobles were to maintain one mounted man for every
hundred pounds of annual income. According to estimates from 1518, this
system could in theory support 700 cavalry from Styria, 280 from Carniola,
and 140 from Carinthia. The prince himself was to maintain a further 300
cavalry for Styria and 100 each for Carinthia and Carniola. 48 Had command-
ers for the archduke and for the separate duchies raised their quotas of men
quickly and perfectly coordinated their efforts, they could have confronted
invaders with 1,500 cavalry and a larger number of infantry. In fact, Inner-
Austrian forces almost never arrived in time. 49
From 1440 Frederick III was also King of the Romans, and he was Holy
Roman Emperor from 1452. 50 Notwithstanding significant incursions into
Austrian territory by Ottoman raiders during his reign, 51 Frederick III’s main
foe was Hungary. The medieval kingdom of Hungary encompassed not just
present-day Hungary, but present-day Slovakia and Croatia as well, and large
parts of present-day Serbia and Romania. In the fifteenth century, the Crown
of St. Stephen changed hands several times owing to failures of dynastic
12 Introduction

succession. Sigismund of Luxemburg (d. 1437) had been king of Bohemia by

hereditary right, 52 king of Hungary by right of his wife, 53 and, by right of
election, King of the Romans and then Holy Roman Emperor 54 from 1414. 55
Having no son, Sigismund designated as his successor in Hungary and Bohe-
mia his son-in-law, Albert of Habsburg, 56 Archduke of Austria. Albert’s
brief enjoyment of his father-in-law’s titles 57 was cut short by death in 1439.
In theory, the crowns of Hungary and Bohemia should have devolved to
Albert’s infant son, Ladislas Posthumous. But Hungary’s estates balked at an
infant king. Instead, they elected Wladislas Jagiello, who was already king of
Poland-Lithuania and Bohemia and who now controlled most of Hungary
until his death in 1444. Meanwhile, Albert’s distant cousin, Archduke Frede-
rick III of Austria, was elected King of the Romans in 1440. As the guardian
of young Ladislas Posthumous, he contested the authority of John Hunyadi,
the military man chosen by Hungary’s estates as regent for Ladislas. While
Frederick was in Rome for his imperial coronation in 1452, a rebellion in his
Austrian lands forced him to release the young prince from his custody.
Ladislas was then recognized as king in Hungary and Bohemia until his
death in 1457. But Frederick had never recognized Ladislas as king, and he
kept the Crown of St. Stephen in his possession. Hunyadi’s son Matthias
Corvinus, elected as king by Hungary’s estates, was thus a natural enemy of
Austria. In 1463, in the wake of the Ottoman conquest of Bosnia, both rulers
were persuaded by a papal legate to accept a treaty whereby Frederick
handed over the Crown of St. Stephen and Corvinus promised to name a
Habsburg prince as his successor in Hungary. Still, Frederick did not recog-
nize Corvinus as king of Hungary. In 1471, when the throne of Bohemia
became vacant, neither of the two rivals chose to press his claim. The war for
Hungary began a few years later (1477–1488). Making good use of Hun-
gary’s military superiority, Corvinus occupied Styria in 1479 and Lower
Austria in 1485. Emperor Frederick III (d. 1493) spent his final years travel-
ing the roads of his empire in search of support, riding between towns in an
oxcart. 58

THREE PROVINCES

Bosnia

Apart from the conquest of Constantinople in 1453, 59 the kingdom of Bosnia,

conquered in 1463, was arguably the Ottoman Empire’s most important ac-
 Introduction 13

quisition in the fifteenth century. 60 Bosnia was a bit exceptional among Otto-
man provinces in that its sancakbegs tended to serve long terms in office, and
many of them were natives. 61 Along with other sancaks carved out of the
former kingdom of Bosnia, 62 the sancak of Bosnia was also unusual in that it
saw massive conversions to Islam during the sixteenth century. 63 One still
encounters the idea that converts came from the Bosnian Church, a local sect
persecuted by medieval Bosnia’s Catholic kings. 64 But an Ottoman census
from 1468 shows Bosnian Church members making up only a tiny fraction of
the population; their decline came earlier, apparently due to royally spon-
sored Franciscan preaching. Conversions to Islam came during the first half
of the sixteenth century, and from the ranks of Bosnia’s Catholics, not from
an Orthodox population whose hierarchy was supported by the Ottomans. 65
Muslim households, less than 1 percent of the population in the census of
1468, accounted for 46 percent in the census of 1525. 66 Bosnia’s sancakbegs
did not pressure their subjects to become Muslims. But Islamic law decreed
that infidels pay a special tax, the jizya. Moreover, poverty was widespread
in rural Bosnia, where non-Muslim subsistence farmers paid higher ordinary
taxes than in neighboring Ottoman provinces. 67 One scholar points to the
advantages that a man could gain by enrolling in military formations re-
stricted to Muslims, 68 like the armed retainers that wealthier sipahis sup-
ported from their timar grants. 69 Another highlights the role of dervishes
from the leading Sufi orders, who founded new towns and formed craft
guilds to which only Muslims were admitted. 70 Finally, for Sarajevo, court
records suggest that about 4 percent of Muslims were former slaves who
gained freedom by converting to Islam. 71 There were also signs of an emerg-
ing Bosniak or Bosnian-Muslim identity. By a law of 1516, timars in Bosnia
were to be granted only to Bosnian Muslims. 72
In Sarajevo, the capital from 1463 to 1554, 73 the court of the sancakbeg
mirrored that of the grand vezir at the Porte: he too presided over a divan
drawn from these military and civil dignitaries. He appointed his secretary or
general factotum (ćehaja) and a military hierarchy made up of district com-
manders (vojvods) led by a commander-in-chief (beglerbeg). The divan
could also include civil officials appointed directly from the Porte: treasurers
(defterdars), customs collectors (emins), local judges (kadis), and a mufti to
pronounce on questions of religious law. 74 As if in imitation of the sultan’s
great capital, Sarajevo showed both a skyline dominated by minarets and a
characteristically Islamic plan of development, with neighborhoods (mahals)
built by notables who endowed religious foundations with the ground rents.
14 Introduction

There were fifteen Muslim mahals in 1516 and thirty-five in 1528–1530;

with the one Christian mahal, there were 1,422 households in 1516 and 1,631
in 1528–1530. 75
Trade with the Mediterranean was now less important, because the con-
quest had disrupted former patterns of exchange (e.g., silver was claimed for
the sultan’s mints). Also, sancakbegs of Bosnia seemed not to share the
interest of their colleagues in Herzegovina in attracting European traders. 76
But Sarajevo boasted a large elite whose wealth came from official salaries
and from their share of the proceeds of the raids emanating from Bosnia:
livestock, precious goods, and men, women, and children for sale on the
city’s slave market. The luxury tastes of elite customers were satisfied by a
flourishing local craft industry and by goods imported from Italy. 77 It seems
that while the number of resident merchants from Dubrovnik declined, 78
there were more and more of the Bosnian merchants mentioned in Venetian
sources from the early sixteenth century. 79 In sum, Bosnia was tied ever
more firmly into the Ottoman system by a self-reinforcing circle of military
success, profit, and religious loyalty.

Dalmatia

Dalmatia controlled the Adriatic sea lanes leading to Venice’s naval bases
and trading stations in the eastern Mediterranean. Accordingly, Venice had
long sought to control the Adriatic coast, especially the sector stretching
south and east from Istria, known in Venice as “the Gulf.” The ability to sail
between the coast and the long islands offshore had been vital in earlier
centuries, when vessels did not venture far from shore, and was still of some
importance in the Early Modern era. 80 This was one reason that Dalmatia’s
major port cities—Zadar (Zara), Šibenik (Sebenico), Trogir (Trau), and Split
(Spalato)—were brought under Venetian rule during the first half of the
fifteenth century. Kotor (Cattaro) was properly speaking in Venetian Alba-
nia, as were three smaller ports, Budva, Bar (Antivari), and Ulcinj (Dulcig-
no). But since both areas faced the same general problems, and since both
were often under the authority of the same ad hoc administrator, the smaller
strip of seacoast known as Venetian Albania is here counted as part of “Dal-
matia.” 81 All of these ports were also valuable as termini for the horse-
caravan routes descending from the mountains, even if trade diminished after
the Ottoman conquest of Bosnia in 1463. To shield “the Gulf” from outside
intruders—like Ottoman vessels based in Albania—a “Captain of the Gulf”
commanded war galleys that kept station in Dalmatia. In 1499, for example,
 Introduction 15

there were three in Zadar; two in Šibenik; one each in Trogir, Split, and
Kotor; and three in the islands. 82 The galleys were also used to enforce a
trading system centered on Venice. Ancona, just across the Adriatic, had
been Dalmatia’s traditional port of entry for Italy. 83 But under Venetian rule,
outward-bound merchant vessels were required to sail for Venice; Zadar
(Zara), the largest city, became the chief station for paying Venetian tolls.
The same restrictions were imposed on non-Venetian ports like Senj and
Obrovac, a practice that made Venice no friends in Croatia. 84
For each large city in Dalmatia, the Senate elected two “rectors”—a count
for civil affairs and a captain for military affairs; for smaller towns they
appointed a podesta. Rectors and podestas sent regular reports to the Colle-
gio, and two years was the usual term of office. 85 Some of these officials
came from families with land in Dalmatia, and there are reports of villages
owned by such families, or fortresses built by them to shelter the rural popu-
lation. 86 As far as possible, rectors and podestas tried not to disrupt the
traditional social and political institutions that pre-dated Venetian rule in
Dalmatia. 87
In his history of the late medieval Balkans, John Fine notes that “no town
south of Bar was able to create an autonomous commune or city-state gov-
erned under its own law code and by its own local council.” 88 By contrast,
from Bar to the north, medieval Dalmatia was much like medieval Italy 89:
cities were self-governing communes, and each commune was divided into
warring civic associations. 90 Even in small towns, a universitas of the popolo
faced off against aristocratic clans who controlled the reins of local govern-
ment. Under Venetian rule, the same elite families made up a small council
advisory to the rectors. But the universitas of the popolo still convened and
could send “ambassadors” to bring its grievances to Venice. The Venetian
formula for keeping things under control was to gratify the nobles with
places of honor in civic life while curbing their abuses of power and thereby
earning the loyalty of the popolo. But festering resentments could not always
be contained. In some cases violence between nobles and popolo broke out
and continued for months, for instance, on one of the offshore islands in 1510
and in the city of Bar in 1512. 91 Finally, social conflict had political ramifica-
tions. Even in the late sixteenth century, many noble families were still
“monarchist” at heart: they would rather have been ruled by Venice’s historic
rival in Dalmatia, the king of Hungary. There were language differences, too,
though without any apparent political implications. The pro-Hungarian no-
16 Introduction

bles used Italian for official occasions while pro-Venetian commoners main-
ly spoke “the Slavic tongue,” la lingua Schiava. 92
The strategic importance of the Gulf and its port cities did not extend to
the countryside. Each city was also the seat of a county (contado). Zadar’s
contado was large and populous enough to include several small towns. For
Šibenik and Split, too, rural territories provided much of the needed livestock
and grain. To protect the peasant population, companies of stradiot light
horse patrolled the countryside; their salaries were paid from urban taxes. 93
Yet city treasuries of this era had more obligations than income, 94 and the
stradioti sometimes hid when raiders came. 95 Venice itself might have pro-
vided more resources, but the lives and property of country folk did not rate
high on the Signoria’s priority scale. If necessary, as in time of war with the
Ottomans, the port cities could be supplied from the sea.

Croatia

Medieval Croatia, like the modern country, had roughly the shape of a wish-
bone, wrapped around Bosnia. From its western region, bordering the Aus-
trian duchies of Styria and Carniola, one prong of land extended east along
the Drava and the Sava, to where both rivers joined the Danube. Another
prong of land extended south and east, between the Adriatic and the Dinaric
Alps, the border with Bosnia. Prior to its incorporation into the crown of
Hungary in 1102, the kingdom of Croatia was itself composed of smaller
kingdoms, 96 including Slavonia in the north, and in the south what will here
be called Croatia proper. 97 Under Hungarian rule, military authority was
exercised by a ban appointed by the king, usually from among Hungary’s
Magyar (Hungarian-speaking) aristocracy. Sometimes there were two bans,
one for Slavonia and one for Croatia proper. Over time, Slavonia, the fertile
plain between the Sava and the Drava, was fully integrated into Hungary:
courts followed Hungarian law, and the great families were often of Magyar
origin. Here, nobles paid at least some royal taxes, and no man held the title
of count save by royal appointment. Croatia proper extended from the Kupa
River in the north to the Adriatic in the south. To the east, its boundary with
Bosnia was formed by the Una River, flowing north to the Sava. In this
region, courts followed Croatian law, nobles were exempt from taxation, and
every nobleman of consequence was a count by hereditary right. 98 Thus,
while the king was sovereign in Croatia proper, it was not clear that he
ruled. 99
 Introduction 17

As was true for princely governments across Europe at this time, the
crown of Hungary depended on the collaboration of local stakeholders, not
just for consent to taxation but also for the administration and defense of the
realm. In Hungary, the diet had two chambers, one for great nobles or mag-
nates who were summoned by name, and the other for representatives of the
lesser nobility elected by diets at the county level. In Croatia, until 1558,
each part of the realm had its own assembly of nobles (with observers from
the towns), known as the Conventio of nobles in Slavonia and as the Sabor in
Croatia proper. 100 These gatherings were sometimes a venue for useful mili-
tary planning, but more often they were a forum for mutual recrimination.
The crown budgeted a handsome salary for the ban, plus money for one
thousand light horse to guard the border and wages for the garrisons of royal
fortresses. But as Hungary’s revenues shrank, 101 payments fell behind, and
one thousand cavalry were in any case hardly sufficient for a frontier that
extended for some two hundred miles; why did the crown not do more? On
the other hand, royal officials had reason to complain about nobles who
reserved their energies and resources for private feuds. Moreover, as in the
rest of Hungary, magnates were a constant threat to lesser nobles, who ap-
pealed in vain to a distant royal justice for the restoration of lands taken from
them by force. In Croatia proper, the greatest magnate clans, the Frankopan
and the Kurjaković, were often at war with each other.
As in Dalmatia, towns were organized as self-governing communes, with
civic militias that sometimes fought battles in pursuit of local interests. In
Slavonia, the two cities that made up Zagreb were always at loggerheads:
Gradec, a town controlled by its burghers, and Kaptol, the town of the arch-
bishop and his cathedral chapter. The townsmen of Senj, put upon by Ven-
ice’s restrictive trading regime, took matters into their own hands by raiding
Venetian territory; Skradin’s burghers repaid Ottoman raids with one of their
own. 102 Thus, while those who spoke for Croatia and Slavonia could plau-
sibly argue that the crown failed to defend the interests of the province,
spokesmen for the king of Hungary could with equal justice retort that the
fractiousness of its towns and nobles made Croatia difficult to defend. Dis-
trust worked in both directions. The central government did not see Croatia
as the best place to expend scarce resources, and towns and nobles hesitated
to put their property at risk by uniting behind a government that failed to
keep its promises. The problem of defense was at bottom a problem of
governance.
* * *
18 Introduction

Following a prologue on Ottoman expansion across the Balkans in the sec-

ond half of the fifteenth century, chapters 1 through 6 are arranged chrono-
logically. In most chapters the internal divisions are geographical, with sep-
arate sections on Bosnia, Dalmatia, and Croatia. Bosnia comes first as the
source of the unrelenting military pressure that compelled its neighbors to
react. Dalmatia comes second, both as a territory under threat from Bosnia
and as the outpost of a Christian state that was more an ally than an enemy of
the sultan. Croatia comes last, and in somewhat more detail, to take account
of the gradual and cumbersome process by which neighboring Austrian prov-
inces took over its defenses. Finally, to indicate each province’s dependence
on decisions taken at a higher level, most chapters begin with a brief look at
the existing priorities of the three metropolitan governments.

A NOTE ON SOURCES

Bosnia. Bosnia’s administrative language was Ottoman Turkish. Those of us

who do not read Turkish are dependent on translations of Ottoman docu-
ments into European languages. 103 Of some relevance to Bosnia are a collec-
tion of decisions about individuals 104 and two selections from the correspon-
dence of Ottoman governors. 105 There are two histories of the sixteenth
century by seventeenth-century Ottoman scholars with family connections to
Bosnia. 106 Western European sources are more helpful. 107 They are of course
hostile to Bosnia’s government and its Muslim population, but their bias
becomes clearer if one draws on different European perspectives. In addition
to the Venetian, Croatian, and Austrian sources, there are reports by Dubrov-
nik’s ambassadors, who brought their city’s tribute payment to the Porte each
year. 108
Dalmatia. From the 1480s, Venice kept a permanent representative at the
Porte, known as the bailo. Dispatches from the baili are indispensable for an
understanding of the ebb and flow of Veneto-Ottoman relations. 109 There are
also the so-called relazioni: upon completion of his term of office, usually
about two years, a returning bailo gave a lengthy report (relazione) to the
Senate on the affairs of the Ottoman state. 110 For decision making within the
Venetian government, historians are fortunate that an official named Marin
Sanudo chose to record or summarize all the interesting documents he could
lay hands on, from 1496 through 1534. 111 His Diarii fill fifty-eight quarto
volumes. 112 Documents relating to the western Balkans were excerpted and
published by Croatian scholars in the nineteenth century. 113 Other Croatian
 Introduction 19

scholars have collected and edited documents pertinent to Dalmatia, includ-

ing many of the relazioni presented to the Senate by officials returning from
a tour of duty on the Adriatic coast. 114
Croatia. For Austrian Habsburg diplomatic relations with the Ottomans,
there are two published collections of documents, one for the period to
1540, 115 the other for 1541–1552. 116 For the years thereafter, the correspon-
dence of diplomats and their principals is preserved at the state archives in
Vienna. 117 For the Habsburgs themselves, the thus-far published correspon-
dence of Archduke Ferdinand (r. 1522–1564) indicates how Austrian prior-
ities were often subordinated to those of his older brother, Emperor Charles
V (r. 1519–1555). 118 The resolutions of the imperial diet, on whose support
the Austrian lands depended, have been published and impressively annotat-
ed for selected years. 119 Under Habsburg rule, the proceedings of the Hun-
garian Diet, 120 published in the nineteenth century, still had meaning for
Croatia. There are also published collections of the letters of leading figures
in the military and political life of Habsburg Hungary. 121 For Croatia itself,
there are four important collections of published documents. 122 For the Aus-
trian provinces bordering on Croatia, there is a published collection of perti-
nent documents from the Styrian archives in Graz. I have also used material
from the state archives of Slovenia, which incorporates the former duchy of
Carniola. 123
Save for the few references to archival materials that have been noted, 124
chapters 1 through 5 are based on printed sources (the prologue and chapter 6
are mainly based on secondary sources). My hope is that the breadth of
coverage offered here may encourage those who know the relevant manu-
script collections to get right whatever I may have gotten wrong.

NAMES AND TERMS

Since the western Balkan region is not a common subject for historical works
in English, many places, names, and terms may be unfamiliar. For personal
names, place-names, and foreign-language terms that come up two or more
times in the text, there are separate glossary sections for each. Other proper
names and terms are kept to the endnotes and can be found in the index.
Finally, personal and place-names have different versions in different lan-
guages. Except when there is a version common in English (e.g., Venice,
Charles V), preference is given to the place-name used by people who now
20 Introduction

live in that place, 125 or to the personal name now used in the person’s land of
origin.

NOTES

1. Cf. Marlene Kurz, Martin Scheutz, Karl Vocelka, and Thomas Winkelbauer, eds., Das
Osmanische Reich und die Habsburger Monarchie (Vienna, Munich: Oldenburg, 2005). A
number of the essays in the volume deal with anti-Ottoman propaganda in one form or another,
but none of them deal with the cross-border fighting.
2. Andrew Wheatcroft, The Enemy at the Gate: Habsburgs, Ottomans, and the Battle for
Europe (New York: Basic Books, 2008). WorldCat has 1,099 entries for this second siege of
Vienna, and 113 for the first (1529).
3. For this term see Marshall Hodgson, The Venture of Islam (3 vols., Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1974), I, 57–60.
4. Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996).
5. For discussion around the concept of civilization, see Jóhann Páll Árnason, Civilization
in Dispute: Historical Questions and Theoretical Traditions (Leiden: Brill, 2003); Matthew
Collings, This Is Civilization (London: 21 Publishing, 2008).
6. Thomas Winkelbauer, Österreichische Geschichte 1522–1699. Ständefreiheit und
Fürstenmacht. Länder und Untertanen des Hauses Habsburg im Konfessionellen Zeitalter (2
vols., Vienna: Carl Überreuter, 2003), vol. II.
7. Jerry H. Bentley, Old World Encounters (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993).
Buddhism survives in Sri Lanka.
8. Vlachs (in Italian, Morlacchi) were speakers of a language akin to Romanian who
gradually adopted South-Slavic speech. Some were Catholics or Muslims, but most were Or-
thodox: Marko Šarić, “Planini i Morlački Svijet u Dalmacij: Ekohistorijski Osvrt,” Časopis za
godspodarsku povijest i povijest okoliša 6 (2010): 55–94.
9. James D. Tracy, “The Habsburg Monarchy in Conflict with the Ottoman Empire: As
Clash of Civilizations,” Austrian History Yearbook XLVI (2015): 1–28.
10. Marco Moroni, L’impero di San Biagio. Ragusa e i commerci balkanici dopo la con-
quista turca (1521–1620) (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2011); James D. Tracy, “The Grand Vezir and
the Small Republic: Dubrovnik and Rüstem Paša, 1544–1561,” Turkish Historical Review I
(2010): 196–214.
11. Jean-Claude Hocquet, Le sel et la fortune de Venise (2 vols., Lille: Publications de
l’Université de Lille, 1979), I, chapter 8.
12. John V. A. Fine, When Ethnicity Did Not Matter in the Balkans (Ann Arbor: University
of Michigan Press, 2009), chapter 4, “Perceptions of Slavs, Illyrians and Croats, 1500 to 1600.”
13. Francis Violich, The Bridge to Dalmatia: A Search for the Meaning of Place (Balti-
more, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), 89.
14. For “Turkish Croatia” see Nenad Moačanin, Turska Hrvatska. Hrvati pod vlašću Os-
manskoga Carstva do 1791 (Zagreb: Matica Hrvatska, 1999).
15. Herzegovina was an Ottoman province from 1481. As later chapters will show, Otto-
man officials recruited Vlachs as defenders of their borders; toward the end of the sixteenth
century, Austrian officials recruited “Ottoman” Vlachs for settlement along the Habsburg Mili-
tary Frontier.
 Introduction 21

16. E.g., Anto Babić and Bodo Grafenauer, eds., Historija Naroda Jugoslavije (2 vols.,
Zagreb: Skolske Knjiga, 1953–1959). The provinces were Bosnia, Croatia, Macedonia, Monte-
negro, Serbia, and Slovenia. On Yugoslavism, see Dejan Djokić, ed., Yugoslavism: Histories of
a Failed Idea, 1918–1992 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2003); and Aloyz
Ivanišević, “Klischees und Feindbilder: Wege und Irrwege des Jugoslawismus,” in Manfred
Pirsching, ed., Identität und Nachbarschaft. Die Vielfalt der Alpen-Adria Länder (Vienna/
Cologne/Graz: Böhlau, 1994), 137–169.
17. E.g., Drago Roksandić, ed., Constructing Border Societies on the Triplex Confinium, c.
1700–1750 (Budapest: Central European University, 2000); Drago Roksandić, Triplex Confin-
ium, ili, O granicama i regijama harvatske povijesti 1500–1800 (Zagreb: Barbat, 2003). Cf.
Wendy Catherine Bracewell, The Uskoks of Senj: Piracy, Banditry and Holy War in the
Sixteenth Century Adriatic (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992), 211, 214–215.
18. Želiko Holjevac and Nenad Moačanin, Hrvatsko-Slavonska Vojna Krajina i Hrvati pod
Vlašču Osmanskoga Carstva u ranom novom vijeku (Zagreb: Bibliotheka Hrvatska Povijest,
2007).
19. Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Explorations in Connected History: From the Tagus to the
Ganges (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2005), ix–x.
20. The Ottoman Empire was unambiguously an empire, and Venice with its overseas
dominions can be called an empire. But I follow common usage in differentiating the Holy
Roman Empire from the hereditary lands ruled by the Austrian Habsburgs by referring to the
latter as the Habsburg Monarchy.
21. The Holy League of 1571–1573, which Emperor Maximilian II refused to join. See
chapter 4.
22. In Turkish as in Arabic, Rum (Rome) was the term for Constantinople and the lands it
ruled.
23. Caroline Finkel, Osman’s Dream: The Story of the Ottoman Empire, 1300–1923 (New
York: Perseus Books, 2005), 1–11.
24. Finkel, Osman’s Dream, 11–21. The first Ottoman capital (from 1326) was Bursa.
25. Their number later increased to four, then five.
26. Colin Imber, The Ottoman Empire, 1300–1600 (London: Palgrave, 2002), 154–176.
27. Gábor Ágoston attributes the formation of a grand strategy to the reign of Suleyman the
Lawgiver (1520–1566): “Information, Ideology, and Limits of Imperial Policy: Ottoman Grand
Strategy in the Context of the Ottoman-Habsburg Rivalry,” in Virginia H. Aksan and Daniel
Goffman, eds., The Early Modern Ottomans: Remapping the Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2007), 75–103.
28. Imber, The Ottoman Empire, 177–184. A sancak was technically a sub-province, subor-
dinate to a governor or beglerbeg to whom many sancakbegs reported.
29. E.g., Robert Harding, The Anatomy of a Power Elite: The Provincial Governors of
Renaissance France (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1978).
30. Imber, The Ottoman Empire, 184–193. Cf. Karen Barkey, Bandits and Bureaucrats:
The Ottoman Route to State Centralization (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994), 27: “I
provide the Ottoman state with agency, but do not argue that all state practices were deliberate-
ly calculated to achieve increased control.”
31. Iran was ruled by the Shi’ite Safavid dynasty from 1501 to 1722.
32. For Ottoman military institutions, see Mesut Uyar and Edward J. Erickson, A Military
History of the Ottomans, from Osman to Atatürk (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC Clio, 2009),
chapters 1 and 2.
33. Imber, The Ottoman Empire, 177–180.
22 Introduction

34. Thomas Madden, The Fourth Crusade: Event, Aftermath, and Perception (Aldershot:
Ashgate, 2008).
35. The Latin Empire of Constantinople lasted from 1204 to 1261.
36. For the Pax Mongolica and the revival of trade along the Silk Road, see Janet Abu-
Lughod, Before European Hegemony: The World System A.D. 1250–1350 (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1989).
37. Benjamin Arbel, “Venice’s Maritime Empire in the Early Modern Period,” in Eric R.
Dursteler, ed., A Companion to Venetian History (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 125–253; James D.
Tracy, “Il commercio italiano in territorio ottomano,” in Franco Franceschi, Richard A. Goldth-
waite, and Reinhold C. Mueller, eds., Il Rinascimento Italiano e l’Europa, vol. IV, Commercio
e cultura mercantile (Treviso: Fondazione Casamarca, 2007), 425–454.
38. Sanjay Subrahmanyam, The Career and Legend of Vasco da Gama (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1998); Palmira Brummett, Ottoman Seapower and Levantine Diplo-
macy in the Age of Discovery (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994).
39. Alfred Viggiano, “Politics and Constitution,” in Dursteler, ed., A Companion to Vene-
tian History, 47–84, here 56–66; John Martin and Dennis Romano, eds., Venice Reconsidered:
The History and Civilization of an Italian City-State, 1297–1797 (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hop-
kins University Press, 2002), especially the essays by Stanley Chojnacki, “Identity and Ideolo-
gy in Renaissance Venice: The Third Serrata,” 263–294; and James S. Grubb, “Elite Citizens,”
339–364.
40. Nicolai Rubinstein, “Italian Reactions to the Terraferma Expansion in the 15th Centu-
ry,” in J. R. Hale, ed., Renaissance Venice (London: Faber & Faber, 1973), 197–217. The main
towns incorporated under Venetian rule during this period were Padua, Verona, Bergamo, and
Treviso.
41. Arbel, “Venice’s Maritime Empire,” 139; Brian Pullan, Rich and Poor in Renaissance
Venice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971), 21–25.
42. M. E. Mallett and J. R. Hale, The Military Organization of a Renaissance State: Venice
c. 1400 to 1617 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 57.
43. Alois Niederstätter, 1400–1522: das Jahrhundert der Mitte: an der Wende vom Mitte-
lalter zur Neuzeit: Österreichische Geschichte 1400–1522 (Vienna: Carl Überreuter, 1996),
225. Population estimates are available for 1527: Lower Austria, 500,000; Upper Austria,
350,000; Styria, 279,000; and Carinthia, 135,000. Carniola included several territories that
were “attached to” but not part of the duchy: the Karst plateau, northern and eastern Istria, and
(from 1500) the county of Gorizia.
44. Archduke Sigismund (d. 1490). Niederstätter, Österreichische Geschichte, 225–230.
Tirol included the so-called Vorlande to the west. In 1504, Tirol and the Vorlande were
assessed for 37 percent of taxes due from all the Austrian territories: Winkelbauer,
Österreichische Geschichte, I, 493–494.
45. Niederstätter, Österreichische Geschichte, 45–46, 218–225. In Upper and Lower Aus-
tria, there were separate chambers for the magnates or high nobility (Herren, or lords), for the
lower nobility (Ritter, or knights), for the prelates of the Church, and for the cities and market
towns. In the Inner Austrian lands, there was only one chamber for the nobility, since families
recognized as belonging to the lordly estate (Herrenstand) were few in number.
46. Joseph Chmel, Briefe und Aktenstücke zur Geschichte des Hauses Habsburg im Zeital-
ter Maximilians I (3 vols., Vienna, 1854, reprinted Hildesheim: Georg Ohm, 1968), III, no.
127, pp. 670–671, Schirmbrief of 8 April 1477, guaranteeing a sum of 100,000 Rhine gulden
owed by Frederick III to Matthias Corvinus.
47. Cf. Niederstätter, Österreichische Geschichte, 217–218. Upper Austria voted in 1458 to
accept as their ruler Archduke Albert VI, rejecting a bid by his brother, Frederick III; when
 Introduction 23

Albert died without male issue, Upper Austria voted for Frederick III in 1464, rejecting a bid by
his cousin, Archduke Sigismund of Tirol.
48. Vasko Simoniti, Vojaška organizacija na Slovenskem v 16. Stoletju (Ljubljana: Matica
Slovenska, 1991), 30, 76, 94; Niederstätter, Österreichische Geschichte, 221.
49. Joseph Freiherr von Hammer-Purgstall, Geschichte des osmanischen Reiches (2 vols.,
2nd ed., Pest: C. A. Hartleben, 1834–1836), II, 520, 529 (1470, 1473); Simoniti, Vojaška
organizacija na Slovenskem, 28.
50. By tradition, the King of the Romans, elected by the Holy Roman Empire’s seven
electoral princes, only became emperor when crowned by the pope.
51. See the prologue.
52. Sigismund’s grandfather, Count John of Luxemburg (d. 1346), became king by marry-
ing the daughter and heiress of Bohemia’s last ruler of the Přemyslid dynasty.
53. His wife Mary was the daughter of King Louis I (d. 1382).
54. He was elected King of the Romans in 1411 and crowned as Holy Roman Emperor in
1414.
55. Save as noted, this paragraph is based on Paul Joachim Heinig, Kaiser Friederich III
(1440–1493): Hof, Regierung, Politik (Cologne, 1997); and Hermann Wiesflecker, Kaiser
Maximilian I: Das Reich, Österreich und Europa an der Wende zur Neuzeit (5 vols., Munich:
Oldenbourg, 1971–1986), I, 271–286.
56. Albert and Frederick III were from different branches of the Habsburg family; the
branch represented by Albert died out with the death of his son Ladislas in 1457.
57. He was elected King of the Romans but never crowned as Holy Roman Emperor.
58. Władisław Jagiello, a younger son of King Casimir IV of Poland-Lithuania (d. 1492),
became king of Bohemia in 1471. In 1490, after the death of Corvinus, he was elected king of
Hungary (r. 1490–1516). Here, he is called Wladislas Jagiello.
59. See the next chapter.
60. For both conquests, see the prologue.
61. Thierry Mudry, Histoire de la Bosnie-Herzégovine. Faits et controverses (Paris: Ellip-
ses, 1999), 46. By contrast, in the paşaluk of Buda (under direct Ottoman rule from 1541), the
average tenure in office for a paşa was about a year and a half: Lajos Fekete, Buda and Pest
under Turkish Rule (Budapest, 1976), 43–44.
62. The sancaks of Herzegovina (in the southeastern corner of modern Bosnia-Herzegovi-
na) and Zvornik (in the northeastern corner) also experienced large-scale conversions. This was
less true for the later sancaks of Lika and Klis along the Adriatic.
63. Large-scale conversion to Islam in Albanian-speaking areas (modern Albania and Ko-
sovo) dates from the seventeenth century: Noel Malcolm, Kosovo: A Short History (New York:
HarperCollins, 1998), chapter 7.
64. Adem Handžić, “O širenju islama u Sjevernoistočnoj Bosni u XV I XVI vijeku,” in his
Studije o Bosni. Historiski prilozi iz osmansko-turskog perioda (Istanbul: Organization of the
Islamic Conference, 1994), 33–74.
65. Fikret Adanir, “The Formation of a ‘Muslim’ Nation in Bosnia-Herzegovina: A
Historiographic Discussion,” in Fikret Adanir and Suraiya Faroghi, The Ottomans and the
Balkans: A Discussion of Historiography (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 267–304, here 285–290; Srečko
Džaja, Konfessionalität und Nationalität Bosniens und der Herzegowina: Voremanzipatorische
Phase, 1463–1804 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1986), 21–40; Moačanin, Turska Hrvatska, 102–113;
and Ines Aščerić “Dervishes and Islam in Bosnia: The Role of Dervish Orders in the Islamisa-
tion Process in Bosnia and the Formation of Bosnian Muslim Society in the 15th and 16th
Centuries” (Ph.D. dissertation, Oriental Studies, St. Antony’s College, Oxford University,
2004), 20–53.
24 Introduction

66. Mudry, Histoire de la Bosnie-Herzégovine, 65.

67. Moačanin, Turska Hrvatska, 108–112. Cf. Adem Aličić, “Introduction,” in Adem
Handžić, ed., Opširni Popis Bosanskoga Sandžaka iz 1604 Godine (3 vols., Sarajevo: Oriental-
ni Institut, 2004), xli–liii, here xliii. Tax status should not be stressed as a motive for conver-
sion, because Bosnian Muslims too were gradually subjected to the jizya. But this development
seems to have post-dated the era of widespread conversions.
68. Moačanin, Turska Hrvatska, 103–104, also 110 (converts paid a lower land tax).
69. Džaja, Konfessionalität und Nationalität, 31–32. A muster of 3,112 cavalry led by the
sancakbeg of Bosnia on the 1526 Hungary campaign includes 16 high-ranking sipahis, all
Muslim; 643 simple sipahis, of whom 51 were Christian (mostly from Wallachia); and 2,457
armed retainers, all Muslim.
70. Aščerić, “Dervishes and Islam in Bosnia,” 236–241.
71. Džaja, Konfessionalität und Nationalität, 53.
72. Džaja, Konfessionalität und Nationalität, 36.
73. From 1554 the capital was Banja Luka.
74. Behija Zlatar, Zlatna Doba Sarajeva (XVI Stoljeće) (Sarajevo: Svjetlost, 2000), 83–84.
75. Zlatar, Zlatna Doba Sarajeva, 38–46.
76. In March 1504, Bosnia’s Skender Paşa told envoys from Venice that merchants bring-
ing cloth and other goods need only write him in advance to have an escort to Sarajevo:
“Odnošaji skupnovlade Mletačke za Južnim Slavenom priobćeni u izvadcij iz rukopisnih lieto-
pisah Marina Sanuda od godine 1496–1533,” Arkiv za Povjestnicu Jugoslavensko, V (1859), VI
(1860), 162–453, VIII (1862), 1–255 (hereafter abbreviated as Sanudo Odnošaji), VI, 287–288.
By contrast, the sancakbeg of Herzegovina burned down the houses of two hundred “malefac-
tors” who lived near the road [to Mostar] and were known to molest traveling merchants:
Sanudo Odnošaji, VI, 333, report of 8 April 1508.
77. For the craft guilds of Sarajevo, see Zlatar, Zlatna Doba Sarajeva, 145–163.
78. Tracy, “The Grand Vezir and the Small Republic,” 199.
79. Sanudo Odnošaji, VI, 321. In January 1510, two Bosnian merchants come to Venice
with a message from the sancakbeg.
80. Cf. the Fourth Crusade of 1202–1204: to satisfy a debt owed the Venetians for the use
of their fleet, the Crusaders were to conquer for Venice the then-Hungarian city of Zadar. Ivan
Pederin, Mletačka uprava, privreda i politika u Dalmaciji (1408–1797) (Dubrovnik: Časopis
“Dubrovnik,” 1990), 12.
81. For Venetian Albania in this era, see Noel Malcolm, Agents of Empire. Knights, Cor-
sairs, Jesuits and Spies in the Sixteenth Century Mediterranean World (Oxford: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 2015), chapter 1.
82. Federico Stefani, Guglielmo Berchet, Nicolò Barozzi, and Rinaldo Fulin, eds., I Diarii
di Marin Sanuto [sic], vols. 1–3 (Venice: “at the expense of the editors,” 1879–1880), hereafter
abbreviated as Sanudo, Diarii, II, 1241–1250, a census of the war fleet in September 1499.
83. Ancona remained the port-of-call for vessels from Dubrovnik, which politely renounced
control from Venice in 1358.
84. Pederin, Mletačka uprava, 115, 119–120, 130. The author notes that Venetian war
galleys could not always catch Ancona-bound ships from Senj and other Croatian ports.
85. In small cities the same man often held both offices.
86. Sanudo, Diarii, II, 853–854, a report of 21 June 1499 from Francesco Venier and
Jacopo da Molin, rectors of Zadar: the Turks are attacking “Sebnico piccolo,” a village that
belongs to “sier Tomaso Venier and his brothers,” sons of the late sier Piero. Sanudo Odnošaji,
VI, 167–169, report of 16 January 1501 from Polo Malipiero, Count of Trogir: many villagers
found safety in “a fortress built along the shore by Bishop Francesco Marcello of Trogir.”
 Introduction 25

87. Arbel, “Venice’s Maritime Empire,” 154–162; Pederin, Mletačka uprava, 16–22.
88. John V. A. Fine Jr., The Late Medieval Balkans: A Critical Survey from the Twelfth
Century to the Ottoman Conquest (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1987), 51.
89. Daniel Waley, The Italian City Republics (3rd ed., London: Longman, 1988).
90. For this paragraph, save as noted, see Pederin, Mletačka uprava, 7–13, 17–24.
91. Report from Nicola da Molin from the island of Hvar (Lesina), 28 May 1510, Sanudo
Odnošaji, VI, 344–345; report from Andreas Capello in Bar, 5 December 1512, Sanudo
Odnošaji, VI, 393–397.
92. Venetian sources use “la lingua Schiava”; German or Latin sources are as likely to say
“Croatian.”
93. Pederin, Mletačka uprava, 40.
94. E.g., Sanudo Odnošaji, VI, 250–251. In November 1503, Sebastiano Contarini reported
that Kotor had 12,000 ducats in annual income and 18,000 ducats in annual obligations.
95. From a physician in Zadar to A. Trevisano, 30 June 1499, Sanudo, Diarii, II, 891–892.
But cf. the good report on Kotor’s stradioti from Zuane Paulo Gradenigo: 22 August 1500,
Sanudo, Diarii, III, 767–769.
96. The Dinaric Alps included the Velebit Mountains. Dalmatia had counted as a third
distinct kingdom. Upland Dalmatia, still part of Croatia, was conquered by the Ottomans
during the sixteenth century.
97. Fine, When Ethnicity Did Not Matter, 20–21, uses this term, but prefers a term of his
coinage, “Velebitia,” referring to the Velebit Mountains, a range that forms part of the Dinaric
Alps.
98. Fine, Late Medieval Balkans, 21–23, and When Ethnicity Did Not Matter, chapter 3,
“Slavonia, Dalmatia, and ‘Velebitia’ after 1102.”
99. For conflicts between the crown and the magnate clans of Croatia proper, see Ivan
Jurković, “Turska opasnost i Hrvatski velikaši—Knez Bernardin Frankopan i njegova doba,”
Radovi 19 (1986): 61–83.
100. In 1558, the two assemblies of a by now much-reduced kingdom of Croatia were joined
together as the Sabor: Géza Pálffy, The Kingdom of Hungary and the Habsburg Monarchy
(Boulder, CO: Social Science Monographs, 2009), 50–51.
101. See chapter 1.
102. See chapter 1, notes 163, 164; for civic militias in Venetian Dalmatia, see chapter 1,
notes 90, 91.
103. Maria Pia Pedani Fabris, I “Documenti Turchi” dell’Archivio di Stato di Venezia
(Venice: Ministero per i bene culturali, 1994), hereafter abbreviated as “Documenti Turchi.”
104. Esref Kovačević, Muhimme Defteri. Documenti o našim kraljevima (Sarajevo: 1985),
hereafter abbreviated as Muhimme Defteri.
105. Gizela Prochazka-Eisl and Claudia Römer, Osmanische Beamtenschreiben und Priva-
briefe der Zeit Suleymans des Prächtigen aus dem Haus- Hof- und Staatsarchiv zu Wien
(Vienna: Austrian Academy of Sciences, 2007), hereafter abbreviated as Osmanische Beam-
tenschreiben; and Gustav Bayerle, The Hungarian Letters of Ali Pasha of Buda, 1604–1616
(Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1991).
106. Ibrahim Alajbegović Pečevija, Historija 1520–1576, with an introduction by Fehim
Nametak (2 vols., Sarajevo: el-Kalem, 2000), hereafter abbreviated as Pečevija, Historija; and
Salih Sidki Hadžihuseinović, Povijest Bosne (Sarajevo: El-Kalem, 1997), hereafter abbreviated
as Muvekkit.
107. Works by Bosnian scholars that deal with relations between Bosnia and its neighbors
mainly use Western European sources, e.g., Behija Zlatar, Ghazi Husrev Beg (Sarajevo: Orijen-
talni Institut, 2009).
26 Introduction

108. “Lettere e Commissioni de Levante,” Država Arhiv u Dubrovniku [Croatian State

Archives in Dubrovnik], Dubrovnik, hereafter abbreviated as “Lettere de Levante.”
109. Archivio di Stato di Venezia, “Dispacci dagli Ambasciatori di Constantinopoli,” here-
after abbreviated as ASV-DAC. Guido Benzoni, “A proposito dei baili veneziani a Costanti-
nopoli: Qualche spunto, qualche osservazione,” Studi Veneziani 30 (1995): 69–77.
110. Eugenio Alberi, Relazioni degli Ambasciatori Veneti al Senato (15 vols., Florence,
1838–1865), vols. III, VI, IX, Relazioni de Baile e di Ambasciatori Veneti alla Porto Ottomano
nel Secolo XVI, hereafter abbreviated as Relazioni. See Donald E. Queller, “The Development
of Ambassadorial Relazioni,” in Hale, Renaissance Venice, 174–196; Guido Benzoni, “A pro-
posito della fonte prediletta di Ranke, ossia le relazioni degli ambasciatori veneziani,” Studi
Veneziani 16 (1988): 245–257.
111. Patricia H. Labalme and Laura Sanguinetti White, ed., Citta Excelentissima: Selections
from the Renaissance Diaries of Marin Sanudo, tr. Linda L. Carroll (Baltimore, MD: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 2008), introduction, xxv–xxxviii.
112. Sanudo, Diarii; I have used vols. 1–3, as cited above, note 82.
113. Sanudo Odnošaji, full citation above, note 76; and F. Rački, ed., “Izvodi za jugoslo-
vensku povijest iz dveznika Marina Sanuda za godine 1526–1533,” Starine XV (1883):
177–240, hereafter abbreviated as Sanudo Izvodi.
114. Šime Ljubić, ed., Commissiones et Relationes Venetae, vols. II (1525–1553) and III
(1533–1571) (Zagreb: Jugoslavenska akademija znanosti i umjetnosti [Yugoslav Academy of
Sciences], 1877, 1880); and Grgur Novac, Mletačka uputsva i izvjestaji / Commissiones et
Relationes Venetae, vols. IV (1572–1590) and V (1590–1600) (Zagreb: Jugoslavenska akade-
mija znanosti i umjetnosti [Yugoslav Academy of Sciences], 1964, 1970), both hereafter abbre-
viated as CRV.
115. Anton von Gévay, Urkunden und Aktenstücke zur Geschichte der Verhältnisse zwischen
Österreich, Ungarn und der Pforte im XVIen und XVIIen Jahrhundert: Gesandtsschaften König
Ferdinands I an Sultan Suleyman (10 vols., Vienna: at the cost of the editor, 1838–1842),
hereafter abbreviated as Gévay.
116. Srečko Džaja, Günter Weiss, Mathias Bernath, and Karl Nehring, eds., Austro-Turcica,
1541–1552. Diplomatische Akten des habsburgischen Gesandtschaftsverkehrs mit der hohen
Pforte im Zeitalter Suleymans des Prächtigen (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1995), hereafter abbrevi-
ated as Austro-Turcica.
117. Haus- Hof- und Staatsarchiv, Vienna, “Turcica,” hereafter abbreviated as HHST. I have
used materials for the years 1553 to 1578, from Turcica I 10 to Turcica I 38.
118. Wilhelm Bauer, ed., Die Korrespondenz Ferdinands I. Familienkorrespondenz bis
1526; Wilhelm Bauer and Robert Lacroix, eds., Familienkorrespondenz 1527–1528; Wilhelm
Bauer and Robert Lacroix, eds., Familienkorrespondenz 1529–1530; and Herwig Wolfram and
Christiane Thomas, eds., Familienkorrespondenz 1531–1532 (Vienna: Kommission für neu-
erere Geschichte Österreichs, 1912, 1937, 1938, 1973), hereafter abbreviated as Familienkor-
respondenz.
119. Deutsche Reichstagsakten, Jüngere Reihe, hereafter abbreviated as DRJR.
120. Vilmos Franknoí, ed., Magyar Országgyülési Emlékek / Monumenta Comitalia Regni
Hungariae (vols. I–III, Budapest: Ráth Mor, 1874–1876), hereafter abbreviated as MOE.
121. Georgius Pray, ed., Epistolae Procerum Regni Hungariae (3 vols., Posonia: G. A.
Belnay, 1806), hereafter abbreviated as Pray; for Count Nikola IV Zrinski, see Samu Barabas,
ed., Zrinyi Miklós Levelek és Okiratok (2 vols., Budapest, 1898–1899), hereafter abbreviated as
ZML; and for Antun Vrančić/Verancsics Antal, see László Szalay, ed., Verancsics Antal,
Összes Munkái = Monumenta Hungariae Historica—Scriptores (vols. II–VI, Pest: Magyar
Tudomanyos Akademia, 1857–1875), hereafter abbreviated as MHHS.
 Introduction 27

122. Ferdo Šišić, ed., Hravatski Saborski Spisi / Comitalia Regni Croatiae, Dalmatiae, et
Slavoniae (3 vols., Zagreb: Dioničke, 1912–1916), hereafter abbreviated as HSS; Emilije Las-
zowski, ed., Monumenta Habsburgica Regni Croatiae, Dalamataie, Slavoniae / Habsburški
Spomenici Kraljevine Hrvatske Dalamacije i Slavonije (2 vols., Zagreb: Dioničke, 1914–1916),
hereafter abbreviated as Monumenta Habsburgica Croatiae; Radoslav Lopašić, Spomenici
Hrvatske Krajine, vol. I, 1479–1610 (Zagreb: L. Hartman, 1884), hereafter abbreviated as
Spomenici Hrvatske Krajine; and Josip Kolanović, ed., Sisak u Obrani od Turaka. Izbor Grad
1543–1597 (Zagreb: Matica Hrvatska Sisak, 1993), hereafter abbreviated as Sisak u Obrani.
123. Radoslav Lopašić, “Prilozi za Povijest Hrvatske XVI i XVII vijek iz štajerskoga zemlj-
koga arhiva u Gradcu,” Starine XVII (1885), 151–230, hereafter abbreviated as Prilozi Styria;
Arhiv Repuiblike Slovenije, Ljubljana, “Deželni Stanovi za Kranjsko,” hereafter abbreviated as
DSK.
124. Notes 108, 109, 117, 123.
125. One exception: the capital of Slovakia is not called by its current name, since Bratislava
is a modern coinage. Here, the Latin Posonia is used, not the Hungarian Pozsony or the German
Pressburg.
 Prologue: Ottoman Expansion in the
Balkans, 1453–1499

Osman, the first of his line, was remembered as a ghazi, a holy warrior
fighting to extend the dar al-Islam, the world of Islam. In the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries, “epic accounts of heroic deeds against the infidels”
formed “a strand in popular Muslim culture,” and sultans still appealed to the
ghazi motif. 1 Yet Ottoman armies did not always march against infidels.
Like Christian kings and emperors, sultans gave priority to rivalries within
their own civilization. Over time, Ottoman thinkers developed complex ideas
of the sultan’s authority, drawn from Persian and Turkoman as well as Islam-
ic traditions. 2
Constantinople had long been the great objective. Through nine centuries,
the Byzantine capital withstood multiple sieges, including five by Muslim
armies. But if Balkan peoples still looked to Constantinople as the mother
church of Orthodoxy and as the guardian of Greco-Roman law and culture,
the great city had by the fifteenth century only a shadow of its onetime
grandeur. Sultan Mehmed II 3 determined to succeed where his predecessors
had failed. He built a powerful fortress to support siege operations and had
huge cannon cast and brought forward to bombard the city from all sides but
one. His spiritual adviser inspired the troops by applying to Mehmed II a
prophecy that Muslims would one day vanquish Constantinople. 4 The city’s
surrender on 29 May 1453 gave Mehmed his sobriquet: he was henceforth
al-Fatih, the Conqueror. He at once began repopulating and rebuilding his
new capital to make Istanbul greater than Constantinople ever was. 5 Hagia

29
30 Prologue

Sophia and five other churches became mosques, and minarets for new sub-
urban mosques dominated the skyline.
Mehmed’s conquest made him emperor of Rum. Italian observers quoted
him as appropriating a vision of the unity of the civilized world that traced
back to early Byzantine times: “There must be only one empire, one faith,
and one sovereignty in the world.” 6 As emperor of Rum, he appointed a new
patriarch of Constantinople following the incumbent’s death in 1454. Further
afield, his armies fanned out to conquer independent Greek principalities that
were Byzantine in culture but had not been part of the empire. 7 Many if not
all of the Slavic peoples of the Balkans were also part of the Orthodox world.
Mehmed’s extension of Ottoman rule to Slavic principalities is of particular
interest here because it set the stage for further expansion to the west under
his grandson and great-grandson.
Ottoman conquest proceeded by stages. First, punishing raids devastated
a target area; this was the time to give local notables the option of signing on
as the sultan’s vassals. The second stage involved full-scale invasion, almost
always with decisive results. 8 Unlike Christian states of the era, the Ottoman
Empire had sufficient resources to conduct campaigns of both types simulta-
neously. Thus while Mehmed II conquered some Christian territories, others
farther west were for the first time subjected to massive raids. The following
overview deals first with campaigns of conquest and then with the war of
attrition.

MEHMED II’S CONQUESTS IN THE BALKANS

Serbia and Belgrade

Most of Serbia was brought under Ottoman rule well before 1453. 9 Although
King Stefan Dušan (r. 1331–1355) had been a powerful ruler, his state had
been “loosely bound,” its regions not integrated into a kingdom-wide admin-
istration but rather controlled by local notables. 10 After a catastrophic defeat
in 1371, 11 many notables became vassals of the sultan. One who did not was
Lazar Hrbljanović: his wife was of the royal line, and from the fortified town
of Novo Brdo (modern Kosovo) he controlled Serbia’s richest silver mines.
At Kosovo Polje in 1389, Lazar and his allies met an army of equal or greater
size under Sultan Murad I; both rulers perished, along with most of their
men. Yet if the battle was indecisive, 12 only the Ottomans had the capacity to
regroup and organize new forays into Serbian territory. Lazar’s widow swore
 Ottoman Expansion in the Balkans, 1453–1499 31

allegiance to Sultan Bayezid I and sent her youngest daughter, Olivera De-
spina, to join his harem. Ruling as despot of Serbia, 13 Lazar’s son, Stefan
Lazarević, needed backing from more powerful neighbors. By turns, he
pledged fealty to King Sigismund I of Hungary (r. 1387–1437) and to Sultan
Murad, or to both at once. In 1426, a gathering of Serb notables accepted
Lazarević’s choice of a nephew, George Branković, as his successor.
Branković held Novo Brdo and built a new fortress-capital at Smederevo,
about fifty miles down the Danube from Belgrade. He lost both cities to
Sultan Murad II in 1439 but regained them in 1444 after brokering a treaty
between Hungary and the Porte in 1444. 14 Finally, in 1454, Mehmed II wrote
to Despot George, claiming the inheritance of Stefan Lazarević by right of
his grandmother, Olivera Despina. When no response came, he declared war.
Novo Brdo fell in 1455 and Smederevo in 1457. The title of despot passed on
to Branković’s grandson and then to a related family, 15 but Serbia itself was
effaced from the political map until the Revolution of 1804–1815.
In 1456, between expeditions to Novo Brdo and Smederevo, Mehmed
organized an assault on the great fortress that strategists regarded as the
“key” to Hungary. At the confluence of the Sava (flowing west) and the
Danube (here flowing south), Belgrade dominated traffic by water and
guarded the approaches to the Hungarian plain. Mehmed had sixty thousand
men, gunboats to block access to Belgrade by water, and twenty-two massive
siege guns from a specially built foundry. In Buda, young King Ladislas V
was feuding with John Hunyadi, Hungary’s best commander. In Rome, the
pope proclaimed a crusade. His legate to Buda, Cardinal Carvajal, failed to
settle the quarrel at court; thus magnates loyal to the king, still hostile to
Hunyadi, refused to join in the defense of Belgrade. 16 Yet Carvajal also
brought with him a celebrated preacher, the seventy-year-old Giovanni Ca-
pistrano. Preaching in Italian to speakers of Magyar, German, and South-
Slavic, 17 he recruited a polyglot force strong in numbers if not in soldiering
skills. Meanwhile, Mehmed II’s artillery battered down a section of Bel-
grade’s walls; on the night of July 21/22 he gave orders to storm the breach.
But Hungarian gunboats had broken through the blockade, giving Hunyadi’s
crusaders access to the city, and they helped townsmen push the attackers
back. After the sultan signaled a withdrawal, a sortie led by Capistrano
captured many of his great siege guns. 18 The upshot was that Belgrade re-
mained in Hungarian hands for another sixty-five years, barring an Ottoman
advance up the Danube.
32 Prologue

Bosnia and Herzegovina

Like Serbia under Stefan Dušan, Bosnia had in the fourteenth century a
strong king who governed by his personal authority and not through a net-
work of officials. 19 A weak central government worked to the benefit of
three great families who each controlled a section of the kingdom. 20 In bat-
tles with one another they appealed to outside powers—Sigismund of Hun-
gary, or the Ottoman sancakbeg of Skopje in modern Macedonia. As Hun-
garian influence waned, Ottoman troops took a larger role in Bosnia’s civil
wars, and from about 1428 the kings paid tribute to the sultan. In 1455, Isa-
Beg Ishaković of Skopje occupied the fortress of Hodidjed and laid out
nearby the site for what would become Sarajevo. 21 As the price for fending
off a full-scale attack, King Stefan Thomaš (r. 1443–1461) raised the tribute
to a level that almost equaled crown revenues from Bosnia’s silver mines.
When the king turned to Rome for help, Pope Pius II demanded and got
repressive measures against members of the Bosnian Church, still seen as
heretical by the Vatican. 22 The decision by Stefan Thomaš to ally with
Rome, confirmed by his son, Stefan Thomašević (r. 1461–1463), may have
prompted Mehmed II to decide on an all-out assault. 23 The sultan’s target
was the fortress-town of Bobovac, currently the capital, from which the king
had already fled. Bobovac surrendered on 22 May 1463 after a siege of three
days; by the end of May seventy more fortresses had given their keys to
Ottoman commanders. King Stefan Thomašević was promised that his life
would be spared. But Mehmed had a religious scholar in his camp issue a
fetwa by which the promise was annulled; when the king was beheaded, the
kingdom of Bosnia ceased to exist. 24
Herzegovina—“the land of the duke”—takes its name from a member of
the Vukčić family, one of three jockeying for power in fifteenth-century
Bosnia. 25 In 1403, the king of Hungary staked his claim to Dalmatia by
naming Hrvoje Vukčić as duke (herceg) of a territory centered on the city of
Split (Spalato). His son and successor, Stefan Vukčić Kosača (d. 1466),
rallied to the Ottomans. 26 Yet in the wake of the conquest of Bosnia, his
lands too were occupied; by 1465, Herceg Stefan controlled only two for-
tress-towns, including Herceg Novi on the Bay of Kotor. His son and succes-
sor, the eldest of three brothers, allied by turns with the Ottomans and the
Hungarians. In 1482, he surrendered to the Ottomans his last stronghold,
Herceg Novi. Meanwhile, the youngest son, sent as a hostage to the Porte,
converted to Islam. As Ahmed Beg Hercegović, he enjoyed a distinguished
 Ottoman Expansion in the Balkans, 1453–1499 33

career; many of his descendants occupied important posts in the Ottoman

Balkans.
The Ottoman sancak of Herzegovina had its administrative capital in
Foča, on the upper reaches of the Drina, a river running north to the Danube
watershed. 27 But the sancakbeg resided in Mostar on the Neretva, a river
whose outlet on the Adriatic was controlled by the Ottomans. 28 This choice
of a command post offers a clue to Herzegovina’s role in the life of the
Ottoman Balkans. Whereas Bosnia served year after year as the staging
ground for attacks to the west, Herzegovina was a conduit for the historic
trade to and from the Mediterranean. 29

Hungary

The kingdom of Hungary, although vast in extent, 30 was more strongly gov-
erned that Serbia or Bosnia. To be sure, magnate clans—as many as forty—
had a penchant for expanding their mini-states by force at the expense of
lesser nobles. But Hungary had an effective royal administration and a hier-
archy of diets that at least kept magnates and lesser nobles in regular commu-
nication. 31 It was thus possible for Hunyadi’s son, King Matthias Corvinus
(r. 1458–1490), to harness the military prowess of the aristocracy to his own
purposes. 32 To supplement Hungary’s traditional feudal levy, he hired Bohe-
mian and German mercenaries. To pay their wages he levied new direct taxes
on the peasantry and raised loans from Italian bankers in Hungary. 33 Such
measures were all the more necessary once Bosnia fell to the Ottomans,
giving Corvinus a dangerous enemy on his southern border. 34 Despite Hun-
gary’s past rivalry with Venice, 35 Corvinus understood that the Signoria too
now had added reason to fear the Turks. In September 1463, following papal
mediation, the two powers signed a treaty: Hungary promised an attack into
Bosnia, and Venice would take the offensive in Greece.
Conscious of previous campaigns into Ottoman lands that had met with
defeat, Corvinus waited until the Ottomans had withdrawn most of their
troops from Bosnia. Then, in October 1463, his army captured Jajce on the
Vrbas, another northward-flowing tributary of the Sava; possession of this
important fortress entailed control of the surrounding region. The next year
Mehmed II ordered Bosnia’s sancakbeg to raise twenty thousand men from
nearby provinces and recapture Jajce; Corvinus brought reinforcements and
drove them off. 36 He then took Srebrenica, a center of Bosnia’s main silver-
mining region. 37
34 Prologue

Europe South of the Carpathians, ca. 1480

These successes enabled Corvinus to complete a system of defenses that

protected Hungary for two more generations. The Sava-Danube line was
guarded against Ottoman Bosnia by a chain of fortresses: from east to west,
Krasso-Szöreny, 38 Belgrade, Zemun (on the Danube), and Šabac (on the
Sava). 39 From this point south to the Adriatic, three Croatian fortresses faced
Bosnia’s western border: Knin, Skradin, and Klis. This main line of defense
was shielded by a forward frontier in northern Bosnia, anchored by Jajce and
Srebrenica. North and west of the main line of defense, there was also a
backup chain of strongholds, including Timosoara (Temesvár) in modern
Romania, Petrovaradin in modern Serbia, Bihać in modern Bosnia, 40 and
Senj in Croatia. 41 While fortresses in the kingdom of Hungary were usually
controlled by magnates or nobles, most of those on the frontier had royal
captains, and many had a contingent of mercenaries, seconded by peasant
soldiers—Bosnian or Serb 42 refugees who held land in return for military
service. 43 The most serious Ottoman effort to break open the Sava-Danube
line came in 1471, when Isa-Beg Ishaković, now the sancak of Bosnia,
brought a large force to Šabac, on the right (south) bank of the Sava.
Shielded by an earthen rampart, his workmen built a fortress girt by a stout
wicker wall. Corvinus struck back, though not until 1476. He mobilized sixty
 Ottoman Expansion in the Balkans, 1453–1499 35

thousand men, supported by four hundred large and small cannon, one hun-
dred gunboats, and one thousand carts for victuals and war materiel. After
resisting for thirty-three days, the counter-fortress at Šabac surrendered in
January 1477. 44
The Croatian sector of the forward frontier was more problematic. 45 Here,
Bihać and Knin had royal captains, but Klis was held by a magnate clan, the
Kurjaković, and Senj by their rivals, the Frankopans. Even when Ottoman
raiders attacked into Croatia beyond the Una, in 1468 and again in 1469, the
two clans remained focused on their ongoing feud. In 1470 King Matthias
sent a large force under a seasoned commander to expel the Frankopans from
Senj. This led to a war with the Frankopans, ending only when a second royal
army conquered many of their towns and castles along the Adriatic. 46 The
crown now had a solid position on Croatia’s seashore, blocking Ottoman
forays in this direction. The upper Una was also well guarded—until the end
of the sixteenth century—by royal fortresses at Bihać and Ripac. Down-
stream, however, many castles along the Una were held by nobles who
lacked the resources to maintain strong garrisons. Families that had wealth in
this region—like the Kurjaković and the Frankopans—were purposely tar-
geted by Ottoman raiders. 47 The consequences of a poorly defended Una
frontier were felt beyond Croatia itself, as far as Austria and Venetian Friuli.
The route taken by raiders was so predictable that Austrian envoys accused
Corvinus of giving them free passage: King Matthias “knows the crossings in
Croatia through which [the Ottomans] come.” 48

Venetian Greece and Albania

In 1462, Ottoman commanders in Greece seized the Venetian-held town of

Argos. The Signoria’s decision to retaliate by declaring war—joining forces
with Hungary—seems to have been taken in the context of the international
situation created by the sultan’s conquest of Bosnia in 1463. 49 For this cam-
paign, Venice took the unusual step of raising a major army in its overseas
possessions. The goal was to expand the republic’s holdings in Greece.
Troops under the Marquis of Este recaptured Argos and rebuilt an ancient
six-mile wall across the Isthmus of Corinth, 50 only to abandon it in the face
of an attack by a superior force under the grand vezir. Venetian war galleys
patrolling off the Dardanelles made it difficult for Mehmed II to supply his
army in Greece, but they also provoked him to have a naval arsenal con-
structed on the opposite bank of the Golden Horn, thus laying the founda-
tions for an Ottoman navy. The decisive event of the war came in 1470, when
36 Prologue

the grand vezir landed a large force on the island of Euboea, known to the
Venetians as Negroponte; despite great losses for the besiegers, the fall of
Negroponte marked the end of Venetian sea power in the Aegean.
Attention shifted to the west. Scanderbeg, 51 whose guerilla tactics in the
Albanian mountains had bedeviled Ottoman commanders for two decades,
had finally agreed in 1458 to become the sultan’s vassal. In 1463 he took up
arms again as an ally of Venice. In 1468, an old man, he retired to Italy and
consigned to the republic his two strongholds, the fortress of Kruje and the
city of Shkoder (Scutari). Ottoman forces under the grand vezir failed to
overwhelm Shkoder in 1474 and failed again at Kruje in 1477. At this point
Mehmed II named a new grand vezir and sent more troops. The Signoria was
by now willing to accept terms proposed by the Porte, but the sultan changed
his mind, deciding that more could be gained if his troops kept fighting.
When Kruje fell (June 1478), Skhoder was already under siege. The Venetian
garrison, aided by townsmen, fought off attacks until January 1479, only to
learn that the city they had so well defended was now surrendered by treaty.
Meanwhile, Ottoman raiders made periodic forays into the rural districts of
Venetian towns in Dalmatia, especially Zadar and Šibenik. Venetian officials
introduced compulsory military service in Dalmatia and organized smoke-
signal stations to warn country folk to seek shelter when raiders came. These
measures helped. But with Shkoder under Ottoman rule, the problems they
addressed would grow worse. 52

THE OTTOMAN CAMPAIGN OF ATTRITION

Akinci Raids from Bosnia

Some scholars think the word akinci was originally synonymous with gha-
zi—that is, a holy warrior who raids infidel country and extends the limits of
Islam. Others point out that Ottoman sources use the word in different
ways. 53 In any case, the akinci of the fifteenth century were light-cavalry
units of one hundred men, armed with compound bows, small shields, lances,
and swords. Their commanders often came from Balkan clans whose ances-
tors had long ago converted to Islam, such as the Michaelogli and the
Malkočbegović. 54 Under Mehmed II, their number throughout the empire—
mainly in Balkan or east Anatolian border provinces—is thought to have
reached fifty thousand. Having no wages, the akinci lived from plunder,
cattle stealing, and the taking of captives for ransom or sale; each man led a
 Ottoman Expansion in the Balkans, 1453–1499 37

second horse to carry booty. The best time for raids was during the harvest
season, when men and horses could take what they needed and when rural
society could be maximally disrupted by burning fields and villages.
Historians differ as to whether Kleinkrieg (little war) of this sort was
carried on by orders from on high or at the private initiative of profit-seeking
officials and commanders. 55 But the fact that Bosnia’s provincial governors
participated in or led many of the plunder expeditions of Mehmed II’s reign
supports the idea that Kleinkrieg was part of a larger strategic plan. From
1464 to 1470, Sancakbeg Isa-Beg Ishaković regularly led attacks from Bos-
nia into Lika and Krbava, Croatian districts lying between Bosnia’s southern
border and Venetian Dalmatia. Under Aias Beg (1470–1475) and his succes-
sors, these campaigns of destruction ranged as far as Udine (capital of the
Venetian province of Friuli), Ljubljana (capital of the Austrian duchy of
Carniola), Klagenfurt (capital of the Austrian duchy of Carinthia), and Graz
(capital of the Austrian duchy of Styria). 56 From Sarajevo, these cities were,
respectively, 294 miles, 244 miles, 274 miles, and 264 miles distant. Bos-
nia’s sancaks were known as “akinci sancak-begs,” 57 and, in Bosnia at least,
akinci had to be Muslims. 58 In Christian territory they burned churches and
sacked monasteries, but their objective was to terrify and scatter the rural

Akinci Attacks from Bosnia, Fifteenth Century

38 Prologue

population. In 1499, sancakbeg Skender Paşa is said to have raised two

thousand cavalry in Bosnia simply by having it cried out far and wide that
“all those with good horses should make themselves ready.” 59 The akinci
probably were joined by volunteers (including Christians) eager to share in
the spoils. Whatever their makeup, these expeditionary forces are described
in Western sources as reaching a size that exceeded that of Bosnia’s entire
military establishment. 60 While such estimates are to be treated with caution,
they are not of a different magnitude than those given in Ottoman sources 61;
it seems safe to think that raiding parties could have ten thousand men or
more. The raiders likely included men from nearby sancaks—Smederevo,
Shkoder, and Herzegovina.

Raids into Friuli

Venice expanded into Friuli in 1420 by taking over lands that had been ruled
by the patriarchate of Aquilea. 62 As in other Venetian territories, each town
had its own captain-rector; on military matters they followed the lead of the
captain-rector of Udine, Friuli’s main city. 63 This rudimentary regional coor-
dination served Venice well during the Ottoman war of 1463–1479, when
Friuli was a tempting target for the akinci. 64 Their invasion route lay through
Croatia, down the Sava valley through Austrian Carniola, and then down the
Isonzo/Soča watershed, or over the Postojna Gap. 65 This was how Bosnia’s
Aias Beg reached the gates of Udine in 1472; a more serious raid followed in
1473. In response, Venetian authorities built a line of earthen forts or sconces
from Gorizia (on the upper Isonzo/Soča) to Aquilea, for which the fortress of
Gorizia served as a northern anchor. In 1477 invaders breached the line by
capturing a key bridge at Gorizia and marching down the west bank of the
Isonzo into the Friulian plain. Venice’s commander made things worse by
falling into the trap of a feigned retreat—a classic Ottoman tactic. The raiders
crossed two more rivers, ravaging as they went. In 1478, ‘Alibeg Michaelogli
led a large force of akinci west from Shkoder, where his men were relieved
of responsibility for the siege after Ottoman regulars arrived. They reached
Friuli but then turned north into Habsburg territory after they had seen Ven-
ice’s latest defenses—about 6,500 men remaining stubbornly in their forts
and sconces. The Venetians had evidently learned a valuable lesson. Ottoman
light cavalry could not be compelled to join in the kind of all-out battle for
which European heavy cavalry and tightly massed infantry companies were
designed. The proper strategy, albeit an inglorious one, was to hold fortified
positions, keeping the men in their posts. To be sure, the Isonzo/Soča line
 Ottoman Expansion in the Balkans, 1453–1499 39

was not impermeable. As things turned out, however, Friuli was struck by a
major Ottoman raid only one more time, in 1499. 66
It should be noted, however, that the Venetian Republic had what was
undoubtedly the best-funded and arguably the best-managed military estab-
lishment in Europe. 67 Things were very different in the three Inner Aus-
trian 68 duchies, Carniola, Carinthia, and Styria. While the three provinces
could raise as many as 1,500 cavalry and a larger number of infantry, they
could not do so quickly, and they lacked the resources to build new strong-
holds or to man a defensive line on a permanent basis. In 1479, the imperial
diet at Nuremberg discussed, but did not act on, a proposal to station a
permanent force of six thousand to seven thousand men along the border
between Austrian Carniola and Hungarian Croatia. 69 Decades would pass
before either the Austrian lands or the empire had the capacity to create the
kind of hardened frontier that was already in place in Venetian Friuli.

Raids into Carniola, Styria, and Carinthia

Following Ottoman raids early in the fifteenth century, Carniola was spared
for more than forty years, apparently in deference to a local prince who allied
with the Porte against Hungary’s John Hunyadi. 70 The real time of troubles
began in 1469. Between that year and 1483, there were one or more major
raids into one or more Inner Austrian duchies during twelve of the fifteen
years. 71 In terms of the plunder to be gotten, it was well worthwhile for
akinci from Bosnia to leave Croatia behind and ride on for another two
hundred or three hundred miles to Austrian territory. The pattern of attacks
indicates advance planning. In Carniola, raiders scoured the Sava valley
around Ljubljana in 1470 and west of Ljubljana, toward Kranj, in 1471. In
southern Styria, the environs of Celje were struck in 1471 and again in 1479.
The valley of the Drava—around Ptuj and Maribor—was ravaged in 1475,
1477, and 1483. Akinci reached eastern Carinthia via the Drava in 1473 and
central Carinthia via the Isonzo/Soča in 1478. In 1480, one force hit Carin-
thia, near Salzburg, while another struck up the Mur toward Salzburg. 72 Over
the fifteen years, the raiders spared no fertile valley and never struck the
same area two years in a row.
Indirect evidence suggests that the decisions guiding raids were made at
the Porte. In 1471, Bosnia’s Isa Ishakbegović did not lead his men up the
Sava until after Mehmed II had learned that Frederick III was asking the
imperial diet at Regensburg for a military subsidy against the Ottomans. In
1472, when Frederick III and Matthias Corvinus were at loggerheads, an
40 Prologue

attack into Habsburg lands may have supported the sultan’s hope of opening
negotiations with Hungary. 73 In 1474 and again in 1478, ‘Alibeg Michaelog-
li’s akinci did not set off on their raids to the west until their services were no
longer needed for siege warfare in Albania. 74 In 1475, Carniola’s mounted
men had scored a rare victory in a skirmish in southern Styria, then joined
with troops from Styria and Carinthia to pursue the invaders, only to fall into
a deadly ambush; the Ottoman raiders had apparently been reinforced by
fresh troops sent by the grand vezir. 75
The taking of captives for profit has a long history in the Balkans, 76 and
indeed a much longer history in Europe generally. 77 For Christian as well as
Ottoman raiders, the best prisoners were those of high rank whose kindred
could afford to pay ransom. 78 Both sides also took persons of low status for
sale as slaves in market towns east and west, but in this “lucrative business,”
there is “little doubt that the Ottomans had the initiative.” 79 As to the num-
bers involved, one must be wary of the estimates given by contemporary
Western chroniclers: thirty thousand men, women, and children taken from
Slavonia in 1469; a line of prisoners that took eight hours to pass through in
Styria in 1473; or ten thousand people from Carinthia in 1478. 80 In Venetian
Dalmatia, where local officials often conducted post-campaign censuses to
find out how many people had been taken away, initial estimates were re-
duced by a factor of two or more. 81 A further problem is that the array of
Western texts for the fifteenth century has no counterpart on the Ottoman
side. The slave market near the sancakbeg’s palace in Sarajevo doubtless
contributed to the city’s spectacular growth, 82 but Bosnian archives yield
information only for those slaves who gained freedom by converting to Is-
lam. 83 Finally, history is always written within a field of questions set by the
historian’s world. In the twenty-first century, the taking of Christian slaves
by Bosnian Muslims has to be treated with circumspection. 84 In any case, the
larger issue is the depopulation of the lands affected; in this respect, the
taking of captives will have been far less important than countless decisions
by peasant families—or the noble landlords directing them—to pick up
stakes and move beyond the reach of the akinci. Parts of Croatia proper are
thought to have lost more than half their population because of Ottoman raids
during the 1470s. 85 According to a 1486 record of the holdings of Count
Bernardin Frankopan, patriarch of his clan, only 270 of his 704 villages were
still inhabited. 86 The area along the Una, where local notables could not
guarantee the safety of their peasants, was also hard hit. 87 Over a longer
period, from about 1470 to about 1530, parts of Carniola are also thought to
 Ottoman Expansion in the Balkans, 1453–1499 41

have lost as much as half of their people. 88 Similar declines are reported for
southern Styria, though here people were fleeing not only the Ottomans but
also the Hungarians, who occupied Styria in the 1480s. What all this means
in strategic terms is that the akinci were very good at their work. Years of
raiding into Austria will thus have served the aims of the Ottoman state in
two ways: it kept the akinci gainfully occupied, and it softened up territories
for future acquisition. With expansion to the north of Bosnia precluded by
Corvinus’s defensive line, the easiest line of advance was westward, through
Croatia toward Austria.

A BREATHING SPACE FOR EUROPE

Bayezid II

The succession of Sultan Bayezid II (r. 1481–1512) was contested by his

younger brother Cem (or Jem), who raised troops against him. After losing a
key battle, Cem fled to the island of Rhodes and then spent the rest of his
years at various Christian courts. 89 It was thus Bayezid’s policy to forestall
attack from the West (in support of Cem) by cultivating ties with the main
European powers, some of which did not scruple from using these diplomatic
contacts to rouse Ottoman military ambitions against their Christian foes. 90
At the same time, Bayezid was also very different from his father: he “sought
the company of teachers of Islamic science and philosophy” and “clearly
disliked war.” 91 The Janissary corps might cause trouble if not sent out to
war from time to time, but one could keep them busy without antagonizing
the sultan’s western neighbors. For example, when Matthias Corvinus and
Bayezid signed a non-aggression pact in 1483, Moldova was excluded from
the agreement. Thus Hungary took no offense when Bayezid led the Janissar-
ies on a successful campaign against the Vojvoda of Moldova in 1484. 92
Finally, the real danger to the Ottoman state lay to the east. The annexation
of the south Anatolian emirate of Karaman (1483) made the Ottomans neigh-
bors of lesser Muslim princes who looked for protection either to Istanbul or
to Cairo’s Mamluk sultans. When Bayezid intervened here on behalf of a
client, his Mamluk counterpart responded in force; the intermittent fighting
that followed left the Mamluks in a stronger position. 93 Someday, there
would be a reckoning between the two Islamic powers.
42 Prologue

Rivalry between Austria and Hungary

Since the sultan refrained from campaigning to the west, Hungary and Aus-
tria were at leisure to pursue their long-standing rivalry. This was why Corvi-
nus so readily agreed to a five-year truce offered by Bayezid II in 1483. 94 But
with Corvinus’s death in 1490 without a legitimate heir, 95 the initiative
passed to the Habsburg side. Archduke Maximilian, more adventurous than
his father, was also a capable military commander. With an army of mercen-
ary Landsknechte from south Germany, 96 he reconquered the Austrian prov-
inces lost by his father. Then in 1490 he presented himself as a candidate for
the Hungarian throne as per the treaty of 1463. But the Magyar aristocracy
would not accept a German king. Leading magnates (and the queen-widow)
preferred Wladislas II of Bohemia, who now became king of Hungary as
well. To prevent Wladislas II from reaching Székesfehérvár, Hungary’s coro-
nation city, Maximilian launched an invasion of Hungary. The upshot was a
new treaty concluded at Posonia 97 in 1491: Maximilian and his father, Frede-
rick III, recognized Wladislas II as king on condition that his successor in
Hungary would be a Habsburg. This treaty was not to the liking of Hungary’s
magnates. In return for their acceptance of it in 1492, they extorted conces-
sions from Wladislas II, including the abolition of some taxes that Corvinus
had put in place to support his two lines of frontier fortresses. Meanwhile,
even as royal fiscal officials struggled to maintain Hungary’s defenses, Otto-
man pressure along the southern border was increasing. 98
Maximilian championed the idea of a crusade, and he personally investi-
gated routes for an advance into Ottoman territory. 99 But this was a prince
who set too many goals. For one scholar, “the Turkish question” was “the
great task” of Maximilian’s life; for another, he showed “childish” insou-
ciance about the dangers of Ottoman power. 100 He did at least defend the
Austrian duchies with a vigor and energy never shown by Frederick III. In
1493, when Bosnia’s Yakub Beg came through Croatia to Styria, he was
turned back by Maximilian’s commander, Jakob Sekely, who had some five
thousand men at his disposal. For a counter-strike, Maximilian borrowed
money to raise three mercenary armies, one to guard Vienna and a second to
hold the border between Carniola and Croatia. He himself led the third army
down the Danube toward the Hungarian fortress of Győr, 101 hoping the Hun-
garians would join him. But the Hungarians had no taste for a German-led
crusade, and when it became clear that the Ottomans would not be attacking
Austrian lands that year, Maximilian disbanded his armies. 102
 Ottoman Expansion in the Balkans, 1453–1499 43

In 1495, when Hungary renewed its truce with the Ottomans, Maximilian
signed on as a third party. As King of the Romans 103 and ruler of the Low
Countries by right of his late wife, 104 Maximilian was ready for a great
undertaking. Would it be against the French in Italy 105 or against Venice? 106
In either case he meant to lead a large army across the Alps and so needed
peace on Austria’s eastern borders. As Maximilian dickered with the imperi-
al diet for the funds for an army, he also entertained the first Ottoman ambas-
sador to appear within the empire. In 1498 he signed a separate truce with
Bayezid II, renewed for three years in 1499. 107

Continued Fighting in Croatia

Even under Bayezid II, incursions into Croatia continued, though they in-
volved fewer men than in the 1470s. Croatia’s defenses were again not up to
the task. The 950 light cavalry on the ban’s payroll could not guard a frontier
that stretched for three hundred miles from the Drava south to the Adriat-
ic. 108 Magnates and nobles had their own troops, but they could never “rise
up” (insurgere) in time to confront an invasion head-on. Instead, they “rose
up” after the fact, hoping to intercept the raiders as they recrossed the fron-
tier, slowed down by their booty and their captives. 109 This tactic sometimes
worked. In October 1483, as Bosnian forces returned from Carniola, the ban
laid an ambush at “Zrinski ford” on the Una; in a two-day battle, the enemy
was routed, and all their captives were freed. 110 In 1491, near Udbina, south
and west of the Una, Croatian forces inflicted heavy losses on Bosnian raid-
ers returning from Carniola. 111
Yet the Ottomans did not keep falling victim to the same trick. In Septem-
ber 1493, as Yakub Beg of Bosnia returned from a raid in Styria, the Croa-
tians (with some Styrians) waited at Krbava Polje near Udbina. When the
Ottomans found their way barred, a parley ensued, but talks stalled when
Yakub Beg refused to release his Christian captives. Then the Bosnian san-
cakbeg attacked from an unexpected angle with devastating effect; as many
as thirteen thousand to fifteen thousand were killed or taken prisoner. 112
Many leading families now paid tribute to the sultan to spare their estates
from attack; they also agreed to give Bosnian troops free passage across their
lands. 113
The catastrophe at Krbava Polje in 1493 has been compared to Kosovo
Polje in 1389. But while Serbia had disappeared from the map by 1457,
Croatia would continue to exist, albeit a Croatia greatly truncated by subse-
quent Ottoman conquests. The difference was that Croatia, unlike Serbia,
44 Prologue

was a province of a larger state. In the immediate aftermath, Wladislas II did

little to help, and Croatians looked elsewhere. Senj applied to Pope Alexan-
der VI (r. 1492–1503), who sent appreciable sums. The Croatian Sabor sent
emissaries to the west. Archduke Maximilian had kind words but little else.
In 1498, the imperial diet voted 5,000 Rhine gulden for Croatia, but the
money was never raised. 114 What did help was that Wladislas II in 1496
named an effective commander as co-ban for Croatia: János Corvinus, the
illegitimate son of Matthias Corvinus, who had important holdings in Slavo-
nia as well as Hungary. 115 Ban János devoted himself to fortifying the fron-
tier, and in 1499 he felt strong enough to conclude a two-year truce with
Bosnia’s Skender Paşa, who was then at war with Venice. 116 But when the
sultan concluded peace with Venice in 1503, Ottoman raiders again turned
toward Croatia.

NOTES

1. For the “ghazi thesis,” see Maria Pia Pedani, Dalla frontiere al confine (Venice: Ca’
Foscari/Herder, 2002), 19; Géza Dávid and Pál Fodor, eds., Ottomans, Hungarians, and Habs-
burgs in Central Europe: The Military Confines in the Era of Ottoman Conquest (Leiden: Brill,
2002), xiii. On Ottoman ideas of legitimacy, see Imber, The Ottoman Empire, 115–127, 120
(the quote); and Colin Heywood, “The Frontier in Ottoman History: Old Ideas and New
Myths,” in Daniel Power and Naomi Standen, Frontiers in Question: Eurasian Borderlands,
700–1700 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1999), 228–259.
2. James D. Tracy, “The Background War of the Early Modern Era: Christian and Muslim
States in Contest for Dominion, Trade, and Cultural Preeminence,” in Marguerite Ragnow and
William D. Phillips, eds., Religious Conflict and Accommodation in the Early Modern World
(Minneapolis: Center for Early Modern History, 2011), 9–54; Imber, The Ottoman Empire,
115–127.
3. Mehmed II ruled from 1444 to 1446 and from 1451 to his death in 1481.
4. http://sunnah.org/msaec/articles/Constantinople.htm; Finkel, Osman’s Dream, 52.
5. Robert Mantran, Histoire d’Istanbul (Paris: Fayard, 1996), 196–201.
6. For Arabs and later Turks, Constantinople was Rum. Imber, The Ottoman Empire, 125;
Antony Black, The History of Islamic Political Thought: From the Prophet to the Present
(Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2001), 125.
7. The despotates of Epirus and Morea (the Peloponnesus) in Greece and, in Asia Minor,
Trebizond: Donald M. Nicol, The Last Centuries of Byzantium, 1261–1453 (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1994), 392, 394–412.
8. Halil İnalcik, “Ottoman Methods of Conquest,” Studia Islamica 2 (1954): 103–129; cf.
Bernard Michael Buchmann, Österreich und das Osmanische Reich. Eine bilaterale Geschich-
te (Vienna: University of Vienna Press, 1999), 29; Fine, Late Medieval Balkans, 607; and
Ignacij Voje, Slovenci pod pritiskom turškega nasilja (Ljubljana: Znastveni inštitut Filozofske
fakultete, 1996), 18.
 Ottoman Expansion in the Balkans, 1453–1499 45

9. For this paragraph and the next, see Fine, Late Medieval Balkans, chapters 7–10; and
Josef von Hammer-Purgstall, Geschichte des osmanischen Reiches (2nd ed., 2 vols., Pest: C. A.
Hartleben, 1834–1836), II, 432–435, 447.
10. Fine, Late Medieval Balkans, 345.
11. At Černomen on the River Marica, not far from Edirne: Fine, Late Medieval Balkans,
376–378.
12. Lazar died in battle, and Murad I was assassinated by a Serb who professed to be a
turncoat.
13. A title granted by the Byzantine emperor; a despotēs was a provincial governor. The
Greek term did not have the negative connotation of “despot.”
14. Fine, Late Medieval Balkans, 530–531, 549.
15. The Berislavić.
16. Camil Murşeanu, John Hunyadi, Defender of Christendom (Iasi; Oxford: Center for
Romanian Studies, 2001).
17. Croatian became a literary language in the sixteenth century, Serbian somewhat later.
Italian sources use the term lingua Schiava for dialects of what would be from 1919 the South-
Slavic kingdom, Jugoslavia.
18. Kenneth M. Setton, The Papacy and the Levant, 1204–1571 (4 vols., Philadelphia:
American Philosophical Society, 1976), III, 173–180; Buchmann, Österreich und das Osma-
nische Reich, 48; Norman J. Housley, The Later Crusades, from Lyons to Alcazar, 1274–1580
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 105–106; and Stephen Sprace and Jason Cobb, The
Siege of Belgrade, 1456 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
19. Tvrtko I, r. 1353–1391. For this paragraph and the next, see Fine, Late Medieval
Balkans, 469–480, 584; Noel Malcolm, Bosnia: A Short History (London: Pan Macmillan,
2002), 13–26; Džaja, Konfessionalität und Nationalität, 21–25; and John V. A. Fine, “The
Medieval and Ottoman Roots of Modern Bosnian Society,” in Mark Pinson, ed., The Muslims
of Bosnia-Herzegovina (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), 1–21.
20. The Hratvinic in the west, the Kosača-Vukčić in the south, and the Jablanić in the
northeast.
21. Vedad Biščević, Bosanski namjesnici Osmanskog doba (1463–1878) (Sarajevo: Biblio-
teka Antologia, 2006), 53–62; Zlatar, Zlatna Doba Sarajeva, 25–29.
22. Franciscan preaching, supported by the crown and by many leading nobles, had con-
verted most Bosnian Church members to Catholicism: John V. A. Fine Jr., The Bosnian
Church: A New Interpretation (New York: Columbia University Press, 1975); Malcolm, Bos-
nia: A Short History, 27–42.
23. A suggestion by Fine, Late Medieval Balkans, 484.
24. Hammer-Purgstall, Geschichte des osmanischen Reiches, II, 477–479. Milan Prelog,
Povijest Bosne u Doba Osmanlijske Vlade (2 vols., Sarajevo: J. Studničke, 1912), I, 5, dates
Bosnia’s end to the fall of Jajce in 1528.
25. Above, note 20. For this paragraph, see Fine, Late Medieval Balkans, 578, 586–589.
26. He was Duke of Hum. Medieval Hum was a dependency of Serbia.
27. The Drina enters the Sava before the latter joins the Danube at Belgrade.
28. Moačanin, Turska Hrvatska, 38; Džaja, Konfessionalität und Nationalität, 23; Vjekos-
lav Klaić, Povijest Hrvata od najstarijih vremena do svršetka XIX stoleca (5 vols., reprint,
Zagreb: Nakladni Zavod, 1974), IV, 106.
29. The hub for this trade was Dubrovnik: Tracy, “The Grand Vezir and the Small Repub-
lic.”
30. Embracing not just modern Hungary and Croatia and Slovakia, but also modern Slovak-
ia and parts of Romania, Serbia, Bosnia, and Ukraine.
46 Prologue

31. In diets at the county level, lesser nobles elected men to represent them at the national
diet.
32. Pál Engel, The Realm of St. Stephen: A History of Medieval Hungary, 895–1526
(London, New York: I. B. Tauris, 2001), 278–294, 298–308, and (on the magnates) 342–343.
33. Pray, I, Letter 18, p. 31–32, 12 November 1492 (a still-outstanding debt contracted by
the late king).
34. For this paragraph and the next, see Prelog, Povijest Bosne, 7–9; Ferenc Szakály, “The
Hungarian-Croatian Border Defense System and Its Collapse,” in János M. Bak and Bela K.
Király, eds., From Hunyadi to Rákóczy: War and Society in Late Medieval Hungary (New
York: Columbia University Press, 1982), 141–158, here 142–146; and András Kubinyi, “Die
südliche Grenzlinie am Ende des Mittelalters,” in his Mathias Corvinus. Die Regierung eines
Königreichs im Ostmitteleuropa, 1458–1490 (Herne: Tibor Schäfer, 1999), 188–201.
35. Both had claims to Dalmatia.
36. Engel, The Realm of St. Stephen, 301 (cf. 286, 291: his father, John Hunyadi, led a
successful campaign into Ottoman territory in 1443/1444 but then suffered a serious defeat at
Kosovo Polje in 1448). Biščević, Bosanski namjesnici, 53.
37. Srebra is the South-Slavic word for silver.
38. East of this point, the southern arc of the Carpathian Mountains (also known as the
Transylvanian Alps) separated Hungarian Transylvania from Wallachia, an Ottoman tributary
state.
39. There was a gap in the line at Smederevo, but when Ottoman raiding parties crossed
here in large numbers they were met and defeated by the Hungarians. Klaić, Povijest Hrvata,
IV, 127, 136–137; Hammer-Purgstall, Geschichte des osmanischen Reiches, II, 521, 528,
548–549, 625–626.
40. Part of Croatia until its conquest by the Bosnian-Ottoman forces in 1592.
41. Géza Pálffy, “The Origins and Development of the Border Defence System against the
Ottoman Empire in Hungary,” in Géza Dávid and Pál Fodor, eds., Ottomans, Hungarians, and
Habsburgs in Central Europe: The Military Confines in the Era of Ottoman Conquest (Leiden:
Brill, 2000), 3–63, here 8–12.
42. The common term in the sources is Rascian, after Rascia, once the heartland of the
kingdom of Serbia.
43. Bracewell, The Uskoks of Senj, 40.
44. Klaić, Povijest Hrvata, IV, 105, 119–123.
45. A contrast made by Jurković, “Turska opasnost i Hrvatski velikaši.”
46. Klaić, Povijest Hrvata, IV, 95–118; Jurković, “Turska opasnost i Hrvatski velikaši,” 77.
The commander was Blaise Magyar.
47. Borislav Grgin, “The Ottoman Influence on Croatia in the Second Half of the Fifteenth
Century,” Povijesni prilozi 23 (2002): 87–104, here 91.
48. Chmel, Aktenstücke und Briefe zur Geschichte des Hauses Habsburg, vol. II, doc. V,
dated 3 September 1476. Hammer-Purgstall, Geschichte des osmanischen Reiches, II, 521, 528,
548–549, 625–626; Prelog, Povijest Bosne, 17. In 1480, while at war with Emperor Frederick
III, Corvinus allowed Da’ud Beg to pass through Croatia toward Austria. Cf. Engel, The Realm
of St. Stephen, 307.
49. For this paragraph and the next, see Mallet and Hale, The Military Organization of a
Renaissance State, 45–50; Finkel, Osman’s Dream, 63–64, 68–69; Setton, The Papacy and the
Levant, III, 247–248, 303, 328; and Hammer-Purgstall, Geschichte des osmanischen Reiches,
II, 482–485, 494–495, 515–516, 522–524, 532–537.
50. The so-called Hexamilion, first built in the late fifth century AD.
 Ottoman Expansion in the Balkans, 1453–1499 47

51. George Kastrioti. See Harry Hodgkinson, Scanderbeg: From Ottoman Captive to Alba-
nian Hero (New York: I. B. Tauris, 2005).
52. Bogumil Hrabak, “Turske provale i osvajanja na području današnje severne Dalmacije
do sredine XVI stoleča,” Radovi 19 (1986): 69–101.
53. For this paragraph, see Rhoads Murphey, Ottoman Warfare, 1500–1700 (New Bruns-
wick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1999), 35; “akinci” in Wikipedia Deutsch; Pedani, Dalla
frontiere al confine, 14–15; and Maria Pia Pedani, “The Border from an Ottoman Point of
View,” in Egidio Ivetic and Drago Roksandić, Tolerance and Intolerance on the Triplex Con-
finium, Approaching “the Other” on the Borderlands: Eastern Adriatic and Beyond (Padua:
Editrice Universita di Padova, 2007), 195–214, here 200–201.
54. Cf. Hammer-Purgstall, Geschichte des osmanischen Reiches, II, 548–549, 640.
55. Wiesflecker, Kaiser Maximilian I, II, 157: Kleinkrieg continued during Maximilian’s
truce with the Ottomans in the 1490s, for it was, “as always with the Ottomans, removed from
the sultan’s control”; Ralf C. Müller, “Der umworbene Erbfeind: Habsburgische Diplomatie an
der Hohen Pforte vom Regierungsantritt Maximilians I bis zum ‘Langen Türkenkrieg’—Ein
Entwurf,” in Marlene Kurz, Martin Scheutz, Karl Vocelka, and Thomas Winkelbauer, eds., Das
Osmanische Reich und die Habsburgermonarchie (Vienna/Munich: Oldenburg, 2005),
252–279, here 255: Europeans of the era wrongly believed that the Porte was unable to control
raiding by the akinci.
56. Biščević, Bosanski namjesnici, 61–62, 68–71.
57. Zlatar, Zlatna Doba Sarajeva, 83.
58. Moačanin, Turska Hrvata, 25. Moačanin suggests (p. 103) that a desire to join the ranks
of the akinci and share the spoils was one of the reasons for massive conversions to Islam in
sixteenth-century Bosnia.
59. Sanudo, Diarii, II, 898–900, entry for July 1499. Sanudo quotes from information that
the Venetian rector of Šibenik obtained by torture from a Bosnian captive.
60. Leopold Toifl and Hildegard Leitgeb, Die Türkeneinfälle in der Steiermark und in
Kärnten vom 15en bis 17en Jahrhundert = Militärhistorische Schriftenreihe, Heft 64 (Vienna:
Heeresgeschichtliches Museum, 1991), 5. Cf. Džaja, Konfessionalität und Nationalität, 36:
according to two estimates for 1493, Sancakbeg Jakub Beg then had about four thousand men
under his command.
61. Toifl and Leitgeb, Türkeneinfälle, 9: the force that crossed the Sava into Carniola in
August 1478 “allegedly” had thirty thousand men; cf. Hammer-Purgstall, Geschichte des osma-
nischen Reiches, II, 519–520.
62. The patriarchs also claimed overlordship over the county of Gorizia on the upper
Isonzo/Soča, a claim that the Habsburgs disputed and eventually resolved in their favor when
the last count willed his lands to Emperor Maximilian I in 1500: Aleksander Panjek, Terra di
Confine. Agricolture e traffici tra le Alpi e l’Adriatico: La Contea di Gorizia nel Seicento
(Gorizia: Editioni della Laguna, 2002), 21–23. I thank Prof. Panjek for sending me a copy of
his book.
63. See the discussion of the 1499–1503 Veneto-Ottoman war in chapter 1.
64. For this paragraph, see Prelog, Povijest Bosne, 14; Pedani, Dalla frontiere al confine,
14; Hammer-Purgstall, Geschichte des osmanischen Reiches, II, 533, 543–544; and Mallett and
Hale, Military Organization of a Renaissance State, 48–50.
65. On the Postojna Gap (Razdrto) as one of the classic invasion routes into Italy, see Oto
Luthar, The Land Between: A History of Slovenia (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2008), 76,
81.
48 Prologue

66. Chapter 1, note 72. For Venetian fears in 1529, see Elizabeth G. Gleason, “Confronting
New Realities: Venice and the Peace of Bologna, 1530,” in Martin and Romano, Venice
Reconsidered, 168–184, here 182n24.
67. This is the case made by Mallet and Hale, Military Organization of a Renaissance State.
68. As “Inner Austria,” the three duchies were ruled by a junior branch of the Habsburg line
(1564–1637). The term is sometimes used more widely, e.g., Niederstätter, Österreichische
Geschichte, 221.
69. Toifl and Leitgeb, Die Türkeneinfälle in der Steiermark und in Kärnten, 8.
70. Voje, Slovenci pod pritiskom turškega nasilja, 18–20 (Duke Ulrich II of Celje).
71. 1469, 1471, 1472, 1473, 1473, 1475, 1476, 1477, 1478, 1479, 1480, and 1483: Voje,
Slovenci pod pritiskom turškega nasilja, 22–30; Toifl and Leitgeb, Die Türkeneinfälle in der
Steiermark und in Kärnten, 6–10.
72. Reference as in note 52.
73. Toifl and Leitgeb, Die Türkeneinfälle in der Steiermark und in Kärnten, 6; Buchmann,
Österreich und das Osmanische Reich, 49.
74. Hammer-Purgstall, Geschichte des osmanischen Reiches, II, 522–523, 543–544.
75. Toifl and Leitgeb, Die Türkeneinfälle in der Steiermark und in Kärnten, 7; Voje,
Slovenci pod pritiskom turškega nasilja, 25; Hammer-Purgstall, Geschichte des osmanischen
Reiches, II, 529.
76. In 1416, at the behest of Bosnian nobles, whose peasants were being taken, Dubrovnik
prohibited the sale of slaves: Fine, Late Medieval Balkans, 459–460.
77. See the definition of the Indo-European root kemb- in Calvert Watkins, The American
Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots (Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 2011), xxvii.
78. Géza Dávid and Pál Fodor, eds., Ransom Slavery along the Ottoman Border: Early
Fifteenth–Early Eighteenth Centuries (Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2007).
79. Džaja, Konfessionalität und Nationalität, 53.
80. Hammer-Purgstall, Geschichte des osmanischen Reiches, II, 494, 521, 543–544.
81. Examples from Venetian sources are given in the following chapter.
82. Mudry, Histoire de la Bosnie-Herzégovine, 68: Sarajevo had fifty thousand people by
1650.
83. Zlatar, Zlatna Doba Sarajeva, 111–116; cf. Džaja, Konfessionalität und Nationalität,
53: Sarajevo was the center of the Ottoman–Balkan slave trade.
84. Simoniti, Vojaška organizacija na Slovenskem v 16. Stoletju, 13: “Concerning the
problem of the number of Christians captured or killed by the Turks, this is not the time for a
satisfactorily professional discussion” (my translation).
85. Bracewell, The Uskoks of Senj, 39.
86. Jurković, “Turska opasnost i Hrvatski velikaši,” 72.
87. Moačanin, Turska Hrvata, 95.
88. Simoniti, Vojaška organizacija na Slovenskem, 12.
89. For this paragraph, see Imber, The Ottoman Empire, 37–44, and Finkel, Osman’s
Dream, 81–102.
90. In 1479, when Venice feared attack from Naples, the bailo intimated to the sultan—
rightful emperor of Rum—that Otranto and Tarento had once belonged to the Eastern Roman
Empire. Otranto was held by the Turks from 1480 to 1481: Nancy Bisaha, Creating East and
West: Renaissance Humanists and the Ottoman Turks (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylva-
nia Press, 2004), 75.
91. Finkel, Osman’s Dream, 81; Imber, The Ottoman Empire, 37.
92. Hammer-Purgstall, Geschichte des osmanischen Reiches, II, 629.
93. Finkel, Osman’s Dream, 90–92.
 Ottoman Expansion in the Balkans, 1453–1499 49

94. Wiesflecker, Maximilian I, II, 275.

95. His illegitimate son, János Corvinus (1473–1504), failed to gain recognition as king.
96. Landsknechte (“rural soldiers”) were well-armed mercenaries who fought in units of
three hundred to four hundred men, called banners. Wiesflecker, Maximilian I, II, 284; this was
the first large-scale recruitment of Landsknechte.
97. The Latin name; Bratislava is a modern coinage.
98. Wiesflecker, Maximilian I, II, 284–303; Fine, Late Medieval Balkans, 592–594.
99. Wiesflecker, Maximilian I, II, 347, 400.
100. Wiesflecker, Maximilian I, 152; Müller, “Der umworbene Erbfeind,” 254.
101. The German name is Raab.
102. Wiesflecker, Maximilian I, I, 356–358; Klaić, Povijest Hrvata, IV, 228–237; Biščević,
Bosanski namjesnici, 75–76.
103. Frederick III had died in 1493.
104. Mary of Burgundy (d. 1482) was the heiress of Duke Charles the Bold (d. 1477), who
had amassed a complex of territories comprising most of the modern Benelux countries. The
son and heir of Maximilian and Mary was Archduke Philip the Fair of Burgundy (d. 1504); his
son and heir was Emperor Charles V.
105. The so-called Wars of Italy began in 1494, when France’s King Charles VIII marched
down through the peninsula and occupied the kingdom of Naples.
106. Both Austria and Venice claimed territory along the Soča/Isonzo: above, note 62.
107. Wiesflecker, Maximilian I, II, 154–159.
108. Jurković, “Turska opasnost i Hrvatski velikaši,” 70.
109. Grgin, “The Ottoman Influence on Croatia in the Second Half of the Fifteenth Century,”
90. Latin sources use “insurgere.”
110. Klaić, Povijest Hrvata, IV, 164–167; Prelog, Povijest Bosne, 19–21.
111. Klaić, Povijest Hrvata, IV, 226; Biščević, Bosanski namjesnici, 74.
112. Klaić, Povijest Hrvata, IV, 228–234; Prelog, Povijest Bosne, 21; Hammer-Purgstall,
Geschichte des osmanischen Reiches, II, 641–642.
113. Fine, Late Medieval Balkans, 593; Klaić, Povijest Hrvata, IV, 238.
114. Klaić, Povijest Hrvata, IV, 236–237; Wiesflecker, Maximilian I, II, 158; Hammer-
Purgstall, Geschichte des osmanischen Reiches, II, 643.
115. Klaić, Povijest Hrvata, IV, 238–239; in northern Slavonia, he held Rokonok, Medved-
grad, and Lukavec.
116. Klaić, Povijest Hrvata, IV, 244–250; Prelog, Povijest Bosne, 23.
 Chapter One

Hungary and Venice Defeated,

1499–1526

As of 1500, two Christian frontier states seemed capable of withstanding the

Ottomans, Hungary and Venice. This chapter recounts how both suffered
defeat. Venice not only accepted (1503) a treaty of peace that entailed impor-
tant territorial losses, but it also began to see the Porte as a potential ally
against European powers covetous of Venetian possessions in Italy. Mean-
while, during the final decades of the Jagiellonian rule in Hungary, the king-
dom’s finances and its military preparedness deteriorated. Corvinus’s defen-
sive line was cracked open by the Ottoman conquest of Belgrade in 1521. At
Mohács in 1526, Hungary lost half its army, and the king himself drowned
while trying to escape. At this point, the only major state left standing in the
way of an Ottoman advance toward Europe’s German heartland was Habs-
burg Austria.

OTTOMAN BOSNIA, 1499–1526

Ottoman Imperial Strategy

From about 1500 the Porte looked anxiously to eastern Anatolia, where
Shi’ite warrior clans known as kizilbaş (“heads”) 1 united behind Shah
Isma’il I, founder of Iran’s Safavid dynasty (r. 1501–1524). 2 Bayezid II
largely ignored the problem, rousing the ire of Prince Selim, the most warlike
of his sons. Meanwhile, the sultan kept peace with Christian powers. A treaty
with Hungary that expired in 1498 was renewed in 1503 and again in 1510
51
52 Chapter 1

and 1511, not long before Bayezid was overthrown by Prince Selim (April
1512). 3 Multi-year truces with the Holy Roman Empire were signed in 1498
and again in 1504. Emperor Maximilian I (r. 1495–1519) often talked of a
crusade against the infidels, but during his campaigns against Venice
(1508–1517) he hoped to gain the sultan as an ally. Imperial diplomats
traveled to Sarajevo in 1504 and 1510 to solicit an invasion of Dalmatia from
Bosnia. 4
The only war that Bayezid launched in the West was against Venice. The
casus belli is not clear, but Venetian Cyprus had refused to give shelter to
storm-tossed Ottoman merchantmen. Also, the sultan’s war fleet lost face
when five Venetian galleys sank a large and well-armed Ottoman vessel with
150 men on board. 5 In any case, Venice’s bailo reported in December 1498
that war galleys were under construction at the Ottoman arsenal, though he
could not find out against whom they would sail. 6 Bayezid and his divan
chose their objective well: they would divest Venice of its remaining harbors
in mainland Greece, including Lepanto (Naupaktos) on the Gulf of Corinth
and the well-fortified port of Methoni (Modon) at the southern tip of the
Peloponnesus. The armada that sailed in June was for the first time large
enough to confront Venice’s fleet. Meanwhile, Bayezid and his army
marched overland toward Lepanto. When the fleets engaged off Navarino in
August 1499, Venice’s commander failed to act decisively, and Lepanto was
lost. In 1500 Methoni was the target of a joint campaign across land and sea.
As the fleets met off Navarino in July, the Ottomans again had the best of
things and proceeded to occupy Methoni. Later that year Spanish troops from
Naples raised the banner of St. Mark over the island of Cephalonia, Venice’s
only success in the battle for good harbors. A secretary sent to the Porte in
September 1502 brought back in April 1503 an inglorious peace. 7
From 1499 through 1501, the fighting at sea was accompanied by nearly
continuous attacks from Bosnia and Herzegovina into the rural “counties” 8
of Venice’s Dalmatian cities. That this theater of the war was of less impor-
tance for the Ottomans is clear from the men deployed. The four thousand
troops kept in Bosnia “for defense” 9 would have included the Janissary in-
fantry, paid four times a year, and the sipahi cavalry. These regular units
joined in campaigns of conquest. 10 But raids were typically entrusted to
irregulars, who fought for a share of the booty. Over the course of the six-
teenth century, the akinci who filled this role under Mehmed II were relegat-
ed to auxiliary duty; with their own hereditary commanders, they did not
always respect the army’s chain of command. In their stead, Balkan sancak-
 Hungary and Venice Defeated, 1499–1526 53

begs created a volunteer light cavalry, the so-called azabs, whose ranks may
have included Christians. 11 Venetian sources indicate that the Ottomans of-
ten began a raid by sending out martolossi—Vlach units that rode under their
own commanders. 12 The main raiding forces that followed were led by san-
cakbegs or their subordinates, following written orders that were not opened
until the troops had reached a certain point. 13 On some occasions, the raiders,
probably azabs, 14 are described as volunteers who reported to muster sites
after a sancakbeg had issued a call for “all who wish to make a profit” or “all
who have good horses.” 15 They seldom took the trouble to drag artillery
down the passes into the Dalmatian plain, 16 and they conquered no territo-
ry. 17 Their aim was to harass enemy country and make Venice more willing
to sue for peace.
Selim I (r. 1512–1520) overthrew his father in order to pursue more
vigorously the war against the kizilbaş. He first had to deal with an older
brother who opposed his seizure of the throne. 18 Hence it was not until spring
1514 that Selim led his army across the Bosporus for the long march to the
Iranian frontier, more than eight hundred miles to the east. 19 Since religious
justification was needed for a war against Muslims, the sultan arranged for
promulgation of a judicial opinion: his Shi’ite foes were not true Muslims but
“unbelievers and heretics.” At Chaldoran, northeast of Lake Van, Isma’il’s
eighty thousand mounted archers were decimated by the concentrated fire-
power of the Ottoman center, where twelve thousand Janissary musketeers
formed around a wagon fort bristling with artillery (23 August 1514). 20 In
June 1515, Selim moved south to occupy lands bordering on the Syrian
territory of the Cairo-based Mamluk Empire. In 1516 he again led his army
across the Bosporus, having previously arranged for a second judicial opin-
ion. The Mamluks were, like the Ottomans, Sunni Muslims, but in light of
their assistance to the Safavids, it was decided that “who aids a heretic is
himself a heretic.” Near Aleppo, a second great Muslim army learned a bitter
lesson from Ottoman firepower (24 August 1516). But Syria could not be
held so long as the Mamluks ruled Egypt. In January 1517 the Ottomans
defeated their rivals near Cairo. In March, the last Mamluk sultan was exe-
cuted. 21
The sobriquet “Conqueror” 22 was already attached to Mehmed II. But
Selim I subjected far more territory to Ottoman authority than any of his
predecessors. As ruler of the Muslim world from Libya to Mecca, 23 and from
Bosnia to the Iranian border, he gave new meaning to the Ottoman claim that
the sultan was Islam’s Rightly Guided Caliph. As he marched toward Cairo,
54 Chapter 1

Ottoman war galleys were already patrolling the Red Sea, aiming to thwart
the penetration of this Muslim lake by the infidel Portuguese. In keeping with
Selim’s status as “world conqueror,” 24 his masters of protocol appropriated a
ritual dating from ancient Persia’s Achaemenid dynasty. From 1519, Euro-
pean envoys were carried at the arms before the sultan, to kneel before the
throne and kiss his hand. This revival of the ancient practice was first re-
ported by a Venetian ambassador sent to Selim’s court in Cairo. 25
In more practical terms, Ottoman rule in Egypt created the basis for a
strategic partnership with Venice. During the fifteenth century, Asian spices
for the European market came through Alexandria, where Venice’s merchant
colony negotiated contracts with officials of the Mamluk spice monopoly.
From about 1500, Portugal’s Estado da India began taking over the role of
supplying Europe with spices. The Mamluks promised to remedy things, but
the war fleet they sent to Gujarat was defeated by the Portuguese (1508). The
Ottomans managed things better. First, they freed the spice trade from the
trammels of a Mamluk state monopoly. Second, while they too failed to
defeat the Portuguese off the coast of India, they did secure control of the
Red Sea 26 and thus provided safe harbor for Muslim shippers who knew how
to elude Portuguese patrols in the Indian Ocean. The change in patterns of
trade was not immediately visible, but by about 1560, Venice was again
queen of the European spice trade, and large sums flowed from Alexandria’s
customs house to the Ottoman treasury. 27
Suleyman the Lawgiver 28 (r. 1520–1566) sought conquests in the West to
complement his father’s achievements in the East. In 1522, his armada of
four hundred sail landed approximately one hundred thousand men on
Rhodes, the island fortress held since the time of the Crusades by the Knights
Hospitaler of St. John. After a siege of 145 days, Suleyman raised the flag for
negotiations, and the Knights agreed to an honorable surrender. 29 This victo-
ry, added to the previous capture of Methoni and Lepanto, left the Ottomans
dominant in the eastern Mediterranean, save for Venetian Cyprus and Crete.
Suleyman’s success in Hungary was to be even more of a shock to Christian
Europe. According to Ottoman documents of 1521 and 1526, the decision to
probe Hungary’s Sava frontier was taken in the fall of 1520, soon after
Suleyman acceded to the throne. 30 The campaign was not especially well
organized, yet its results were beyond expectation. While Suleyman laid
siege to Šabac, a fortress on the Sava, his grand vezir managed to encircle
Belgrade, whereupon he was joined by the sultan and the main body of the
 Hungary and Venice Defeated, 1499–1526 55

army. After a full-scale siege of only seven days, the proud anchor fortress of
Matthias Corvinus’s Danube–Sava line surrendered (29 August 1521). 31
In the next few years, there were attacks north into Hungary and west into
Croatia that will be discussed below. In 1524 Suleyman offered peace to
Hungary, albeit with the proviso that his armies would have free passage for
attacks into Habsburg territory. King Louis II Jagiello (1516–1526) refused
to agree. 32 Because of this rejection, or because he planned to attack in any
case, 33 Suleyman invaded again in 1526, leading eighty thousand men up the
Danube. At Mohács, south of Buda, a Hungarian force of twenty-five thou-
sand launched a disastrous charge (29 August 1526). Some sixteen thousand
Hungarian troops perished, and Louis II drowned while trying to escape. 34
As his engineers erected a seven-kilometer wooden bridge near Osijek to
facilitate passage across the Sava marshlands, 35 the sultan briefly occupied
Buda. By the Ottoman law of conquest, the fact that he had defeated Louis II
in open battle made him king of Hungary. 36 Europeans, slow to grasp this
claim, would have many decades to digest its implications.

Bosnia as an Ottoman Province

Since Bosnia was above all a military province, 37 the subordinate officials
who counted for most were the district military commanders, the vojvods. 38
This was probably the reason that its European neighbors saw Bosnia as a
dangerous place during the absence of a sancakbeg. In 1520, during an
interregnum in Bosnia, Zadar’s rectors could not find anyone to carry a
message to Bosnia, “for they say this would be going to a certain death.” 39
When the Dalmatian countryside was raided soon thereafter, the rectors
traced the attack to four vojvods who allegedly intended to “make a profit
while we can,” before a new sancakbeg came. 40 In any case, public order
would have suffered from the fact that many sancaks served only a year or
less. 41 But three men who served long terms made a mark, by their building
projects 42 and by their stewardship of Ottoman military power: Skender Paşa
(1498–1504), Firuz Beg (1505–1512), and Ghazi Husrev Beg (1521–1525,
1526–1534, 1536–1541).
Skender Paşa (or Skender Beg) was by sixteenth-century standards an old
man when he entered on his third term in Bosnia. 43 Venetian officials ex-
tracted from a captured Ottoman soldier a statement that Skender Paşa was
“a Turk, like his father,” but it seems his family was of Slavic or Greek
origin. 44 His close ties to the Porte are indicated by the fact that when a
particularly unwelcome bit of news came, he chose to carry it to the capital
56 Chapter 1

himself. 45 In keeping with the sultan’s policy toward Hungary, the sancak-
beg sought, at least initially, to nurture good relations with his neighbor, Ban
János Corvinus of Croatia. 46 On the other hand, Venetians thought that he
took personal satisfaction from leading the campaign against Dalmatia be-
cause of an old grievance against the republic. 47 The rector of Šibenik re-
ported that the sultan had given Dalmatia to Skender Paşa “as a gift,” 48 but
this claim is refuted by the fact that he made no serious effort to conquer
territory during the war; for example, he did not bring artillery against the
weak but strategic fortress of Vrana in the contado of Zadar as Venetian
officials feared he would. 49 Leaving his regulars behind to defend Bosnia,
Skender Beg raised volunteers for his raids, sometimes from local peasants. 50
He coordinated such operations with the sancaks of neighboring provinces,
and on one occasion he was reported to have several of them under his
command. 51 One Venetian observer complained bitterly of the huge sums
that “this devil Skender” had amassed from “souls taken off into captivity.” 52
Once peace was concluded, the rector of Trogir circulated a hopeful re-
port that Skender would now be dismissed by the sultan “because of his
many robberies.” 53 Instead, he remained in office and adapted to the shift in
Ottoman policy; for example, he promised that Venetian merchants would
have an escort through Bosnia if they let him know of their coming. 54 In
October 1504, when the aged Skender was afflicted with a “tremor,” Venice
was asked for a physician. Gabriele Zerbi, a distinguished professor of medi-
cine at the University of Padua, was sent off with a salary rich enough to
offset a man’s fears. But the last act of the story suggests that Bosnia’s
military elite did not share in the Porte’s newfound friendship for Venice.
When Skender died in December, notwithstanding Zerbi’s ministrations, his
hosts expressed their displeasure by having the unfortunate physician “sawed
in half.” 55
Firuz Beg was remembered in Dubrovnik as a man who liked a good
glass of Malvasia. The city-republic sent bricklayers and other craftsmen to
help in the construction of baths and other public works that he attached to
his religious endowments (vakufs). 56 With regard to Dalmatia, Firuz Beg
kept the sultan’s peace with Venice. He tolerated occasional raids by the
martolossi, who lived from plunder, but not by regular troops. In 1507, when
two vojvods violated the peace, the sancakbeg sent them to Istanbul in
chains. 57 Since Bayezid II also had a treaty of peace with Hungary during
these years, there would not have been much for Bosnia’s military establish-
ment to do, and one can imagine the men becoming restless. When Maximil-
 Hungary and Venice Defeated, 1499–1526 57

ian I began a war against Venice that was to last for a decade (1508–1517),
both sides looked to Bosnia as a potential recruiting ground for light cavalry.
In 1510, Firuz Beg sent emissaries to Venice with an offer to hire out “ten
thousand Turks” for military service, all of them “slaves” of the sultan, and it
seems the ensuing negotiations had some result. 58 Meanwhile, the emperor
dispatched an envoy to Sarajevo to propose a Habsburg-Ottoman alliance in
which Firuz Beg would attack Dalmatia; doubtless acting as instructed, the
sancakbeg sent him on to the sultan’s court at Edirne, where he achieved
nothing. 59 In 1512, the accession of the warlike Selim I seems to have had
repercussions in Bosnia. In April or May of that year, Firuz Beg launched a
major raid across the Una into Croatia. In the fall, his troops forced the
surrender of Srebrenica, an important Hungarian outpost in northern Bos-
nia. 60 Until now, this fortress had blocked possible attacks down the Drina to
the Sava.
Husrev Beg was part of the Ottoman inner circle. His father, a convert
from Herzegovina, rose to high office as a protégé of grand vezir Ahmed
Paşa Hercegović and was given the honor of marrying one of Bayezid II’s
daughters. Sent to the Porte by his widowed mother, the young Husrev Beg
was befriended by his uncle, the sultan’s second son. As sancakbeg of Sme-
derevo, he distinguished himself in the fighting around Belgrade in 1521, for
which he was given the sobriquet “Ghazi.” 61 Transferred to Bosnia in Sep-
tember 1521, he formed raider units of a new type, the so-called delis (“cra-
zies”); the men were all Muslims, in many cases converts, and the fact that
they made up the sancakbeg’s personal retinue made them amenable to disci-
pline. 62 In March or April 1522 he led a quick strike through Croatia into
Carniola. 63 But there were bigger fish to fry. Troops from Bosnia and Her-
zegovina had previously made probes toward Knin and Skradin on the Krka
River, above the Venetian port of Šibenik. In June 1522, both towns surren-
dered to a joint Bosnian-Herzegovinan siege army. 64 Bosnia’s sancak stayed
on a while to make sure Skradin was properly fortified. 65 He made further
conquests the next year in the Lika region, west of the Krka. 66
Since Ghazi Husrev Beg did not permit reprisals against the burghers of
Knin and Skradin, 67 his men were denied the satisfaction of booty. Then in
June 1524 he led a large force across Croatia to Metlika in Styria; unable to
force a surrender of the citadel, they burned villages in the area and took off a
reported four thousand captives. 68 The next major target was Jajce, anchor
fortress of the Hungarian position in northern Bosnia. According to a Croa-
tian commander, Suleyman threatened Ghazi Husrev Beg with loss of his
58 Chapter 1

post if he did not capture this critical fortress. 69 But, apparently unwilling to
risk the loss of precious artillery, 70 the sultan would not allow more than a
few siege guns to be trundled out along difficult mountain tracks; Jajce must
be forced into submission the hard way, by cutting off its supplies. With help
from Herzegovina, Ghazi Husrev Beg managed to block all routes into Jajce
by late 1524. He was, however, not able to prevent the breakthrough in June
1525 of a good-sized Hungarian relief force. 71 Though he did in fact lose his
post for a time, this setback was just a bump along the road of a long career.
In 1526, again the sancak of Bosnia, Ghazi Husrev Beg led a contingent of
three thousand cavalry in the sultan’s great victory at Mohács; in 1528, his
forces conquered Jajce.

VENETIAN DALMATIA, 1499–1526

Strategic Priorities of the Venetian Republic

In the aftermath of French invasions of Italy in 1494 and 1498, Venice

aligned itself with France’s foes; for example, it supported Pisa’s revolt
against Florence, hoping to pry Florence away from its French alliance. But
when war with the Ottomans loomed in 1499, the republic limited its com-
mitments in Italy by backing the likely winner: Venice would help the
French conquer the duchy of Milan in return for territorial concessions north
of Milan. The government thus concentrated its forces for a thrust toward
Milan, ignoring warnings of an Ottoman attack through Croatia. As things
turned out, France’s conquest of Milan in 1499 did create a breathing space
in the Italian wars, during which Venice could devote its resources to the war
in Greece and at sea. But grand strategy had a price. As Milan surrendered
and Venetian troops started moving back toward their positions in Friuli,
Skender Paşa’s raiders broke through defenses on the Isonzo to inflict “ap-
palling” suffering on Friuli’s rural population. 72
Both Maximilian I and Pope Julius II (r. 1503–1513) begrudged Venice
its recent territorial gains. So did the now-Spanish government of Naples 73 as
well as two regional powers in Lombardy, the Marquis of Mantua and the
Duke of Ferrara. Thus while France would control Milan from 1499 to 1512,
the Signoria’s French alliance made Venice wholly dependent on a single
ally, and this ally was not wholly reliable. France’s Louis XII (r. 1498–1512)
was receptive to suggestions that he, along with others, might enlarge his
dominions at Venice’s expense. When France joined in the League of Cam-
 Hungary and Venice Defeated, 1499–1526 59

brai (December 1508), meant to make the republic disgorge all of its con-
quests over the last eighty years, Venice faced its greatest crisis. After a
decisive victory by the allies in May 1509, Venice lost all of Terraferma,
save for Treviso and some villages on the lagoon. 74 But the patrician govern-
ment now proved its mettle. Mercenary generals on the state payroll sent out
recruiters to the lands of friendly rulers, including the sultan. Although the
Council of Ten blocked a Senate proposal to ask the Porte for massive
assistance, at least one contingent of Ottoman light cavalry crossed from
Albania. 75 To support large mercenary armies, new ways were found to levy
forced loans on wealthy citizens. 76 Venetian diplomats detached Pope Julius
from the League of Cambrai by allowing him to reclaim Romagna for the
Papal States. Finally, Venice had ruled its subject towns with a light hand;
burghers in Terraferma were thus glad to see the banner of St. Mark return.
French troops, briefly ejected from Milan, soon returned. King Francis I (r.
1515–1547) inaugurated his reign with a great victory at Marignano. Mean-
while, in the east and north, the armies of Venice and of Maximilian I
continued their duel up and down the Isonzo and back and forth across
Lombardy, Friuli, and Istria. Peace was finally declared in 1517, with no loss
of major possessions on either side. Venice kept Verona, while the Austrians
kept Gorizia and Gradisca (both on the Isonzo) and Rijeka (Fiume) on the
Adriatic. 77 During the war, Venice’s military engineers devised massive de-
fense works of a new style to make key cities of Terraferma impervious to
artillery bombardment. The first-ever “bastion trace” or trace italienne for-
tress was erected at Padua between 1509 and 1520. 78
As for Dalmatia, the Collegio approved added expenses during the Otto-
man war of 1499–1503, especially for Zadar. As the doge commented, “Za-
dar is our very heart.” 79 In 1499 Venice stationed a detachment of Spanish
mercenaries at Nin, in Zadar’s contado. When the city’s rectors engaged one
hundred light cavalry at 3 ducats a month, 80 they no doubt had the approval
of the Collegio. Troops called provisionati were kept on half pay, ready for
service at full pay when called upon. In 1501 Venice sent two hundred
stradioti and two hundred provisionati, 81 “including one hundred musket-
eers.” 82 When Venice appointed a procurator-general to oversee Dalmatia’s
defenses, he was greeted “like a messiah” on his arrival in Zadar, and again
in Split. 83 Still, as Ivan Pederin has said, if Venetian rule in Dalmatia was
“mild and humane,” it was also “very stingy” in doling out funds. 84 For
example, a model for a fortress in Nin met with great approval in the Senate,
as among the burghers of Nin. But it would have cost 3,000 ducats, 85 and Nin
60 Chapter 1

did not get a fortress. For a good part of the extraordinary expenses of war,
Dalmatia had to rely on its own resources.

Dalmatia’s Resources

Whether they had family property there or not, Venetian patricians serving as
officials in Dalmatia were expected to put their personal credit at the service
of the state, in the expectation of eventual recompense. (The same was true
of wealthy magistrates elsewhere in Europe). 86 For example, in November
1500, the Count of Zadar, newly in office, had debts of 700 ducats; the town
treasury could not repay him because his predecessor took what there was to
cover his debts, including his annual salary. But since Skender Paşa was said
to be headed for Vrana, where the walls were weak, the new count and his
colleague, the captain, borrowed again for the repairs. Soon thereafter, both
rectors pleaded for Venice to send cash: Vrana and Nadin needed more
soldiers, but “we cannot get anything on our credit.” Local merchants and
members of the landowning town nobility were also called upon. In Kotor,
when grain stocks were dangerously low, the count convened “forty citizens”
for dinner. They lent money to charter a ship “for Puglia or Albania,” and the
captain put up funds to buy grain. 87 This willingness to borrow in one’s own
name for the needs of the state helps to explain how Dalmatia withstood
Ottoman attacks. There was also of course a question of protecting one’s
property, as when urban patricians built forts to shelter the peasants on their
lands. In Zadar’s contado, eight forts or towers were constructed after the
1499–1503 war, including one by a local monastery, one by the town govern-
ment, and five by patrician families. The most important of them was at
Zemunik, ten miles east of Zadar, built by the Zadar branch of Venice’s
Venier family. 88
The strong sense of communal identity among Dalmatia’s town dwellers
was another asset, at least potentially. To be sure, corporate amour propre
could make it difficult for Venetian officials to assert their authority. In 1500,
for example, the Venetian podesta of Nin made himself a spokesman for the
town’s claim to judicial autonomy; his superior, the Count of Zadar, had to
come to Nin in person to vindicate his right to hear appeals against verdicts
by the town court. 89 But the local patriotism promoted by traditional social
arrangements also kept civic militias alive. In March 1500, the rector of
Kotor had few paid soldiers on hand, yet he was not worried, for “the spirit of
the citizens here is strong and brave against the Turks.” In June 1500, his
counterpart in Bar reported that “our five hundred arms-bearing citizens” 90
 Hungary and Venice Defeated, 1499–1526 61

had defeated a larger force recruited by rural nobles allied to the Ottomans.
In keeping with the grim custom of Balkan wars, “our men took many enemy
heads, crying, ‘Marco! Marco!’” 91 In the countryside, too, Venetian author-
ities sanctioned the traditional practice by which villagers gathered in an
assembly, sometimes to form a league with other villages. In 1503, the small
town of Poljica (Polizza) in the contado of Split held “an assembly of nobles
and landholders” (patrimoniali) to discuss how to respond to Ottoman at-
tacks. “For the first time in 90 years,” they elected a “count” and sent him to
Split with letters of credence. When the men from a nearby town built a
bridge across a local stream, Poljica’s leaders feared it would give Ottoman
martolossi easier access to their territory; hence “700 men marched out with
their battle-standard” to destroy the bridge. 92 These citizen-soldiers made a
difference, at least for a time.

War and Depopulation in Dalmatia

Venetian officials sought to limit the harm raiders could do in rural Dalmatia.
To keep watch on mountain passes that descended from Bosnia through
Croatia, Croatian nobles were kept on retainer. 93 At the news of an imminent
attack, artillery on the town walls sounded the alarm, smoke signals were
sent up, and riders fanned out, warning country folk to cross to an island or
flee to the nearest fortified site. 94 Things often worked as planned, in part
because peasants who took shelter were capable of defending themselves. 95
But places of refuge often could not accommodate livestock, and men were
loath to abandon their livelihood. In one case, villagers chose to “gather with
their animals under a rock,” where they were found and taken off by the
raiders. 96 The Ottomans also had counter-measures. Raiding parties hired
“guides” who knew the country well and so came by “unaccustomed paths,”
thus evading detection. 97 They also attacked areas that had not been hit
before, save for “rich villages.” 98
In June 1499, after a four-day raid into the contado of Zadar led by
Skender Paşa, a local physician reported estimates of four thousand to six
thousand people carried off. When the rectors of Zadar ordered a census
“village by village,” they found the losses great, but not so great as first
reported: missing after the raids were “674 men capable of bearing arms,
1,315 women and children, and 37,987 animals large and small.” 99 In No-
vember 1500 the Ottomans, coming by “an unaccustomed route,” attacked
the environs of the coastal fortress-town of Vrana, “not yet depredated.” On
previous occasions, villagers here had found shelter on a nearby island, but
62 Chapter 1

as ill luck would have it, a sirocco “prevented people from crossing.” The
castellan of Zadar reported that 2,500 people were taken. In all, he said, five
thousand people had been taken in the last three raids. 100 The peace that
Venice concluded with the Ottomans in April 1503 brought such incursions
to a halt, at least until the accession of Sultan Suleyman in 1520. 101 There
was, however, one troubling incident. In December 1514, some four thou-
sand men crossed through the Croatian district of Lika, between Bosnia and
Zadar’s contado. Fearing an attack, the nobles and popolo of Zadar sent an
emissary to Bosnia; en route, from a hill near Nadin, he watched as three
hundred Ottoman cavalry came by a “roundabout way” to make it seem that
they had come from farther west, in Croatia; falling on Vrana, they took,
“according to a census, about one thousand souls.” 102
Captives were reportedly sold for 30 ducats apiece in Sarajevo. 103 The
taking of slaves was profitable for Bosnia’s adventurers and terrifying for
Dalmatia’s rural population. Moreover, while the direct loss of population
due to raids was bad enough, the indirect loss was even greater. Faced with
the threat of having their families carried off into slavery, Dalmatians de-
camped permanently to the islands offshore or farther afield. The first full
census of men able to bear arms was carried out by Lunardo Venier and
Hieronimo Contarini, elected by the Senate as “syndics” for Dalmatia in
1525. 104 Their report affords comparison with scattered earlier bits of infor-
mation. In 1499, Zadar was said by its rectors to have 7,500 homeni da fatti;
in 1525, “Zadar with the islands” had only 2,630. Bar’s rectors boasted of
five hundred men in 1500, but in 1525 there were only three hundred. 105
Around Zadar, Venier and Contarini found the land “ruined and destroyed,”
for “all the peasants who remained after the incursions have fled,” some to
Puglia or Istria. 106 To be sure, some had fled only to nearby islands. But the
syndics’ overall tally counted 6,800 homeni da fatti on the islands, as against
only 4,830 in mainland cities and villages. If the Ottomans applied real
pressure, could a Dalmatia thus depopulated still be defended?

“The Signoria Does Not Know What We Know”

In February 1520, officials reported an incursion such as they had not seen
for years. The seven hundred cavalry who attacked the contado of Zadar
were homeni da fatti with “fine horses,” not ragtag martolossi; they “ad-
vanced in formation,” and “all had weapons to brandish in their hands.”
There had not been a shift in policy at the Porte. Rather, there was an
interregnum in Bosnia; four vojvods reportedly agreed among themselves to
 Hungary and Venice Defeated, 1499–1526 63

“make a profit” while they could before a new sancakbeg came. 107 More
disturbing was a raid against Šibenik in January 1521, when Bosnia had a
resident sancakbeg. Eleven villages were burned, and some five hundred
captives were allegedly taken; Venetian war galleys that happened to be in
the vicinity prevented things from getting worse. The raiders also damaged
the mills on the Krka River, not far from Šibenik, so that the general sense of
alarm was exacerbated by a spike in grain prices. 108 After presentations by
“ambassadors” from Šibenik and Zadar, the Senate agreed to elect a procura-
tor-general for Dalmatia, as in 1499. But the man they chose did not go
because the Chamber of Loans refused to honor his demand for four months’
salary in advance. 109
In May 1523, the arrival of nine Ottoman fuste gave Šibenik a different
kind of jolt. 110 The ships anchored at an island opposite the channel leading
to Šibenik’s harbor, formed by the estuary of the Krka. Their commander
asked permission to sail up the Krka to Skradin, newly conquered by the
Ottomans, where Ghazi Husrev Beg was busy with fortifications. 111 Not
having authority to make such decisions, the Count of Šibenik wrote the
Collegio for instructions. Unable to choose between offending the sultan and
endangering Šibenik, the Collegio deferred to the Senate, which in turn de-
ferred to the Council of Ten. The upshot was a command for Šibenik to
accommodate the Ottoman request. But the count wrote back that, notwith-
standing his orders, “people here” refused to let the fuste pass and gave him a
letter to explain why. “The Signoria does not know what we know,” the
citizens wrote 112; “they [the Ottomans] mean to put soldiers on land and
capture Šibenik.” The Council of Ten now deferred to the Senate, where a
compromise was proposed: the Signoria would send infantry and galleys to
ensure the safety of Šibenik as the fuste passed through. But Tommaso Con-
tarini, an erstwhile bailo at the Porte, intervened on behalf of Šibenik’s view:
“By no means should they be given access to the port.” His colleagues in the
Collegio concurred. To give a plausible reason for denial, the Senate in-
structed the Count of Šibenik to tell the Ottoman commander that since he
had in fact come to burn the mills, just up the Krka, he would not be allowed
to pass. 113
One would expect the Signoria and its Dalmatian subjects to have differ-
ent views. Dalmatians were under the gun, but in the Collegio’s wider view,
some losses had to be tolerated for the sake of larger interests, like Venice’s
trade in spices and silk from the East. It seems that the apparent threat to
Šibenik in 1523 brought the two perspectives closer together. In April 1525,
64 Chapter 1

the Captain of the Gulf (commander of the Adriatic squadron) envisioned for
the benefit of the Collegio a nightmare scenario in which Šibenik became an
Ottoman port: “For the good of our state and of all Christendom, God forbid
that this should come to pass, for the Turk could then pass on to Italy at his
good pleasure.” In fact, Šibenik’s capacious harbor, sheltered from the sea by
a neck of land cut by a single channel, might have served very well as the
base for an invasion fleet. To ward off such a possibility, the channel from
the Adriatic must be better fortified; the captain thought a “stout and impreg-
nable” fortress could be built in six months for a mere 700 ducats. 114 Yet
nothing was done, not until after the next Veneto-Ottoman war. 115
In 1527, Šibenik’s captain proposed a whole new system of fortifications
alla moderna, as at Padua. In the case of Šibenik this was too much to
expect. Yet Zadar, the “heart” of Dalmatia, was a different matter. 116 In
1525, both the Captain of the Gulf and the two syndics endorsed building
defense works alla moderna at Zadar. 117 In July 1527, the commander of
Venice’s Terraferma army had a model constructed. The work of tearing
down old walls and building a bastion trace would take decades. 118 Still,
Zadar, no longer guarded by a well-populated hinterland, required the best
fortifications that Venice’s military architects could contrive.

HUNGARY DEFEATED

Hungary under the Jagiellonian Kings

Upon the death of Matthias Corvinus in 1490, Hungary’s diet rejected the
claims of his illegitimate son, János Corvinus (d. 1504). They chose a Polish
prince, Wladislas II Jagiello (r. 1490–1516), who had been king in Bohemia
since 1471. Even though Wladislas now made Hungary his residence, his
authority was limited. Royal income was down by about half since Corvi-
nus’s reign, 119 and the aristocracy was more assertive of its privileges. The
forum for aristocratic politics was the rákos or diet, with an upper chamber
made up of magnates and a lower chamber of delegates elected by county
assemblies of lesser nobles. 120 Magnates enjoyed ex officio membership on
the king’s council, and many of them supported Wladislas II. Still, their right
(from 1498) to maintain private armies was inherently disruptive. 121 The
Szapolyai of Transylvania, richest of the magnate clans, were a natural rally-
ing point for discontent with a foreign sovereign, especially among the lesser
nobles. János Szapolyai (1487–1540) was vojvod of Transylvania from 1510.
 Hungary and Venice Defeated, 1499–1526 65

Elsewhere, along the border with Moravia, whole counties “belonged almost
entirely” to him or his family. 122 The lesser nobility had a spokesman in
István Werböczy (1465–1541), a jurist learned in the laws of his country. 123
Adopting the legend that Magyar conquerors of the ninth century were
“Scythians,” Werböczy promoted the idea that the nobles—descendants of
the proud and free Scythians—made up the true Hungarian “nation.” 124
Werböczy and Szapolyai joined forces on the critical issue of succession.
Wladislas II had had two wives but no children. From Vienna, Emperor
Maximilian I watched with interest, since his dynasty was accorded a right of
succession (failing a male heir) in treaties signed at Wiener Neustadt in 1463
and at Posonia in 1491. 125 In fact, Wladislas and his partisans saw forming a

Hungary and Croatia under Matthias Corvinus

66 Chapter 1

connection with the Holy Roman Empire as Hungary’s best hope for with-
standing the Ottomans. Yet the king was not ready to abandon hope of
progeny. He married for a third time, and his wife, Anne of Foix, soon gave
birth to a daughter, Anna (1503). Might little Anna be betrothed to one of
Maximilian I’s grandsons, Charles (b. 1500) or Ferdinand (b. 1503)? 126 Pre-
cisely to forestall a Habsburg succession, a diet held in the fall of 1505 voted
that no foreigner could ever be elected king. This decree capitalized on
widespread anti-German sentiment, and it pointed implicitly to János Szapol-
yai as the next king. 127 Maximilian reacted by declaring war on Hungary. By
now, in the winter of 1505/1506, Queen Anne was pregnant a second time.
Wladislas proposed a dual marriage: Anna would marry Maximilian’s
younger grandson, Ferdinand, and the son Queen Anne was sure she carried
would marry Ferdinand’s sister Mary; in default of male issue on either side,
rights of succession would pass to the in-laws. Rejecting the offer, Maximil-
ian invaded Hungary. But when the queen gave birth to a son, the future
Louis II (r. 1516–1526), he agreed to open negotiations. By a treaty signed in
1507, Louis and Mary were betrothed, and Anna was betrothed to either
Charles or Ferdinand. 128
In 1514 a massive peasant uprising jolted the kingdom. An ambitious
prelate, Archbishop Tamás Bakócz of Esztergom, was instrumental in having
a crusade against the Ottomans proclaimed by Pope Leo X (r. 1513–1521). In
April, near Pest, some forty thousand armed peasants rallied to the banner of
the cross. Magnate landlords, unwilling to see their fields abandoned before
the harvest, got Bakócz and King Wladislas to order the crusaders to disband.
Under György Dózsa, the commander appointed by Bakócz, they ignored
orders and marched south toward the Ottoman frontier, only to be set upon
by István Báthory, high sheriff of Temesvár. By repelling Báthory’s attack,
they sparked a general uprising against the aristocracy in eastern Hungary.
As Dózsa and his men dug in around Temesvár, roving bands of peasants
attacked manors, killed nobles, and burned records. At this point János Sza-
polyai, at the head of twenty thousand men, intervened; by scattering
Temesvár’s besiegers (July 15), he effectively ended the revolt. A subsequent
diet imposed new restrictions on the peasantry and voted Szapolyai a hand-
some reward. 129 Two years later, upon the death of Wladislas II, a ten-year-
old boy was crowned in the royal city of Székesfehérvár. To remove him
from the influence of his legal guardian, Maximilian I, Louis II was immedi-
ately declared to be of age. In practice, Hungary was governed for the next
five years by Tamás Bakócz, now a cardinal. 130
 Hungary and Venice Defeated, 1499–1526 67

Notwithstanding the abortive crusade of 1514, Hungary could not sustain

a war against the Ottomans. Corvinus’s main defensive line had two sectors.
To the west, the Croatian sector faced off against the sancakbeg of Bosnia.
To the east, the Danubian sector, commanded by the high sheriff of
Temesvár, faced off against the sancakbeg of Smederevo. This sector ex-
tended east from Šabac on the Sava to a fortress on the Danube about thirty-
five miles east of Belgrade. 131 Against a total crown income of approximate-
ly 200,000 florins, frontier garrison wages, roughly the same amount for each
sector, consumed 116,000 florins. The Danubian sector had more men, but
they served only part time. Along the Croatian-Bosnian frontier, key fortress-
es had mercenary contingents serving year-round. Wladislas II did not have
the wherewithal to emulate Corvinus by hiring mercenaries to form a strike
force always ready for action. Instead, each high official called up the “band”
he maintained, while magnates and nobles raised troops by quota according
to their incomes. 132 Armies of this kind could still defeat Ottoman forces of
the same size. 133 But victory came just often enough to make Hungary’s
nobles unduly confident.
Wladislas II’s reluctance for war matched Bayezid II’s inclination to
peace. The exception came during the Veneto-Turkish war of 1499–1503,
when Venetian subsidies tempted the court in Buda to agree to an offensive
alliance. Thus in late 1501 and again in late 1502, armies from Croatia and
from southern Hungary invaded Bosnia. 134 But peace between Venice and
the sultan ended the fighting in this region as well. In August 1503 the
sultan’s envoy to Buda agreed to a nine-year treaty of peace, including a
promise that Ottoman troops would not cross Hungary to attack other Chris-
tian realms. The agreement was renewed in 1510 and again in 1511. Contrary
to European diplomatic usage, the accession in 1512 of Selim I nullified all
existing treaties. 135 Yet the advent of a warlike sultan did not entail fresh
attacks into Hungarian territory—at least not along the Danubian sector of
the frontier. 136 Instead, the sultan’s wars in the East made peace with Hun-
gary desirable. An envoy sent to Buda in 1516 was well received by the
ruling circle, even if negotiations had to be kept secret because the lesser
nobles would not hear of a treaty with the Turks. Discussions were then
complicated by Pope Leo X’s vain effort to launch a crusade against the
infidel power that had just recently overwhelmed its Mamluk rivals in the
East. In the end, however, peace was attained: in May 1519 Selim I endorsed
a three-year treaty 137 that lasted until his death in September 1520.
68 Chapter 1

Suleyman the Lawgiver’s first public act in regard to Hungary was to

send an emissary offering renewal of the peace agreement. As in 1516,
magnates at court were amenable, but the nobles objected that no king of
Hungary had ever sued for peace with the Ottomans. Louis II rejected the
overture and for good measure had the emissary detained. In one reading of
the story, it was in response to this insult that the sultan raised an army
against Hungary the following year; in other words, the ensuing Ottoman
expansion to the west was opportunistic, not planned in advance. 138 Yet a
“victory declaration” issued by Suleyman after his capture of Belgrade indi-
cates that the campaign was decided on at a divan held shortly after his
accession and thus prior to Louis’s maltreatment of his envoy. By this read-
ing, Suleyman planned from the outset to replicate in the West his father’s
conquests in the East. 139
In any event, Hungary’s deteriorating finances had left the great citadel of
Belgrade in a worse state of preparedness than the Ottomans had any right to
expect. Seeing that its defenders could not prevent a small Ottoman force
from encircling the city, Suleyman made Belgrade his main target. Since
Buda sent no relief force, the garrison surrendered after a full-scale siege
lasting no longer than a week. 140 Without its anchor, Corvinus’s first line of
defense was in peril, and fortresses on the Sava and the Danube were picked
off one by one. 141 Buda’s safety now depended on Corvinus’s second line of
fortresses, from Temesvár to Petrovaradin, where the commander of the
Danubian sector set up headquarters. 142 The rejection in 1524 of Suleyman’s
double-edged peace overture 143 meant war, yet little was done to forestall
catastrophe. Andrea dal Burgo, a seasoned papal nuncio, saw a court para-
lyzed by friction between the party of young Louis II and the party of János
Szapolyai; meanwhile, rebellious lesser nobles, seven thousand in number,
convened their own diet in 1525. 144 Dal Burgo would not release papal funds
for Hungary unless he could “get these people to adopt a serious plan.” 145
As of January 1526, Louis and his court had reliable intelligence of events
in Istanbul that always portended war: in December, Suleyman had published
the customary orders for his Janissaries and sipahis to be ready to march in
the spring. 146 In May, as the sultan marshaled his army, Hungarian border
garrisons were deserting for want of pay. One obvious move would have
been to build a fortified camp south of Buda, but as dal Burgo remarked “this
king has no proper shoes, much less what is needed for setting up camp.”
When Louis sent out a call to arms in June, messengers would not depart
until the nuncio paid their wages. 147 In August, Suleyman led his army up the
 Hungary and Venice Defeated, 1499–1526 69

right (west) bank of the Danube. At Mohács, about 125 miles south of Buda,
they met the twenty-five thousand troops that Louis II had mustered (Szapol-
yai remained in Transylvania with a large force, possibly at the king’s be-
hest). The battle of 29 August 1526 “ended with the virtual annihilation of
the Hungarian army.” The dead included ten thousand infantry, four thou-
sand cavalry, five hundred nobles, and twenty-eight magnates. Louis II
drowned while trying to escape. 148

Croatia under Pressure

The Croatian sector of the frontier included six major fortress-towns, each
with a royal captain and a mercenary garrison paid by the treasury in Buda.
In northern Bosnia, Srebrenica on the Drina and especially Jajce on the Vrbas
shielded Slavonia (northern Croatia) from attack. 149 In Hungarian Dalmatia,
Knin on the upper Krka kept watch on the nearby Bosnian border, and the
famed citadel of Klis, just north of Venetian Split, controlled roads leading to
the West. In Croatia proper, south of the mountains, Bihać guarded the upper
Una valley, and the port city of Senj protected the entrance to the Vinodol
channel between the island of Krk and the mainland. The Croatian frontier
was under the authority of the ban of Croatia, 150 appointed by the king from
among leading magnates and officials in Hungary. 151 János Corvinus held
the office from 1496 until his death in 1504. As Duke of Slavonia, 152 he had
influence there, but he held little sway in Croatia proper until he married into
the influential Frankopan family. 153 Andreas Both (1504–1508/1511) refused
to yield to a successor and managed to outlast the king’s displeasure. 154 His
successor (1512–1513), a leading magnate in eastern Hungary, was named
ban only after a long factional quarrel at court. 155
Petar Berislavić (1513–1520), bishop of Veszprém in western Hun-
gary, 156 the most active ban of this period, focused on districts bordering the
Una River, a westward-pointing arc extending for some 130 miles from south
to north; he worked closely with frontier lords such as Count Nikola III
Zrinski of Gvozdansko (d. 1534) and Franjo Berislavić of Kostajnica (d.
1517), the titular despot of Serbia. At Dubica, near where the Una enters the
Sava, Ban Berislavić and his men left a reported seven thousand Ottomans
dead on the field (15 August 1513). In 1515, an invasion force he was
assembling near Novigrad on the Una was set upon and dispersed by Bosnian
troops. In February 1518 he marched through the snow to defeat a Bosnian
army gathered near Jajce. In May 1520, as he rushed to intercept a Bosnian
army that had crossed the Una near Bihać, he was surprised from behind and
70 Chapter 1

killed. 157 Berislavić’s career shows that, as in Hungary, Croatian troops

could measure up to Ottoman forces of similar size in an open battle. Yet
even as the two sides traded victories, it was the Ottomans who extended
their borders.
The ban had an annual salary of 10,000 Hungarian florins, plus a budget
of nearly 50,000 florins. As a measure of its importance for the protection of
Slavonia, roughly half of the ban’s budget was allotted to Jajce. 158 There was
also money for one thousand light cavalry, half under the ban’s direct com-
mand and the rest parceled out to frontier nobles. But one could not seal off
the long Una frontier with a mere one thousand light cavalry. 159 Moreover,
owing to Hungary’s financial woes, wages for the ban and for Croatian
frontier garrisons, on the far side of Bosnia from Buda, were often in arrears.
In 1507, the Venetian Count of Trogir supplied victuals and wood to Klis,
whose citizens could not leave the city “for fear of the Turk.” In 1510, the
captain of Knin reported that since he had gotten no help from the ban or
anyone else, his city too was shut in by Ottoman irregulars lurking beyond
the walls. In 1511, Ban Andreas Both left his base in Senj to come in person
before the Collegio in Venice; desperate for grain and powder that Buda had
not supplied, he wanted to hire on as a condottiere for the Signoria. In his
will (also 1511), Both instructed his executor not to hand over the citadel of
Senj to royal officials until his widow was paid the 16,000 florins he was
owed. In 1517, Ban Petar Berislavić sent emissaries to the Collegio carrying
a letter from Wladislas II seeking a loan of 10,000 ducats for the needs of
Klis. 160
In effect, Croatia was to a large extent left to its own resources. Royal
towns here were smaller in size and population than the port cities of Vene-
tian Dalmatia, but they too had elected governments capable of acting in the
town’s interests. In 1499, the burghers of Knin feared an attack from Bosnia
(notwithstanding the treaty that was then in effect), and they did not trust Ban
János Corvinus to defend them. Hence when Skender Paşa sent the ban a
friendly letter by way of Knin, they surreptitiously opened the letter; seeing
its contents, they held the letter back and instead sent the ban a message
warning him not to trust the Bosnian sancakbeg. In 1500, when the Franko-
pans were meditating an assault on Senj, its citizens resolved to defend
themselves; if necessary, they would submit to the sultan rather than to a
hated magnate clan. 161 In 1501, a warning sent to Buda about mobilization in
Bosnia was reinforced by a letter on behalf of the “whole community” (tota
communitas) of Jajce. 162 In 1509, amid long-standing disputes with Venetian
 Hungary and Venice Defeated, 1499–1526 71

officials on Krk, who restricted their access to island markets, Senj sent a
flotilla of oared craft (barche) to plunder Krk. 163 Skradin’s burghers com-
plained of not getting the resources needed to defend themselves, but they
also provoked the Ottomans by raiding into Ottoman territory and sending
out “barks” to rob Ottoman shipping. 164
Leading noble families, controlling much of Croatia’s wealth, pursued
their interests with single-minded determination. The allocation of light cav-
alry on the ban’s payroll gives a sense of their relative importance. In 1499,
Bernardin Frankopan (1453–1529), patriarch of his clan, had one hundred
light horse under his command, and two of his sons had fifty each. In 1504
Bernardin and three of his sons together had 280. 165 The Frankopans
dreamed of recovering Senj (lost in a war against the crown in 1471), but
they retained the town of Modruš (northeast of Senj) and the port of Bakar,
south of Rijeka; like Senj, Bakar carried on a contraband trade with Krk and
sometimes raided the island. Despite Ottoman attacks that depopulated their
rural holdings, the Frankopans still had over 250 villages; by converting cash
payments to old-style payments in kind, they made it easier for peasants to
stay on and also built up trade through Frankopan lands. 166 At periodic
family gatherings the Frankopans discussed how to recapture Senj, either by
agreement with the king or by direct assault. 167 Alliance with Venice might
have been a better idea, but this option was blocked: Krsto Frankopan, Ber-
nardin’s eldest son, earned fame as a commander by fighting for Emperor
Maximilian I in his wars against Venice. 168
The head of the Kurjaković family, Ivan Karlović (1478/9–1531), com-
manded one hundred light horse in 1499 and two hundred in 1504. He con-
trolled the hilltop fortress-town of Medvedgrad in Slavonia, north of Zagreb,
but the lands he held as Count of Krbava, south of the Velebit Mountains,
were a favorite target for Ottoman raiders. In 1504, Karlović’s future brother-
in-law, Count Nikola III Zrinski (1488/1489–1534), had only twenty-five
light horse under his command. But his silver mines near Gvozdansko
yielded, he claimed, an annual income of 30,000 florins. He also ruled the
small port of Bribir on the Vinodol channel, where, in 1514, Zrinski met with
other scions of the old Šubić clan to plot a strategy for defense against the
Ottomans. 169
When Bosnian commanders organized attacks by regular troops on for-
tified sites in Croatia, they usually targeted the fortress-towns of Corvinus’s
line. In 1514, Ottoman soldiers captured a suburb of Knin but withdrew after
failing to get permission from Šibenik to have fuste sail up the Krka to assist
72 Chapter 1

them. 170 In 1517, the sancakbeg of Bosnia constructed two forts near Skradin
to serve as platforms for a future attack. 171 Meanwhile, plunder expeditions
by Ottoman irregulars targeted Frankopan and Karlović villages and towns.
Croatian officials apparently did not conduct censuses to determine how
many people were carried off in raids, and their on-the-spot estimates must
thus be taken with caution. But eight thousand souls were said to be missing
after a 1505 raid on the lands of Countess Dorotea Frankopan (mother of
Ivan Karlović) “and the Frankopans allied with her.” 172 In September 1509,
Frankopan castles were hit “as far as Modruš.” In 1511, a party of two
thousand attacked Modruš, then moved north to western Slavonia, inflicting
damages from which Bernardin Frankopan thought it would take years to
recover. In May 1514, raiders crossed Zadar’s contado to attack Frankopan
territory. 173 In September or October, some four thousand men from Bosnia
fell on Ivan Karlović’s lands in the Lika region west of Bihać; they reported-
ly took away large flocks and three thousand people, leaving the count
“ruined and desperate.” According to Zadar’s rectors, some of Karlović’s
peasants escaped destruction by “going to live under the Turks.” 174 In 1520,
some two thousand Ottomans briefly besieged the fortress-town of Modruš
and then attacked the Senj Fair, held on Frankopan lands. 175
At this point, Ivan Karlović replaced the slain Petar Berislavić as ban. The
fact that his own holdings lay exposed to attack from Bosnia was one of the
reasons he was chosen; by protecting his lands, he would protect Croatia. 176
In departing from the custom of choosing bans from men who held major
positions or estates in Hungary, Louis II’s government took a risk that one
man’s private interests would not take priority over the public good. In fact,
Karlović promised not just to guard this or that position but to remain on
campaign, taking his men where they were needed, 177 and he seems to have
done so. But Croatia’s problems of defense and governance required that the
generality of nobles identify their private interests with the interests of the
state, and they would not do so until the central government infused more
resources into Croatia than it was currently doing.
Not expecting much help from Buda, Croatia’s leading men looked else-
where. Under Leo X if not before, the papal court was in direct communica-
tion with the commanders of both of Hungary’s border sectors. In April
1515, the pope informed Wladislas II of emissaries bringing 27,000 ducats in
cash for Ban Petar Berislavić and High Sheriff István Báthory, together with
sulfur and saltpeter to make gunpowder. In all, Berislavić received some
50,000 ducats in papal subsidies during his tenure as ban. 178 One might have
 Hungary and Venice Defeated, 1499–1526 73

thought the Holy Roman Empire had an interest in preserving Croatia as a

buffer against the Ottomans, but the diet had no taste for expeditions beyond
the empire’s borders. 179 Moreover, so long as Emperor Maximilian I was at
war with Venice, Bosnia was a possible ally. 180 He did concern himself with
Krsto Frankopan, a kinsman of one of his chief advisers, 181 who was held
captive in Venice. Having no representative in Venice, Maximilian lobbied
through the French ambassador and eventually arranged to have Frankopan
exchanged for a French nobleman held in Spain. 182
Venice was a more likely source of help. Though at peace with the Otto-
mans after 1503, the Signoria had an interest in preserving the Hungaro-
Croatian buffer zone that separated Ottoman Bosnia from its Dalmatian terri-
tories. Many noble personages in Croatia applied to Venice for protection at
one time or another. 183 In 1509, while still serving as ban of Croatia, Andreas
Both signed a condotta to serve Venice in its war against Maximilian I, but
this experiment did not end well. Robbing those they were meant to protect,
Both and his light cavalry caused an estimated 20,000 ducats worth of dam-
age in Friuli. 184 Ivan Karlović served in Lombardy in 1509, and in such wise
that Venice chose to renew his condotta. In 1510 he was haggling for higher
wages for his light horse to match an offer he had from Maximilian I, but as
of 1514 he was still on the Signoria’s payroll. 185 In 1517, he sent emissaries
to the Collegio asking to trade three of his towns in Croatia for three of the
Signoria’s castles in Lombardy where his wife could live safely. After dis-
cussion by the sages of Terraferma, the doge responded: Karlović’s lady
would be welcome in Venice, but he should defend his own castles, using his
stipend from the Signoria. 186 Two years later Karlović himself came before
the Collegio, accompanied by “fifty Croats, well dressed according to their
fashion.” After one of the Sages met privately with him in his lodgings, the
Signoria gave the Count of Krbava a new condotta at 4,000 ducats a year and
sent him away with 500 ducats in cash. 187 Bernardin Frankopan was not
welcome in Venice so long as his son Krsto was held captive there. But in
1522 the aged patriarch came before the Collegio promising to provide from
his lands oarsmen for Venice’s galleys. What he wanted in return is not clear,
but a subsequent letter to the Signoria speaks of capturing Senj and bestow-
ing it on Krsto to “free” him from dependence on the Habsburgs. 188
Still another possibility was for Croatia’s nobles to protect their lands by
making accommodations with the sultan. In 1499, when Bosnia’s Skender
Paşa sent presents for the christening ceremony of Ban János Corvinus’s
infant son, Venetian authorities suspected a bargain that would allow Bos-
74 Chapter 1

nian troops to cross Croatian territory and attack Dalmatia. As of 1500,

Countess Dorotea Frankopan was sending annual tribute payments to the
sancakbeg in Sarajevo. 189 In 1507 and again in 1511, Croatian nobles held a
“council” among themselves; both times, their message to Wladislas II was
that if Buda did provide more help, they would have to submit to the sultan
and pay tribute. 190 In 1513, Ivan Karlović was kind enough to send the
rectors of Zadar a warning: he had made an agreement with the Ottomans, so
Zadar should expect an attack. 191 In 1516, the Venetian captain of Split
reported that his city and contado were no longer secure because the Croatian
fortress-town of Klis, a mere five miles inland, was now paying tribute to the
sultan. 192 From about 1519—the year he went to Venice—Ivan Karlović
came under intense pressure. In July 1519 a letter from the sancakbeg of
Bosnia threatened to raid his lands every two weeks. A letter of June 1520
said Bosnian troops would burn him out if he did not submit to the sultan in a
matter of days. In January 1521, after an attack on one of his towns near the
Una, Ban Karlović and “all other Croat lords . . . from the Sava to the
Adriatic” were ready to bargain. 193 One Hasan of Zvornik, an envoy from the
Porte, met with Karlović, Bernardin Frankopan, and others. Even as King
Louis II called for an end to these proceedings, the Croatians sent a message
to the Collegio in Venice: unless Christendom came to their aid, they would
pay harac (tribute) to the sultan. According to what Venice’s ambassador
was told in Buda, they also sent to Sarajevo for safe conduct for an emissary
to the Porte. Whether they actually submitted to the Porte or not is probably a
matter of perspective. Vjekoslav Klaić believes the Croat lords were only
bargaining to gain time. 194 But Sultan Suleyman took a different view, and
his opinion would have consequences.

Croatia’s Options

Suleyman concluded that the Croats had deceived him, 195 possibly because
they paid tribute but did not in fact submit. 196 In the wake of his great victory
at Belgrade (August 1521), it was clear that such men deserved to be pun-
ished. His sancakbegs in Bosnia and Herzegovina were thus given orders to
finish what their predecessors had begun, starting with Knin and Skradin, the
two fortress-towns on the upper Krka River, which marked the eastern border
of Croatia’s Lika region. Already in October 1521, the captains of both cities
traveled to Buda to offer their resignations; Ghazi Husrev Beg was coming
against them with a large army, they said, and they did not have the resources
to resist him. Somehow, Louis II and his council persuaded the two captains
 Hungary and Venice Defeated, 1499–1526 75

to return to their posts. In March 1522, the communitas of Skradin sent two
noblemen to offer the king the keys to their city; since they could not defend
Skradin, they asked his permission to abandon it honorably. 197 By May, the
sancakbegs of Bosnia and Herzegovina had assembled an army of about
twenty-five thousand men. Ghazi Husrev Beg planted artillery opposite
Knin, which required a proper siege; after three assaults, the defenders
agreed on June 7 to honorable terms. Skradin, which had not yet completed
its circuit of walls, surrendered almost immediately. Bosnian soldiers now
occupied the suburbs but not the city or its fields; as in other lands conquered
by the Ottomans, townsmen and peasants who had fled were welcome to
return, so long as they paid harac to the sultan. 198 The next year, as Ghazi
Husrev Beg tended to Skradin’s incomplete fortifications, his men probed
deeper into Lika. In a castle town of central Lika belonging to Ban Ivan
Karlović, the garrison withstood an assault in August 1523 but then surren-
dered after a turncoat opened the gates in December. 199
The great prize was Jajce, gateway to the fertile and populous Sava wa-
tershed. After Hungarian forces invaded Bosnia in 1501, in keeping with
Wladislas II’s alliance with Venice, Skender Paşa directed his retaliatory
strikes against Jajce. In October or November of that year, Ban János Corvi-
nus dispersed an Ottoman wagon fort 200 set up opposite Jajce; in the spring
Wladislas II sent one of his captains with 4,500 men to break through another
siege and re-victual the city. Probes continued even under Firuz Beg, a san-
cakbeg inclined to keep the peace. In 1511, a royal official reported to the
diet in Buda on recent damage to Jajce’s walls. In 1515, after Ban Petar
Berislavić’s army was set upon and scattered, Jajce was again attacked; the
Palatine of Hungary led a successful relief expedition. As noted above,
Berislavić marched through the snow in February 1518 to thwart another
siege army dug in around Jajce. 201
Ghazi Husrev Beg and his Herzegovinan colleague used previously cap-
tured castles near Jajce as bases for a new offensive. In the second half of
1524, they began the work of encirclement. The seven siege guns allotted by
the sultan were planted on two sides of Jajce, and siege trenches were
manned by arquebusiers. By June 1525, Jajce had not had a delivery of
victuals for eighteen months. In April, the Hungarian government organized
a relief force under the command of Krsto Frankopan. Following its success-
ful completion, Frankopan described his mission in a detailed letter to Zuane
Antonio Dandolo, once his jailer in Venice and now his good friend. 202
Owing to dissensions at court, the army that mustered south of Buda was
76 Chapter 1

much smaller than planned. But troops under Ban Ivan Karlović and cavalry
sent by Archduke Ferdinand of Austria joined in along the way, making
about six thousand men in all. Frankopan stressed that the army marched “in
regular order” (ordinanza). Each of the three squadrons had its light cavalry
preceded and followed by infantry units, many of them arquebusiers. When-
ever the army came to a defile, arquebusiers went ahead to provide cover
from both sides. As they descended a steep incline toward Jajce, the Otto-
mans attacked. Sensing that the main thrust would come against his rear
guard, Frankopan posted “perhaps five hundred arquebusiers” in the woods;
at a decisive moment, they emerged, “firing all at once.” 203 The besiegers
scattered, and Jajce was again relieved. Karlović wanted to exit Bosnia to the
west, past Kamengrad, but Frankopan vetoed this “shameful” plan. Instead,
they marched back along the same tortuous track by which they had come.
Though harassed by a much larger force, they inflicted more damage than
they received because “we always kept our squadrons in good order.”
Frankopan’s account breathes a confidence that the Ottomans could be
beaten by having superior firepower and by keeping to a disciplined order of
march. 204 This confidence was not misplaced, but it focused attention on
only one or two elements in a larger set of military parameters. No European
prince had more than a fraction of the sultan’s income; the 12 million ducats
estimated for Bayezid II in 1512 would amount to fifty times the annual
revenue of Maximilian I, and sixty times that of Hungary’s Wladislas II. 205
No European army could match the Ottomans for military logistics, 206 and no
elite units in Europe had the discipline of the Janissary corps. 207 The relief of
Jajce was indeed a great victory. What matters more is that it was also
Jagiellonian Hungary’s last victory.

Croatia Becomes a Habsburg-Ottoman Battleground

It might seem inevitable that Croatia should become a site for confrontation
between Habsburg-Austrian and Ottoman forces. For nearly thirty years, the
Austrian duchies accessible along the Sava, the Drava, and the Mur—that is,
Carniola, Carinthia, and Styria—were largely spared the devastation that had
come year by year during the last decades of Mehmed II’s reign. But Bosnian
raiders active in Croatia could still extend their range westward, as they did,
for example, in 1516 following an attack on Frankopan lands in western
Croatia. As the fighting in Croatia intensified under Sultan Suleyman and
Ghazi Husrev Beg, damaging raids into Carniola resumed a pattern that some
in the Austrian lands could still remember from the 1480s: Postojna in 1522,
 Hungary and Venice Defeated, 1499–1526 77

the countryside around Metlika in 1523, and Metlika itself in 1524. 208 Mean-
while, because of Maximilian’s war with Venice, the estates of these Aus-
trian duchies had the habit of meeting to raise funds and to deliberate on how
to defend their borders. 209 The noblemen who made up these assemblies thus
had ideas on how to protect their lands from the Ottomans, and in a “compos-
ite” state like the Austrian monarchy, their views were not without influence.
Still, direction for what would now be called foreign policy had to come from
the prince, and Maximilian did not focus on the Ottoman threat until after his
war with Venice was over. In December 1517, the Austrian estates received a
plan for an offense against the Ottomans. But the estates now had plans of
their own. In May 1518, they proposed that representatives of the estates be
admitted to Maximilian’s governing council, known as the Regiment. Al-
though loath to support wars beyond their borders—as Maximilian had de-
manded of them for years—they recognized the Ottoman danger, and they
proposed creating a defensive frontier in Croatia. Finally, they voted a large
tax grant, partly intended to implement their ideas. But these discussions
ended with Maximilian’s death on 12 January 1519. 210 Everything now de-
pended on a prince raised in far-off Spain, Archduke Ferdinand. 211
Ferdinand’s older brother, Archduke Charles, grew up in Brussels, where
he would claim the Low Countries inheritance of their father. 212 Charles was
crowned king of Castile and Aragon in 1517, and in 1519 his bankers pro-
vided the electoral princes of the Holy Roman Empire with sufficient induce-
ment to elect him as Emperor Charles V. By default, Ferdinand was slated
for the family’s Austrian lands, although it would not be until April 1521 that
Charles signed off on a document transferring authority over the six Austrian
duchies to his younger brother. 213 Meanwhile, Austria’s estates had ousted
Maximilian’s Regiment and installed a Regiment of their own, presided over
by one of Vienna’s burgomasters, Dr. Martin Siebenbürger. The new govern-
ment sought to establish relations with their sovereigns—Siebenbürger him-
self journeyed to Charles’s court in Spain—but the Habsburg brothers would
have no truck with rebellion. 214 When Ferdinand arrived in his Austrian
lands early in 1522, his first order of business was to punish leaders of the
unauthorized government and replace them with a new Regiment. Nine men,
including Siebenbürger, fell victim to the executioner’s axe in the so-called
Blood Court at Wiener Neustadt in August 1522. 215
His preoccupation with Austria’s internal affairs did not mean that Ferdi-
nand was heedless of the danger to his eastern borders. In 1521, even before
coming to Austria, he arranged for the dispatch of two thousand infantry to
78 Chapter 1

aid in the defense of Belgrade, though it seems they did not arrive in time. 216
In 1522, his representatives helped persuade the imperial diet to authorize a
force of three thousand infantry; together with another three thousand men
raised in Austria, they would begin work on setting up a defensive frontier in
Croatia. This plan was a dismal failure. The imperial troops refused to take
orders from Ferdinand’s commander, Nicholas von Salm, and, as Ferdinand
wrote Charles, his Austrian troops fled, leaving behind much booty for the
Ottomans. 217 Meanwhile, aid was sent to Ban Ivan Karlović, who, from
Bihać, called Ferdinand his “lord”: three hundred troops in March 1522 and
another four hundred in June after the fall of Knin and Skradin. 218 In 1523
Salm and his cavalry were again posted to Croatia; in the fall, when it seemed
the campaign season was over, they were dismissed—just prior to the Otto-
man seizure of a Karlović castle-town in Lika. Ferdinand himself was then in
Nuremberg making another plea to the imperial diet. 219 In 1524, Habsburg
troops in Croatia were commanded by Hans Katzianer, the captain of Carnio-
la’s forces; meanwhile, Ferdinand agreed to take temporary responsibility for
two of Count Nikola Zrinski’s towns on the Una frontier. In 1525, Ferdinand
suspected that Krsto Frankopan was planning to invade Carniola at the head
of an Ottoman army. Recognizing the falsity of this report, he then sent five
hundred cavalry to join Frankopan on his march to Jajce. 220
Ferdinand’s support for the defense of Croatia was limited by the fact that
his Austrian lands would not agree to stationing men beyond their borders on
a permanent basis. 221 The imperial diet was equally unwilling to involve
itself in affairs beyond the empire’s borders. Also, Ferdinand’s willingness to
give credence to a hostile report about Frankopan, a trusted Habsburg servi-
tor, suggests a lack of facility in navigating the shoals of aristocratic politics
in Croatia. Still, by sending troops year after year he built a following,
especially in Croatia proper. In the struggle for Hungary that lay ahead,
Croatia proper would stand behind Ferdinand.

NOTES

1. Their red turbans had twelve knots in deference to the “Twelver” version of Shi’ism that
recognized ‘Ali and eleven descendants as true caliphs: Roger M. Savory, “Kizil-Bash,” Ency-
clopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., edited by P. J. Bearman, Th. Blanquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van
Donzel, W. P. Heinrichs, et al. (12 vols., Leiden: Brill, 1960–2005), V, 243–245.
2. Before he proclaimed himself shah, Isma’il was leader of the Safavi religious order:
Adel Allouche, The Origins and Development of the Ottoman-Safavid Conflict, 906–962/
1500–1555 (Berlin: K. Schwarz, 1983).
3. Engel, Realm of St. Stephen, 360–361.
 Hungary and Venice Defeated, 1499–1526 79

4. Wiesflecker, Maximilian I, IV, 221–225; and Müller, “Der umworbene Erbfeind,”

257–258.
5. Daniel Goffman, The Ottoman Empire and Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 2002), 141; Giuseppe Gullino, “Il frontiere navale,” in Alberto Tenenti
and Ugo Tucci, eds., Storia di Venezia dalli origini alla caduta della Serenissima (consulted
here: vols. IV, VI; Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia italiana, 1996), IV, 1–112, here 90.
6. Andrea Gritti to Zacharia di Freschi, Constantinople, 11 December 1498, in Sanudo,
Diarii, II, 506–507.
7. Gullino, “Il frontiere navale,” 90–95; Goffman, Ottoman Empire and Europe, 140–141;
Brummett, Ottoman Seapower, 22.
8. In Italian, contado. The division of Europe into counties went back to Charlemagne: cf.
Tea Mayhew, Dalmatia between Ottoman and Venetian Rule: Contado di Zara, 1645–1718
(Roma: Viella, 2008), 146–147.
9. “Per custodia”: from Bernardin Frankopan, January 1500, Sanudo Odnošaji, VI, 167.
10. From the rectors of Zadar, 23 June 1500, describing an attack by peasant cavalry from
Bosnia: “et in Bossina non resto altro che i timirati o ver feudatarii”; Sanudo, Diarii, III,
556–557.
11. Uyar and Erickson, A Military History of the Ottomans, 59–64.
12. E.g., Sanudo, Diarii, II, 1325, news from Knin received by the rectors of Zadar: while
the sancakbeg, Skender Paşa, raises men in Bosnia, the martolossi have already set out.
13. Sanudo, Diarii, II, 853–854, from the rectors of Zadar, 21 June 1499: captured Turks say
they were led by Skender Paşa; II 967, 1038, reports of 22 July 1499 and 8 August 1499 from
Vetor Bragadin in Šibenik; II, 1219–1220, a letter received in Split (16 August 1499) from the
commander of Jajce, “Skender Begus in Vhrbosna [Sarajevo] maximum cumulavit exercitum
in Venetorum bona”; and III, 1538–1539, from the rectors of Zadar, 19 June 1500, describing a
raiding party of two thousand led by the son of Skender Paşa.
14. Pederin, Mletačka uprava, 22, thinks the raiders were mainly martolossi.
15. Sanudo, Diarii, II, 898–900, Bragadin’s report (Šibenik, July 1499) on the interrogation
of a captured Turk; and III, 199, a spy’s report relayed by Zuan Antonio Gradenigo from Kotor,
28 September 1500.
16. But cf. Sanudo, Diarii, III, 1538–1539: in August 1500 light cavalry, led by the son of
Bosnia’s Skender Paşa, “made a hole in the walls” of Nin, a small and ill-fortified town in
Zadar county.
17. Pederin, Mletačka uprava, 23.
18. Prince Ahmed was defeated in battle and then strangled in April 1513.
19. Murphey, Ottoman Warfare, 22, counts 121 days of marching and 76 days of rest
between Üsküdar (on the Asian side of the Bosporus) to Baghdad, conquered by Suleyman the
Lawgiver in 1535; Hammer-Purgstall, Geschichte des osmanischen Reiches, II, 487, counts 59
“campings” between Istanbul and Erzurum, site of an Ottoman arsenal, and 69 more from
Erzurum to Persia’s northeastern frontier.
20. Finkel, Osman’s Dream, 104–108; Uyar and Erickson, A Military History of the Otto-
mans, 50–51. For Ottoman wagon forts, adopted from the Hungarians and ultimately from
Bohemia’s Hussite armies, see Gábor Ágoston, “Firearms and Military Adaptation: The Otto-
mans and the European Military Revolution, 1450–1800,” Journal of World History 25 (2014):
85–124, here 91–92.
21. Finkel, Osman’s Dream, 106–110.
22. Selim I was known as Selim the Grim.
23. Mecca and Medina had previously been under Mamluk rule.
24. Finkel, Osman’s Dream, 117.
80 Chapter 1

25. Imber, Ottoman Empire, 126; Giancarlo Casale, The Ottoman Age of Exploration (New
York: Oxford University Press, 2010), chapter 2; Konrad Dilger, Untersuchungen zu der Ges-
chichte des osmanischen Hofzeremoniells im 15en und 16en Jahrhundert (dissertation, Lud-
wig-Maximilians Universität, Munich 1967), 58–59, 122–125. Ambassadors from Safavid Iran
were not made to observe this ritual, known by its Greek name, proskynesis.
26. Critical in this respect was the Ottoman conquest of Aden in 1538.
27. Brummett, Ottoman Seapower, 34–36; Casale, Ottoman Age of Exploration, chapter 3;
Tracy, “Il commercio italiano in territorio ottomano,” 442–449. For other Veneto-Ottoman
common interests in this period, see Setton, The Papacy and the Levant, III, 50–51, 82, and
Paolo Preto, Venezia e i Turchi (Florence: Sansone, 1975), 39–43, 51.
28. Known in the West as “the Magnificent”; “Lawgiver” (kanuni Suleyman) was his Otto-
man sobriquet.
29. Lord Kinross, The Ottoman Centuries: The Rise and Fall of the Turkish Empire (New
York: Morrow & Quill, 1977), 176–179.
30. Pál Fodor, “Ottoman Policy towards Hungary, 1520–1541,” in his In Quest of the
Golden Apple: Imperial Ideology, Politics, and Military Administration in the Ottoman Empire
(Istanbul: Isis, 2000), 105–169, 119–120.
31. Ferenc Szakály, “Nándorfehérvár: The Beginning of the End of Medieval Hungary,” in
Géza Dávid and Pál Fodor, eds., Hungarian-Ottoman Military and Diplomatic Relations in the
Age of Süleyman the Magnificent (Budapest: Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Institute of
History, 1994), 47–76.
32. Géza Perjés, The Fall of the Medieval Kingdom of Hungary: Mohács 1526–Buda 1541
(Boulder, CO: Social Science Monographs, 1989), 104–117. Louis’s wife Mary was the young-
er sister of Emperor Charles V and Archduke Ferdinand of Austria.
33. Perjés defends the former view, but cf. Fodor, “Ottoman Policy towards Hungary,” 124.
34. Pálffy, Kingdom of Hungary, 35–37.
35. On the bridge, see Kemal Çiçek, Ercüment Kuran, Nejat Göyunci, and Ilber Ortalyi,
Great Ottoman Turkish Civilization (Ankara: Yeni Türkiye, 2000).
36. Pál Fodor, “Ungarn und Wien in der osmanischen Eröberungsideologie (im Spiegel der
Tarih-i Bec krali, 17en Jahrhundert),” in his In Quest of the Golden Apple, 56–57. In 1527, the
ambassador of János Szapolyai (Archduke Ferdinand’s rival in Hungary) was asked by an
Ottoman official how his lord had dared set foot in a capital city where the sultan’s horse had
trodden, for “our law says, where our ruler lays down his head, or where his horse puts his
head, that is his by right forever.”
37. Zlatar, Zlatna Doba Sarajeva, 84, comments that Bosnia lost its offensive role only after
the Ottoman defeat at Sisak, not far from Zagreb (1593).
38. Members of the civil and religious hierarchy were appointed by the Porte.
39. Sanudo Odnošaji, VIII, 71.
40. Sanudo Odnošaji, VI, 290; VIII, 71; and VIII, 74–75.
41. Zlatar, Zlatna Doba Sarajeva, 87–89, lists the following sancaks of Bosnia between the
death of Firuz Beg (December 1512) and the appointment of Ghazi Husrev Beg (September
1521): Junuz Aga, December 1512–October 1513 and again late 1514–mid-1515; Sinan Paşa
Borovinić, November 1513–end 1514; Mustafa (or Mustaj) Paşa Jurisević (a son of Skender
Paşa), mid-1515–after November 1519; and Balibeg Jahjapašić, spring 1521–September 1521.
But according to Venetian sources, the office was held in 1517 by Mehmed Beg (see Sanudo
Odnošaji, VIII, 27, 28, and Biščević, Bosanski namjesnici, no. 28). Biščević (no. 33) also
mentions a Hasan Beg who held the office in 1516 or 1516–1517.
42. On Firuz Beg, see Biščević, Bosanski namjesnici, no. 27; on Ghazi Husrev Beg, see
Zlatar, Ghazi Husrev Beg.
 Hungary and Venice Defeated, 1499–1526 81

43. He had served previously in 1466–1467 and 1477–1479.

44. Sanudo, Diarii, II, 898–900; according to Biščević, Bosanski namjesnici, no. 8, Ottoman
sources give him a patronymic of Christian origin, Jurisević or Mihajloglu.
45. Sanudo, Diarii, III, 423 (12 June 1500): Bayezid’s ally, Duke Lodovico il Moro of
Milan, was defeated while trying to reclaim his duchy from the French.
46. Prelog, Povijest Bosne, 23.
47. Sanudo, Diarii, II, 506–506: from Istanbul (11 December 1498), Bailo Andrea Gritti
warned the Venetian government that the governorship of Bosnia had been given to Skender
Paşa “because of his wrath against the Signoria, owing to the consignment of cash [la griparia]
that was taken from him.”
48. 29 July 1499, Sanudo, Diarii, II, 967.
49. From the rectors of Zadar, 22 February 1501, Sanudo Odnošaji, V, 195.
50. Above, note 15.
51. Report from the communitas of Jajce to Wladislas IV, 21 March 1501, Sanudo Odnošaji,
VI, 211.
52. From Hieronimo Zorzi in Dubrovnik to his brother Constantin, February 1501, Sanudo
Odnošaji, VI, 184–185.
53. From Dolfin Venier in Trogir, 15 December 1503, Sanudo Odnošaji, VI, 268.
54. From Dolfin Venier in Trogir, 1 January 1504, Sanudo Odnošaji, VI, 271–272.
55. Sanudo Odnošaji, VI, 290, 291, 293: a messenger comes to request a physician (October
1504); Andrea Gritti mentions that Zerbi has gone to Sarajevo for 300 ducats a month (Novem-
ber); and the Collegio hears (5 January 1505) that Skender died after the arrival of Zerbi, who
“era sta da quelli Turchi segato per mezzo.” Cf. Giuseppe Trebbi, “Le professioni liberali,” in
Tenenti and Tucci, Storia di Venezia dalli origini alla caduta della Serenissima, IV, 465–528,
here 479–480.
56. Biščević, Bosanski namjesnici, no. 27.
57. Sanudo Odnošaji, VI, 299 (raid reported by the rector of Trogir, March 1507), and VI,
300 (the rector of Šibenik is told by an Ottoman envoy of the two vojvods being sent in chains
to the Porte, June 1507); Hrabak, “Turske provale i osvajanja na području današnje severne
Dalmacije do sredine XVI stoleča,” 80–81.
58. Sanudo Odnošaji, VI, 323, 355 (reports from Hieronimo Zorzi on his mission to Saraje-
vo, January–June 1510). According to Mallet and Hale, Military Organization of a Renaissance
State, 315–316, Venice contracted with Bosnia’s governors for the Croatian light horse (crova-
ti) who patrolled with the stradioti.
59. Wiesflecker, Maximilian I, IV, 225. Venice knew of his mission: Setton, The Papacy
and the Levant, III, 88.
60. Klaić, Povijest Hrvata, IV, 297–298.
61. Zlatar, Ghazi Husrev Beg, 11–26. For Ahmed Paşa Hercegović, see prologue, note 26.
62. Zlatar, Ghazi Husrev Beg, 26; Uyar and Erickson, Military History of the Ottomans,
59–64.
63. Zlatar, Ghazi Husrev Beg, 30; Voje, Slovenci pod pritiskom turškega nasilja, 32.
64. Hrabak, “Turske provale i osvajanja na području današnje severne Dalmacije,” 83–87.
According to Pečevija, Skradin surrendered to Bektaš, a Herzegovinan vojvod: Pečevija, Histo-
rija, 79–80.
65. Zlatar, Ghazi Husrev Beg, 31.
66. Klaić, Povijest Hrvata, IV, 387–388; Zlatar, Ghazi Husrev Beg, 32.
67. Zlatar, Ghazi Husrev Beg, 30.
82 Chapter 1

68. Instructions for Bredam’s mission to Charles V, 13 June 1524, in Familienkorrespon-

denz I, Letter 76, 174–175; cf. Klaić, Povijest Hrvata, IV, 392, and Voje, Slovenski pod
pritiskom turškega nasilja, 32.
69. Cf. Biščević, Bosanski namjesnici, no. 34: Ghazi Husrev Beg was relieved of his post
sometime during the second half of 1525 and reappointed in January.
70. Cf. Klaić, Povijest Hrvata, IV, 260–261: following a failed siege in 1501, captured
Ottoman artillery was brought into Jajce.
71. Krsto Frankopan to Zuane Dandolo, 24 June 1525, Sanudo Odnošaji, VIII, 202–210;
Prelog, Povijest Bosne, 30–32.
72. Prelog, Povijest Bosne, 55–62.
73. Conquered in 1502 by the armies of Ferdinand the Catholic of Aragon.
74. Mallet and Hale, Military Organization of a Renaissance State, 211. The battle was at
Agnadello, 14 May 1509.
75. Preto, Venezia e i Turchi, 37–43, 51; Setton, The Papacy and the Levant, III, 90.
76. Luciano Pezzolo, Il fisco dei Veneziani: finanza publica tra XV e XVII secole (Verona:
Somma campagna, 2003).
77. Wiesflecker, Kaiser Maximilian I, IV, 306–315.
78. Mallet and Hale, Military Organization of a Renaissance State, 409–411; Christopher
Duffy, Siege Warfare: The Fortress in the Early Modern World, 1494–1660 (London: Rout-
ledge and Keegan Paul, 1979), 8–16; Geoffrey Parker, The Military Revolution (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1988), 9–12.
79. Sanudo Odnošaji, VI, 169. The doge was Andrea Barbarigo (r. 1486–1501).
80. From the rectors of Zadar, 11 August 1499, Sanudo, Diarii, II, 1105. For the cavalry
commander, Count Žarko Dražović, who was “Great Count of Poljica,” see Klaić, Povijest
Hrvata, IV, 255.
81. Sanudo, Diarii, III, 1033: Zadar’s rectors report (31 October 1500).
82. From Francesco Venier and Jacopo da Molin in Zadar, 22 October 1500; from Sagredo
and Molin in Zadar, 12 December 1500; and Sanudo’s report of a decision by the Senate, here
called the Pregadi [January 1501]: Diarii, III, 1016–1017; cf. Sanudo Odnošaji, VI, 162.
83. Report of Procurator-General Zuam Driedo, 23 February 1501, Sanudo Odnošaji, VI,
196–198.
84. Pederin, Mletačka uprava, 16.
85. Sanudo Odnošaji, VI, 194, 222 (Sanudo’s report on two appearances before the Pregadi
by the captain of Nin, 26 February 1501 and 16 October 1502).
86. James D. Tracy, A Financial Revolution in the Habsburg Netherlands (Berkeley: Uni-
versity of California Press, 1985), chapter 5.
87. From the rector of Zadar, 21 September 1500; from the captain of Zadar, 17 November
1500; and from the rector and captain of Zadar, 27 November 1500: Sanudo, Diarii, III, 878,
1164, 1291–1292. From Driedo in Kotor, 28 February 1501, Sanudo Odnošaji, VI, 205–206.
88. Nikola Jakšić, Zemunik. Srednovjekovni Zadarski kaštel i Turska kasaba (Split: Muzeij
Arheoloških Spomenika, 1997), 39–41.
89. From Domengo da Mosta, podesta of Nin, [late September or early October] 1500,
Sanudo, Diarii, III, 934.
90. The term used is homeni da fatti, “men of deeds.”
91. From Zuane Paulo Gradenigo in Kotor, 15 March 1500, Sanudo, Diarii, III, 185; and
from Piero Tiepolo in Bar, 16 June 1500, Sanudo, Diarii, III, 491.
92. Mayhew, Dalmatia between Ottoman and Venetian Rule, 165–166: the assembly was
called a zbor; a league was a posoba. On Poljica, see report from Zuane Antonio Dandolo in
Split, 19 January 1503, 8 February 1503, Sanudo Odnošaji, VI, 235–237.
 Hungary and Venice Defeated, 1499–1526 83

93. From Zadar’s count, 26 December 1500, Sanudo, Diarii, III, 1306–1307; and III, 1291,
January 1501.
94. E.g., Sanudo, Diarii, II, 693 (from the rectors of Zadar, 22 April 1499); II, 1033 (from
the same, 31 October 1500); Sanudo Odnošaji, VI, 181 (from the Count of Trogir, 17–19
January 1501); V, 188 (from the Count of Šibenik, 12 February 1501); VI, 234 (from a
subsequent Count of Trogir, 24 January 1503).
95. Sanudo, Diarii, II, 954, report from the Count of Šibenik, 19 July 1499: Ottoman raiders
gained little by attacking Garbazo, “where some peasants had taken refuge and defended
themselves.”
96. From the rectors of Zadar, 23 June 1500, Sanudo, Diarii, III, 556–557; from the rector of
Split, 24 January 1501, VI, 177 (fearing for their animals, peasants would not take shelter “on
the islands”).
97. Rectors of Zadar: 22 February 1501 (Sanudo Odnošaji, VI, 195); 31 October 1500,
Sanudo, Diarii, III, 1033.
98. From the rectors of Zadar, 19 June 1500 (Sanudo, Diarii, III, 1538–1539); and from the
rector of Šibenik, 12 February 1501 (Sanudo Odnošaji, VI, 188).
99. From the rectors of Zadar, 21 June 1499 (a report on the raid in progress), and 15 July
1499 (their census of losses suffered), Sanudo, Diarii, II, 853–854, 943; cf. II, 891–892, letter
of “Alexandro medico” in Zadar to Aloisio Trevisano, 30 June 1499.
100. From the rectors of Zadar, 31 October and 3 November 1500, Sanudo, Diarii, III, 1033,
1059. From the castellan of Zadar, 17 November 1500, Sanudo, Diarii, III, 1164–1165.
101. Hrabak, “Turske provale i osvajanja na području današnje severne Dalmacije,” 80: from
1504 until 1514 there were occasional raids by martolossi but not by Ottoman regulars.
102. From Hieronimo Sagredo, castellan of Vrana, [January 1515], Sanudo Odnošaji, VI,
441–443; Hrabak, “Turske provale i osvajanja na području današnje severne Dalmacije,” 82.
103. From the Count of Šibenik, 14/15 July 1499, Sanudo, Diarii, II, 949: a courier reports
from Bosnia that “poor folk” (not worth ransoming) brought back as captives are sold for 30
ducats “to a merchant.”
104. CRV I, 9–34, the relatio of Venier and Contarini, dated 27 October 1525; cf. the sum-
mary, Sanudo Odnošaji, VIII, 217. The Senate sent syndics to Dalmatia only when it was felt a
more general oversight was needed, as in 1439, 1473, 1497, 1513, and 1525 (CRV I, 1–4).
105. Sanudo, Diarii, II, 1270–1271, and III, 491.
106. CRV I, 13.
107. From the rector of Šibenik, February 1520, Sanudo Odnošaji, VIII, 69; from the rectors
of Zadar, 6 February and 1 March 1520, Sanudo Odnošaji, VIII, 69–70, 74–75.
108. From the rector of Šibenik, 13 January 1531, Sanudo Odnošaji, VIII, 96; from the
rectors of Zadar, 24 and 28 January 1521, VIII, 95–96, 97; from Domengo Capello, proveditor
of the Armada, 21 January 1521, VIII, 97. Cf. Biščević, Bosanski namjesnici, no. 32: sancak-
beg Balibeg Jahjapašić was in office in 1521.
109. From the rectors of Zadar, 28 January 1521, Sanudo Odnošaji, VIII, 97; Sanudo’s report
of how a delegation from Šibenik was received in Venice, January 1521; Sanudo Odnošaji,
VIII, 98–99, Sanudo’s notes on Anzolo Guoro’s election and his ensuing dispute with the
camera degli imprestidi.
110. A fusta was a small galley with twelve to eighteen banks of oars. This was not the first
time Ottoman fuste appeared off Šibenik: below, note 170.
111. Above, note 65.
112. “Non sa la Signoria quella sapiamo nui.” For the reference, see the next note; for a
possible reason for the suspicions of the townsfolk, see below, note 170.
84 Chapter 1

113. Sanudo Odnošaji, VIII, 157–159: from the Count of Šibenik, 8 May 1523; Sanudo’s
summary of discussions within the organs of government, concluding May 11; and a letter of
May 20 from the bailo Andrea de Prioli saying that grand vezir Amath Paşa is claiming that the
mills rightfully belong to the sultan. Cf. pp. 159–161, a presentation to the Senate (May 22) by
the “orators” of the nobles and popolo of Šibenik on what measures must be taken to defend
their city.
114. From Alvise da Canal, 7 April 1525, Archivio di Stato di Venezia, hereafter abbreviated
as ASV-DAC, Busta 61, f. 26–26v.
115. For the fortress of San Nicolò, built on the Šibenik channel after the 1537–1540 Otto-
man war, see Andrej Žmegač, Bastioni jadranske Hrvatske (Zagreb: Školska knjiga, 2009),
48–55.
116. CRV I, 14; ASV-DAC, Busta 61, f. 62v–63v; above, note 79.
117. ASV-DAC, Busta 61, 26–26v; CRV I, 11; ASV-DAC, and a report by count Vetor
Barbadico of Zadar, 24 June 1527, CRV II, 41–46, here 44–46.
118. Žmegač, Bastioni jadranske Hrvatske, 33–47, 189–191. Michele Sammicheli’s Land-
ward Gate, the crowning touch, was completed in 1543.
119. Annual crown income was roughly 200,000 Hungarian florins, or about what it cost to
maintain Corvinus’s border defense system: Engel, The Realm of St. Stephen, 357–358; Pálffy,
The Kingdom of Hungary, 22; and Jurković, “Turska opasnost i Hrvatski velikaši,” 69.
120. Pálffy, The Kingdom of Hungary, 21–22.
121. Engel, The Realm of St. Stephen, 342–343; cf. 278: with the death of Sigismund I in
1437, “the power that had hitherto linked the magnates to royal authority . . . disappeared.”
122. Engel, The Realm of St. Stephen, 361–364. Szapolyai (or Zapolya) was recognized as
king (1527–1540) by the Ottomans and by many European courts, notably France.
123. His Tripartitum, a summary of Hungary’s laws, was completed in 1517.
124. Engel, The Realm of St. Stephen, 349, 364. For the Scythian legend, see Paul Lendvai,
The Hungarians (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003), 12, 14, 16, 25, 60.
125. Wiesflecker, Maximilian I, I, 302–305.
126. Two of the six children of Maximilian’s son Philip the Handsome, Archduke of Bur-
gundy (d. 1506), and Juana of Castile and Aragon, the only surviving child of Ferdinand and
Isabella. The future Mary of Hungary (b. 1505) was the third of four sisters.
127. Engel, The Realm of St. Stephen, 361.
128. The 1507 treaty left unspecified which brother Anna would marry. When Charles or
Ferdinand divided their inheritance in 1519, Ferdinand became Archduke of Austria and mar-
ried Anna in 1521.
129. Engel, The Realm of St. Stephen, 362–364.
130. Setton, The Papacy and the Levant, IV, 158.
131. Krasso-Szöreny. Beyond this point, Transylvania’s border along the Danube with Wal-
lachia (an Ottoman tributary state) marked an informal third sector of the frontier.
132. András Kubinyi, “The Battle of Szávaszentdemeter-Nagyolaszi (1523): Ottoman Ad-
vance and Hungarian Defence on the Eve of Mohács,” in Dávid and Fodor, Ottomans, Hungar-
ians, and Habsburgs in Central Europe, 71–116, here 71–81.
133. E.g., Sanudo, Diarii, III. 886–887 (September 1500), a report that seven thousand Hun-
garians have defeated eight thousand Ottomans near Smederevo; Kubinyi, “The Battle of
Szávaszentdemeter-Nagyolaszi (1523)”; and Krsto Frankopan’s relief of Jajce in 1525, dis-
cussed below.
134. Klaić, Povijest Hrvata, IV, 260–262; Beneto Sanudo’s reports to the Collegio from
Dubrovnik (5 November 1502) and from Budva (30 November 1502), Sanudo Odnošaji, VI,
229–230.
 Hungary and Venice Defeated, 1499–1526 85

135. Klaić, Povijest Hrvata, IV, 263; Engel, The Realm of St. Stephen, 360.
136. The Croatian sector had a different experience; see below.
137. Engel, The Realm of St. Stephen, 366–367; Klaić, Povijest Hrvata, IV, 332, 341; Setton,
The Papacy and the Levant, IV, 175–178.
138. Engel, The Realm of St. Stephen, 367; Perjés, The Fall of the Medieval Kingdom of
Hungary, 86–99; Ferenc Szakály, “The Hungarian-Croatian Border Defense System and Its
Collapse,” in Bak and Király, From Hunyadi to Rákóczy, 141–158, here 151. Cf. Rhoads
Murphey, “Sultan Süleyman and the Conquest of Hungary: Ottoman Manifest Destiny or a
Delayed Reaction to Charles V’s Imperialist Vision?,” Journal of Early Modern History 5
(2001): 197–221.
139. Fodor, “Ottoman Policy towards Hungary,” 120–121; cf. Finkel, Osman’s Dream, 118;
Uyar and Erickson, Military History of the Ottomans, 73. A victory declaration was a fethname.
140. Szakály, “Nándorfehérvár, 1521.”
141. Zemun on the Danube and Šabac on the Sava in 1521, Krasso-Szöreny on the Danube in
1524. Kubinyi, “The Battle of Szávaszentdemeter-Nagyolaszi,” 80–84; Pálffy, “The Hungar-
ian-Habsburg Border Defense Systems,” 13.
142. Szakály, “Nándorfehérvár, 1521,” 151–154. Archbishop Pál Tomori of Kalocsa had
replaced the high sheriff of Temesvár as commander of the Danubian sector.
143. Above, note 32.
144. Dal Burgo to Jacopo Sadoleto, 11 July 1525, Pray, I, Letter 83, pp. 193–201.
145. Dal Burgo to Sadoleto, 11 July 1525 and 6 December 1524, Pray, I, Letters 79, 83, pp.
193–201, 185–186.
146. Dal Burgo to Sadoleto, 28 January 1526, Pray, I, Letter 86, pp. 210–215.
147. Dal Burgo to Sadoleto, 3 May, 26 May, and 12 June 1526, Pray, I, Letters 90, 91, and
93, pp. 226–230, 230–243, and 243–246.
148. Perjés, The Fall of the Medieval Kingdom of Hungary, 173–257 (the quote, p. 157), puts
the invasion force at 150,000 men, but cf. above, note 34.
149. Both rivers flowed north to the Sava.
150. Often there were under-bans for Slavonia and Croatia appointed by the ban.
151. Klaić, Povijest Hrvata, IV, 278: in 1504 Wladislas II withdrew his appointment of
Ferenc Balassa because the congregatio of nobles in Slavonia protested that he did not hold
property in the kingdom of Croatia.
152. He received this title and a grant of land in Slavonia in compensation for his failure to
succeed his father as king of Hungary.
153. Klaić, Povijest Hrvata, IV, 250–251.
154. Klaić, Povijest Hrvata, IV, 279, 286, 294.
155. Peter Pereny. Klaić, Povijest Hrvata, IV, 294.
156. Klaić, Povijest Hrvata, IV, 249–250; 272; 296; and 290, 301, 335.
157. Jurković, “Turska opasnost i Hrvatski velikaši,” 71; Klaić, Povijest Hrvata, IV,
301–302, 306–311, 337, 343. Names of the Bosnian sancakbegs given by Klaić do not corre-
spond to the names given by Biščević, Bosanski namjesnici.
158. From Pasquaglio in Zagreb, March 1510, Sanudo Odnošaji, VI, 325–326: to retaliate
after an Ottoman strike, the captain of Jajce raised one thousand cavalry, only to ride into an
ambush in Bosnia.
159. Klaić, Povijest Hrvata, IV, 280; cf. rectors of Zadar, 29 August 1499, Sanudo, Diarii, II,
1270–1271.
160. From Bernardo Loredan in Trogir, November 1507, Sanudo Odnošaji, VI, 302; from the
rectors of Zadar (who had sent an emissary to Knin), 26 March 1510, Sanudo Odnošaji, VI,
86 Chapter 1

329; Klaić, Povijest Hrvata, IV, 296; Sanudo Odnošaji, VI, 66, entry for 12 January 151, and
VIII, 20, entry for 19 August 1517.
161. From the rectors of Zadar, 28 July 1499, Sanudo, Diarii, II, 1009–1010; from Malipiero
on Krk (Vegia), 10/12 September 1500, Sanudo, Diarii, III, 792.
162. Sanudo Odnošaji, VI, 211, a copy of this letter from Jajce, dated 21 March 1501.
163. Note from Krk (Veglia), June 1509, Sanudo Odnošaji, VI, 315: “30 barche.” These
vessels were smaller and faster than the fuste of Venice’s Dalmatian fleet. War galleys were
larger and slower still.
164. Skradin to Louis II, Laetare Sunday, 1522, Pray, I, Letter 67, pp. 156–158; Hrabak,
“Turske provale i osvajanja na području današnje severne Dalmacije,” 86; letters from Dalma-
tia, 30 May 1518, Sanudo Odnošaji, VIII, 37–38.
165. From the rectors of Zadar, 29 August 1499, Sanudo, Diarii, II, 1270–1271; Klaić,
Povijest Hrvata, IV, 280.
166. Jurković, “Turska opasnost i Hrvatski velikaši”; from Francesco Prioli (Priuli?) on Krk
(Veglia), 30 July 1510, Sanudo Odnošaji, VI, 355–356; from Zuane Moro on Krk, 7 June 1514,
Sanudo Odnošaji, VI, 416.
167. From Piero Malipiero on Krk, 25 January 1499, 10/12 September 1500, Sanudo, Diarii,
II, 394–395, III, 791; from Agustin Valier on Krk, 28 October 1525, Sanudo Odnošaji, VIII,
218.
168. Jurković, “Turska opasnost i Hrvatski velikaši,” 73: for his services, Krsto Frankopan
received Novigrad in Istria and Postojna in Carniola. From 1514 to 1519 he was held captive in
Venice: Sanudo Odnošaji, VIII, 414–415, entry for 5 June 1514. Cf. from Priamo Malipiero on
Rab (Arbe), 1 May 1523, Sanudo Odnošaji, VIII, 156.
169. Nataša Štefanec, Heretik njegova Veličanstva. Povijest o Jurjur IV Zrinskom i njegoiva
Rodu (Zagreb: Barbat, 2001), 13–22; Klaić, Povijest Hrvata, IV, 306; and Paulus von Ober-
stein et al. to Ferdinand, Cetina, 3 January 1527, MOE, I, doc. 47, 57–64: for his support of
Ferdinand, Zrinski asks a pension of 15,000 florins, equivalent to half the income he says he
has from his mines—a claim which, in context, should be taken with a grain of salt.
170. From Andrea Donado in Split, 10 March 1514, Sanudo Odnošaji, VI, 409–410.
171. From Francesco de Cha Taiapetra in Split, October 1517, Sanudo Odnošaji, VIII, 28.
172. From the rectors of Zadar, July 1505, Sanudo Odnošaji, VI, 293: in a family feud, one
“Zuane Frankopan” called in the Turks against his kinfolk. Cf. Hrabak, “Turske provale i
osvajanja na području današnje severne Dalmacije,” 80.
173. From F. Prioli (Priuli?) on Krk, 25 September 1509, Sanudo Odnošaji, VI, 319–320;
letter of 5 September 1511, cited by Klaić, Povijest Hrvata, 293; from the rectors of Zadar,
May 1514, Sanudo Odnošaji, VI, 411.
174. From the rectors of Zadar, 30 October 1514, 4 November 1514, Sanudo Odnošaji, III,
433–434, 434; cf. Klaić, Povijest Hrvata, IV, 307, and Hrabak, “Turske provale i osvajanja na
području današnje severne Dalmacije,” 82.
175. Reports from Udine and Cividale, April/May 1520, Sanudo Odnošaji, VIII, 77–78.
176. Klaić, Povijest Hrvata, IV, 377; also, Karlović was an in-law of the influential Cardinal
Tamás Bakócz.
177. Sanudo Odnošaji, VIII, 166–167, entry for 18 October 1523.
178. Leo X to Wladislas II, 3rd calends of April 1515, and to István Báthory, 13 May 1515,
Pray, I, Letters 47, 49, pp. 97–99, 100–103; cf. Leo X to Doge Lorenzo Loredan, 15 June 1515,
Sanudo Odnošaji, VI, 454–457.
179. For the reception of a delegation from Croatia at the Diet of Nuremberg in 1498, see
prologue, note 114.
 Hungary and Venice Defeated, 1499–1526 87

180. Above, note 59. In December 1518, after the fighting in Italy had died down, Maximil-
ian reportedly sent three thousand cavalry to re-victual Jajce: Sanudo Odnošaji, VIII, 47.
181. Klaić, Povijest Hrvata, IV, 292: his wife, from an Augsburg patrician family, was
Apollonia Lang; on her brother, Cardinal Matthäus Lang of Salzburg (1468–1540), see Con-
temporaries of Erasmus: A Biographical Register of the Renaissance and Reformation, ed.
Peter G. Biuetenholtz and Thomas B. Deutscher (3 vols., Toronto: University of Toronto Press,
1985–1987), II, 289.
182. Sanudo Odnošaji, VI, 414–415 (he is brought to Venice, June 1514); VIII, 13 (the
French ambassador comes before the Collegio, February 1517), and 51 (Frankopan’s release, 5
January 1519).
183. E.g., “Anzolo” Frankopan (one of Bernardin’s sons) and Countess Dorotea Frankopan:
Sanudo, Diarii, II, 422 (entry for 14 February 1499), and II, 788 (entry for 22 April 1499).
184. Sanudo Odnošaji, VI, 313, entry for March 1513, Both’s condotta; cf. Sanudo Odnošaji,
VI, 315, 316, reports from the podesta of Albona in Friuli (13 June 1509) and from Venice’s
captain-general (1 June).
185. Sanudo Odnošaji, VI, 314 (April 1509), 326 (from the rectors of Zadar, 18, 21, and 26
March 1510), and 433 (from the rectors of Zadar, 30 October 1514).
186. Sanudo Odnošaji, VIII, 29, Sanudo’s summary of the mission of Karlović’s emissaries,
29 November 1517.
187. Sanudo Odnošaji, VIII, 56 (his appearance before the Collegio, 15 March 1519), and 59
(discussions leading to the new condotta, 19–28 March).
188. Sanudo Odnošaji, VIII, 146–147, January 1522, and 156, report from Priamo Malipiero
on Pag, 1 May 1523. Krsto Frankopan’s holdings in Postojna gave him access to the Soča/
Isonzo valley. Venice’s ambassador to France urged the advisers of Emperor Charles V not to
give him Gradisca or Marano lest this be the start of another war: Sanudo Odnošaji, VIII, 93,
96, summary of letters from the ambassador to France, 6 January 1521.
189. Klaić, Povijest Hrvata, IV, 255–256, and Prelog, Povijest Bosne, 24; from the rectors of
Zadar, 10 September 1500, Sanudo, Diarii, III, 792.
190. From the rectors of Zadar, August 1507, Sanudo Odnošaji, VI, 300–301; Klaić, Povijest
Hrvata, IV, 294, citing a report from Venice’s ambassador in Buda.
191. From the rectors of Zadar, April 1513, Sanudo Odnošaji, VI, 398.
192. From Maffeo Michiel, 24 March 1516, Sanudo Odnošaji, VI, 461.
193. Reports from the rectors of Zadar, 29 June 1519, 11 June 1520, and 29 June 1521,
Sanudo Odnošaji, VIII, 64, 80, 101–102. The town that was attacked is called “Dobrovica.”
There is a Dobrovac in Slavonia, south of the Drava, but Dobrenica, near Bihać, seems more
likely.
194. Klaić, Povijest Hrvata, IV, 377–378.
195. Klaić, Povijest Hrvata, IV, 381.
196. For suspicions about the Zrinski clan’s dealings with the Ottomans, see chapter 2, notes
241, 304.
197. From Venice’s ambassador to Hungary, 27 October 1521, Sanudo Odnošaji, VIII, 141;
Skradin to Louis II, Sunday before Laetare Sunday, 1522, Pray, I, Letter 67, pp. 156–158.
198. Hrabak, “Turske provale i osvajanja na području današnje severne Dalmacije,” 86–88;
Klaić, Povijest Hrvata, IV, 382–383; from the rectors of Šibenik, June 1522, Sanudo Odnošaji,
VIII, 152.
199. The town was Ostrovica. Klaić, Povijest Hrvata, IV, 387–388; reports from Proveditor-
General Hieronimo Canal, August 1523, and from the rectors of Zadar, 29 December 1523,
Sanudo Odnošaji, VIII, 166, 169; above, note 65.
88 Chapter 1

200. A tactic and also a term (tabor) pioneered by Hussite armies in fifteenth-century Bohe-
mia; cf. the Janissary formation known as tabur cengi: Uyar and Erickson, Military History of
the Ottomans, 42.
201. Klaić, Povijest Hrvata, 261–262, 293, 310, 337; cf. 327–328: in 1519, rival diets (one
convened by the lesser nobles, the other by the king) competed to develop plans for defending
Jajce.
202. Frankopan to Dandolo, 24 June 1525, Sanudo Odnošaji, VIII, 202–210.
203. “Cominzarono trare et scragarono forsi 500 schiopetieri in una volta.” Frankopan will
have known about the Battle of Pavia (24 February 1525), where an apparently successful
cavalry charge led by King Francis I of France was cut short by a fusillade from Spanish
arcabuceros emerging from cover on both sides: Angus Konstam, Pavia, 1525: The Climax of
the Italian Wars (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996).
204. A view echoed in later Venetian writing on the Ottomans.
205. Wiesflecker, Maximilian I, IV, 221; for Hungary’s income, see above, note 132.
206. Uyar and Erickson, Military History of the Ottomans, 83–87.
207. Godfrey Goodwin, The Janissaries (London: Saqi Books, 2001).
208. Voje, Slovenci pod pritiskom turškega nasilja, 32; cf. Sanudo Odnošaji, VIII, 149,
188–189, from the captain of Gorizia to the podesta of Koper/Capodistria (29 April 1522), and
from Andrea Foscolo, lieutenant of Friuli (24 October 1524).
209. For a proposal from the estates in May 1518—the so-called Innsbrucker Libell—see
Alfred Kohler, Ferdinand I, 1503–1564: Fürst, König, und Kaiser (Munich: C. H. Beck, 2003),
61–70, and Simoniti, Vojaška organizacija na Slovenskem, 35. In December 1518, Maximilian
sent three thousand cavalry to join with Ban Berislavić in re-victualling Jajce.
210. Sanudo Odnošaji, VIII, 47 (December 1518).
211. Ferdinand was raised in Spain at the behest of his maternal grandfather, King Ferdinand
the Catholic of Aragon (d. 1516).
212. Archduke Philip the Handsome (d. 1506).
213. Martina Hengel, Renaissance und Gegenreformation. Geschichte Österreichs (Vienna:
Pichler, 2003), 39. The duchies were Tyrol (Innsbruck), Upper Austria (Linz), Lower Austria
(Wiener Neustadt), Styria (Graz), Carinthia (Klagenfurt), and Carniola (Ljubljana/Laibach). In
1508 Maximilian had transferred the administrative capital of the Austrian lands from Inns-
bruck to Vienna.
214. It is worth noting that Charles’s government in Castile barely survived a major revolt in
1521: Stephen Haliczer, The Comuñeros of Castile: The Formation of a Revolution, 1475–1521
(Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1981).
215. Kohler, Ferdinand I, 61–70; Buchmann, Österreich und das Osmanische Reich, 72.
216. Pálffy, “Origins and Development of the Border Defence System,” 14–15.
217. Maria Wakounig, “Ferdinand I und die Uskoken,” in Maria Fuchs and Alfred Kohler,
eds., Kaiser Ferdinand I. Aspekte eines Herrscherlebens (Münster: Aschendorff, 2003),
191–201, here 192; Ernst Dieter Petritsch, “Die Ungarnpolitik Ferdinands I bis zu seiner
Tributpflichtigkeit an die hohe Pforte” (Ph.D. dissertation, Universität Wien, Geisteswissens-
chaftliche Fakultät, 1979), 12 (Dr. Petritsch, of the Haus-Hof- and Staatsarchiv in Vienna,
kindly made a copy available to me); and Ferdinand to Charles, Nuremberg, 5 November 1522,
Familienkorrespondenz, I, Letter 23, 30–33.
218. Klaić, Povijest Hrvata, IV, 380–381, 385–386.
219. Klaić, Povijest Hrvata, IV, 388; Ferdinand to Charles, Nuremberg, 6 December 1523,
Familienkorrespondenz, I, Letter 49, 79–80.
 Hungary and Venice Defeated, 1499–1526 89

220. Ferdinand to Charles, Innsbruck, 14 March 1525, and Ferdinand’s instructions for Mar-
tin Salinas on his mission to Charles, Innsbruck, 2 April 1525, Familienkorrespondenz, Letter
131, 275, and Letter 136, 287.
221. Cf. the letter cited in note 217: Ferdinand says that he cannot support such operations
much longer.
 Chapter Two

The Ottoman Advantage: Advances in

Slavonia, Croatia, and Dalmatia,
1527–1541

Wars between France and Spain 1 convulsed sixteenth-century Europe. Fran-

cis I (r. 1515–1547) ruled Europe’s largest kingdom, with a population in
1500 of around fifteen million. 2 Spain 3 had only half as many people, but
Charles V 4 was also Archduke of the Low Countries provinces and king of
Naples and Sicily. As Holy Roman Emperor, 5 he controlled no territory in
Germany, 6 but he did have privileged access to the most sought-after mer-
cenary units, German heavy cavalry and Landsknecht infantry. Habsburg-
Valois rivalry promoted advances in the military arts and induced Europe’s
banking houses to float gigantic loans to finance the wars. 7 Since the rivals
were evenly matched, the fighting did not significantly alter France’s borders
with Spain in the south or the Low Countries in the north. But in northern
Italy, seen by both sides as the key battleground, the Habsburgs gained the
upper hand. 8 To redress the balance, France appealed to the Porte. From the
1530s, Francis I and Sultan Suleyman were firm allies. 9
By comparison with Charles, Archduke Ferdinand cut a sorry figure as a
leader of armies. 10 The imperial diet had means of raising troops if Germany
were attacked, but Hungary and Croatia lay beyond the empire’s borders and
as yet beyond the diet’s concerns. In 1500 the Austrian and Bohemian 11
lands that Ferdinand would come to rule had a combined population of
around 3.5 million; for the years 1520–1535, the population of the Ottoman
Empire has been estimated at twelve million. 12 In 1560, near the end of a

91
92 Chapter 2

long reign during which his estates increased the amounts of their subsidy
grants, Ferdinand’s lands yielded the equivalent of 1,720,000 Venetian gold
ducats in income. 13 In 1527/1528, near the beginning of Suleyman’s long
reign, Ottoman account books show an annual income equivalent to
10,075,000 ducats. 14 European princes fought their wars on borrowed mon-
ey, but in Ferdinand’s case the royal mining rights that bankers demanded as
surety for their loans were either over-pledged already (in Tirol) or, in Upper
Hungary (modern Slovakia), contested by his rival for the throne, János
Szapolyai. 15 Finally, Ferdinand lacked some of the building blocks from
which Charles V assembled his armies. Austria had nothing like the tercios,
Spain’s famed infantry regiments. 16 Charles’s generals were sometimes out-
planned by the French, 17 but Ferdinand’s commanders sometimes lost battles
through their failure even to agree on a plan. As a result, campaigns against
Ottoman targets had little success. By contrast, Ottoman sancakbegs dogged-
ly pursued well-defined strategic objectives. Their superior resources meant
sound logistics, and they took prudent measures to hold conquered territory.
By 1542 the sultan ruled a third of Hungary and half of Croatia.
The Venetians, their territorial ambitions pruned by Charles’s victories in
Italy, 18 cultivated a cooperative relationship with the Porte, which meant
ignoring provocations in Dalmatia. When war unexpectedly broke out in
1537, the republic reluctantly allied with the Habsburgs. But after failures by
Ferdinand’s army and by Charles V’s war fleet, Venice made a separate
peace with the Porte. Although large parts of the contado of Zadar were
conquered by the Ottomans during the war, the Signoria accepted the loss as
a necessary inconvenience. Venice’s Dalmatian subjects apparently did not.
As uskoks from Croatia ramped up their excursions into Ottoman territory,
they were aided and abetted by Dalmatia’s country folk. 19

OTTOMAN BOSNIA

The Grand Strategy of Suleyman the Lawgiver

Christians and Muslims alike anticipated a climactic battle between Charles

V and Suleyman, both seen as aiming to be “lord of the world.” 20 Indeed,
each had advisers who spoke of world monarchy. 21 But while the estates of
Charles’s lands could resist his demands, 22 Ottoman court usage presumed
that the sultan’s word, once spoken, was immutable. 23 Suleyman had foreign
ambassadors kneel before him in homage; Charles demanded this obeisance
 The Ottoman Advantage 93

only from those he defeated. 24 With his Christian enemies, Charles V signed
treaties, as between equals. But Ottoman protocol recognized no peer to the
sultan; what Europeans called treaties or capitulations were worded in Turk-
ish as concessions from the Ottoman sovereign. 25 Suleyman entrusted cap-
tured land in Hungary to vassal princes, as Charles V did in Italy, 26 but only
in Ottoman law did land where the ruler’s horse had trod become his, to
dispose of as he pleased. 27 In sum, whereas Charles may have entertained
thoughts about Dante’s Monarchia, Suleyman embodied, in substance and in
style, the unquestioned authority of a Rightly Guided Caliph. 28
Selim I’s victories over the heretic Shi’ites of Iran and their Mamluk
abettors had vindicated Ottoman claims to the caliphate. But repeated cam-
paigns against Muslim states also stirred discontent; in Anatolia as in Rume-
lia, troops lobbied for a renewal of the fighting against infidel Europe. Suley-
man’s turn to the West was thus in part a way of keeping harmony in the
ranks. 29 Advancing Islam’s frontier need not have meant bringing Hungary
under direct Ottoman rule. János Szapolyai of Transylvania, one of two
contenders for the throne vacated by the death of Louis II, promised to rule as
a vassal of the Porte. Suleyman’s hand was forced only when Szapolyai was
driven from the field by Habsburg troops in Hungary, allowing Ferdinand to
enter Buda on 1 August 1528. 30 In May 1529 an Ottoman army of between
100,000 and 150,000 set out from the capital. En route to Vienna, Suleyman
paused in Buda to install his vassal-king, János Szapolyai. In response to
Ferdinand’s pleas, units from the west reached the Austrian capital just be-
fore the Ottomans did: Spanish arquebusiers sent across the Alps by Charles
V, Bohemian infantry, a contingent of miners from Tirol to counter the
efforts of Ottoman sappers, and, finally, a commander appointed by the
imperial diet. The invaders dug in around Vienna, and their artillery battered
down a section of the wall near the Kärntner Gate. But after three efforts to
storm the breach were driven back (9–11 October), Suleyman ordered a
withdrawal. 31
Three years later he returned with an even larger force. As he entered
Belgrade, Suleyman had carried before him a bejeweled golden tiara, made
in Venice to the orders of his grand vezir, Ibrahim Paşa; it was meant to show
that the sultan’s majesty eclipsed that of pope and emperor combined. Pos-
sibly, the objective of this campaign was not so much to conquer Vienna as
to force Charles V to come against the sultan. If this was the plan, it suc-
ceeded. Charles, the self-professed champion of Christendom, now took the
field. But as the Hispano-Imperial war flotilla headed down the Danube to
94 Chapter 2

Vienna, Suleyman unaccountably wasted three weeks besieging the small

Hungarian fortress-town of Köszeg (Güns), fifty miles south of Vienna. By
the time he made a face-saving agreement with its commander, Nikola
Jurešić, autumn rains were falling, and the Ottomans turned back. 32 The
moment for a direct confrontation between Charles and Suleyman had come
and gone.
The strategic threat posed by Safavid Iran—the main preoccupation of
Selim I’s reign—loomed in the background. Iran was now under pressure
from the Uzbeks to the east and also weakened by the defection of key
officials to the Ottomans. Suleyman’s advisers saw a chance to cut off Iran’s
access to the Caucasus and to push Ottoman rule down through Iraq to Basra
on the Persian Gulf. Hence in March 1533 the Ottoman government con-
cluded with Ferdinand’s ambassadors an armistice that allowed peace talks to
begin. Suleyman then led a victorious campaign against Iran; by the end of
1534, Baghdad and Basra were Ottoman cities. 33 Meanwhile, Ferdinand pur-
sued separate negotiations with the as yet childless Szapolyai, who in 1538
secretly named Ferdinand as his heir. But upon Szapolyai’s death in 1540 his
widow defended the rights of a newborn son, János Zsigmund. Habsburg
troops failed at Buda, but they provoked an Ottoman response. In 1541,
marching once more to Buda, Suleyman installed an Ottoman paşa, relegat-
ing Szapolyai’s widow to Transylvania. The imperial diet now authorized for
the first time a campaign into Hungary in 1542. But the army led by an
imperial elector, having dug in around Pest, withdrew without accomplishing
anything. 34 Buda was henceforth the capital of an Ottoman paşaluk until
1686.
Suleyman’s focus on Charles V as his great rival was seconded by the
man he had promoted over the heads of senior officials to become grand
vezir, Ibrahim Paşa, who served from 1523 until the sultan had him executed
in 1536. One of the more remarkable grand vezirs of the sixteenth century,
Ibrahim Paşa also served as serdar (commander-in-chief) for the sultan’s
major campaigns, both in Hungary and in Iraq. 35 A native of Parga, a moun-
taintop Venetian outpost in western Greece, he preserved an affection for his
native place that facilitated good relations with Venice. Against the Habs-
burgs, Ibrahim promoted the sultan’s claim to be the true Roman Emperor.
He taunted Ferdinand’s ambassadors about the insignificance of their prince
and suggested that Charles V should “evacuate Germany and return to
Spain.” 36 Though injudicious in bragging about his personal power, 37 Ibra-
him had an impact: “His messianic rhetoric and imperial aspirations not only
 The Ottoman Advantage 95

reached the sultan’s ears but also influenced his master’s mind.” 38 In sum,
questions of “honor and reputation” brooked large in the sultan’s strategic
thinking, just as for Charles V. 39 Honor and reputation required defeating the
man who styled himself the champion of Christendom—not to mention his
brother Ferdinand, who despite his grand pretensions was nothing more than
“king of Vienna.” This was the imperial context for further conquests in
Hungary and Croatia by Ghazi Husrev Beg and his colleagues.

Glimpses of Bosnia

Three diplomats of this era left records of their impressions of Bosnia. In

1528, en route to take up his post as Venetian bailo in Constantinople,
Tommaso Contarini traveled by land, from Šibenik up mountain tracks to
Sarajevo. In retrospect, he saw he had chosen a difficult route, for traffic
between Sarajevo and Venetian Dalmatia was evidently minimal. At Šibenik
he found “scarcely four” horses. No caravan was formed until Ghazi Husrev
Beg sent mounts, “small and ill suited to carry their burdens.” At the first
major town, Bistrica, Murad Beg Tardić, a leading Bosnian official, honored
Contarini by putting out silver goblets captured in Hungary. The visitor also
saw “a great number of boys” and much booty from Hungary. The country-
side was “molto bello,” with abundant streams, but of its fine, broad fields,
“not the tenth part” were cultivated. 40
Unlike Contarini, Benedikt Kuripešić, who in 1530 accompanied Ferdi-
nand’s ambassadors to the Porte as a translator, spoke Croatian and thus
interacted with the locals. His account stressed the differences between Mus-
lims (“Turks”) and Christians, whether Catholic or Orthodox. Not under-
standing that most townsfolk were Muslim, he identified only soldiers and
officials as “Turks.” Christian men have hair, he says, but “Turks are bald—
that is how one tells them apart.” Christians were usually prevented from
speaking with the party; when they did they were apologetic about joining in
raids into Christian territory, an obligation they said was forced upon them.
Kuripešić saw signs of dilapidation, like deserted villages, which he recog-
nized as artifacts of war. Only now, for example, was rebuilding underway in
the area around Jajce, captured two years earlier. 41 Outside Sarajevo, the
ambassadors 42 were received by Ghazi Husrev Beg. Passing between “two
rows of Turks, decked out in fabrics of silk, velvet, and cloth of gold,” they
came to a hut “made of fine green leaves.” Inside, Ghazi Husrev Beg, seated
on the ground, bade them to take places on a splendid carpet spread before
96 Chapter 2

him. 43 This was how a prominent sancakbeg emulated his superiors, enough
to indicate his stature but not so much as to give offense.
Clues about how decisions were made in Bosnia are provided by another
Habsburg ambassador, Franz Ricius, provost of Trent and Baron Sprinzen-
stein, who traveled through Bosnia to the Porte in 1536. When he sought to
return the same way in 1537, carrying a letter from the sultan to Ferdinand,
he came at a bad time, because Ferdinand’s lands were raising a large army
meant to reverse recent Ottoman gains in Slavonia. Thus when Sprinzenstein
got “to Bosnia,” he was detained by the locumtenens (vojvod), 44 who also
stopped him from negotiating with “Christian merchants” for a loan against
the letter of credit he carried. Sprinzenstein managed to escape and head
south toward Dubrovnik, but when customs officials found the sultan’s letter
in his baggage they sent him back whence he came. Pressed to tell why he
escaped, the ambassador said he would do so only before “the communitas.”
Once the “elders” (seniores) were duly assembled and learned of Sprinzen-
stein’s mission, they told the locumtenens that he had put his life at risk by
detaining an ambassador sent from the Porte. The locumtenens excused him-
self by saying he was following orders from Ghazi Husrev Beg. 45 In fact, the
sancakbeg may have had reasons for not wanting the sultan’s letter (possibly
authorizing a new truce) to reach Vienna too quickly. A more interesting
question arises from Sprinzenstein’s terminology: humanist diplomats, fond
of Roman parallels, rarely if ever used non-classical words like communitas
or seniores in referring to Ottoman dignitaries. Who were the seniores? They
could have been military commanders—the vojvods. Another Habsburg
source of the same era indicates that the communitas of soldiers had or at
least claimed a voice in military decisions. Alternatively, Sprinzenstein
might have been referring to the ayan-i vilayeti, a “loose organization of
leading men who contributed to the regulation of daily problems” in a given
district. 46

Ottoman Strategic Objectives: Breakthrough on the Sava

According to a report Sprinzenstein prepared years earlier while serving as a

spy for Ferdinand, the sancakbegs of Bosnia and Herzegovina together had
under their command five thousand cavalry and fifteen thousand infantry.
Few of the infantry had arquebuses, and most of the rest were poorly armed;
also, many mounted units were more suited for plunder than for conquest. 47
But these numbers, probably not far off the mark, indicate a formidable
military establishment. Bosnia’s might was on display in the march to
 The Ottoman Advantage 97

Mohács. Ghazi Husrev Beg, with a personal retinue of more than three thou-
sand, was accompanied by his fifteen vojvods and their retinues, together
with 641 sipahi cavalry holding timar grants in Bosnia. 48 In 1532, he and
Mehmed Beg Jahjapašić, his counterpart in Belgrade, marched in the van of
the sultan’s army; a Habsburg source reports contention between them be-
cause Ghazi Husrev Beg had been promised that he alone would take the
lead. 49
Mohács opened the door for expansion, and each sancakbeg was expected
to take advantage of opportunities on his doorstep. 50 In the Hungarian prov-
ince of Srijem, east of where the Drava enters the Danube, 51 the initiative lay
with Mehmed Beg Jahjapašić in Belgrade. Bosnia, with its arrowhead shape,
had an unusually long doorstep and thus many opportunities. But the prime
zone for expansion was to the north, across the Sava into Slavonia, the fertile
plain between the Drava and the Sava. 52 Military men on both sides under-
stood this. Hence Jajce on the Vrbas, blocking their access to the Sava, had
been assaulted again and again by the Ottomans and stoutly defended by an
impoverished Hungarian monarchy. 53 In January 1528, Ghazi Husrev Beg
and Murad Beg Tardić surrounded and then stormed the fortress of Jajce.
Other towns in the Jajce district, including Banja Luka farther down the
Vrbas, fell to the Ottomans in short order. To facilitate the movement of
artillery, the sancakbeg built a pontoon bridge across the Vrbas at Jajce. 54 He
then led some four thousand men down the Vrbas, across the Sava, and
through Slavonia to Metlika in Carniola where the raiders were met and
defeated by an Austro-Croatian force. 55
To shorten lines of supply, Bosnia needed fortified bases at points where
the Sava was shallow enough to ford. In March 1530, Ban Ferenc Batthyány
reported that Szapolyai had conceded Slavonia to the Ottomans in return for
the sultan’s promise to protect his other holdings in Hungary and Transylva-
nia; so as to have a base for advancing into Slavonia, the Ottomans were now
building a wall around the city of Osijek. 56 In November, other Habsburg
sources pointed to Kobaš 57 as an intended bridgehead. Soon thereafter, Stje-
pan Berislavić, titular despot of Serbia from 1514 to 1536 and an Ottoman
vassal, led Bosnian troops “across the Sava at his ford called Kobaš,” on the
right (south) bank. When they began building a palisade on the north bank—
more than he bargained for—Berislavić protested. Ghazi Husrev Beg had no
time for quibbles: “Boy, this kingdom and all of its fords belong to the
sultan; it shall be done not as you will but as I will.” 58 The Ottomans brought
98 Chapter 2

Croatia under Ottoman Pressure, ca. 1525–1550 (Venetian cities underlined)

up artillery and replaced the wooden walls with stone. By 1531, however, the
fortress was dismantled, apparently at the behest of Szapolyai. 59

Ottoman Strategic Objectives: Breakthrough to the Adriatic

Croatia proper, south and west of Bosnia, was less fertile and populous than
Slavonia. 60 But if the sultan’s mariners were to challenge Venice’s domina-
tion of the Adriatic, they needed Adriatic harbors. The obvious target was
Senj, a base for attacks on Ottoman shipping. Having conquered Knin and
Skradin 61 on the eastern edge of the district of Lika, Bosnian forces already
had an opening to the west. In 1527, Murad Beg Tardić, who knew the
country well, led expeditions into Lika and neighboring Krbava, resulting in
the capture of several cities including Udbina. More important was the sei-
zure of Obrovac, a small harbor at the mouth of the Zrmanja River that gave
access to the Novigrad Sea, an arm of the Adriatic. As instructed by his
sancakbeg, Murad Beg prepared Obrovac’s harbor to serve as a base for
fuste. 62 In 1530, one of Ferdinand’s spies reported from Istanbul that an
official from Bosnia had come to ask the sultan’s permission for a campaign
 The Ottoman Advantage 99

against Senj; “If I have Senj,” Ghazi Husrev Beg had reportedly promised, “I
will give you Trieste and Ljubljana.” 63 Meanwhile, Murad Beg was pressing
Venetian Šibenik to send him naval craftsmen to help in readying Obrovac’s
warships for action. 64 But the men of Senj struck first, burning four fuste in a
raid on Obrovac (July 1530). 65
Although there are further reports of fuste at Obrovac, 66 Ghazi Husrev
Beg seems to have decided he could more readily gain access to the Adriatic
by striking directly south through the thin strip of Croatia separating Bosnia
from Venetian Split and its contado. Here the obstacle in his path was the
fortress of Klis above Split. In 1531, the Bosnians built a fortress at Solin on
the Bay of Kaštela, two miles below Klis and within sight of the walls of
Split. From here, they launched unsuccessful attacks against Klis in that year
and again in 1532. In September 1532, the Habsburg captains of Senj and
Rijeka, together with Italian mercenaries recruited by Petar Kružić, the cap-
tain of Klis, destroyed the Solin fortress; its 130 Janissaries were strangled. 67

Diplomatic Interlude: Alvise Gritti

From late 1532, the Porte was preoccupied not just by Iran but also by an
affront from Charles V—his admiral, Andrea Doria, had seized the port of
Koroni (Koron) in southern Greece. While these challenges were dealt with
(1532–1535), 68 there was need for calm in Hungary. Ambassadors sent by
Ferdinand were thus well received in January 1533, and a truce was quickly
arranged. 69 Negotiations leading toward a possible treaty of peace were en-
trusted to Ibrahim Paşa until he was sent off to the east in late 1533. Alvise
Gritti (1480–1534), the grand vezir’s right-hand man and his chief adviser
for Hungary, now took over. Apart from his role in these negotiations (dis-
cussed below, in connection with Ferdinand), Gritti had his own objectives.
He was an illegitimate son of Andrea Gritti (d. 1538), a Venetian patri-
cian who made a fortune through trade in Istanbul, in part through his friend-
ship with the then grand vezir, Ahmed Paşa Hercegović. 70 Back in Venice
from 1502, the elder Gritti rose through the ranks of military and civil posts
until in 1523 he was elected doge. From 1506, the younger Gritti made his
career as a merchant in the Ottoman capital dealing in goods of every sort,
especially precious stones and other luxuries. He too was politically con-
nected, through a friendship with Ibrahim Paşa that pre-dated the latter’s
appointment as grand vezir in 1523. The younger Gritti involved himself in
Ottoman revenues by advancing large sums against the right to collect partic-
ular taxes. He is said to have held a three-year contract as a tax farmer for
100 Chapter 2

customs duties in Istanbul and in “all of Greece.” 71 He thus combined busi-

ness and politics, rather like the “portfolio capitalists” of the Mughal Empire
in contemporary India. 72
Possibly because of his business connections in Buda, Gritti was involved
from the very beginning in the Porte’s dealings with János Szapolyai. His
steady accumulation of titles in Hungary—treasurer, governor, and captain-
general—made him “king in fact” if not in name. 73 He also added to his
portfolio by taking over royal rights in the copper mines of Upper Hungary
and the salt mines of Transylvania, shunting aside the favorite bankers of the
Habsburgs, the Fuggers of Augsburg 74 Gritti shuttled back and forth between
Buda and the Porte, where his presence was sometimes required by the grand
vezir or the sultan. To Habsburg diplomats he presented himself as a man
“chosen by God to be a servant of the Turkish Emperor” so as to keep
Hungary out of the hands of the Turks; “were it not for him,” he said, the
kingdom would already be under direct Ottoman rule, “with sancaks, as in
Bosnia, so that no profit could be gotten from the mines.” 75 Alexius Thurzo,
Ferdinand’s treasurer in Hungary, passed on a report that Gritti had promised
to protect Szapolyai’s interests at the Porte. 76 Yet Szapolyai himself stayed
away from Buda when Gritti was there, 77 and his partisans grew increasingly
suspicious of Begogli 78 and his intentions. In September 1534, when Gritti
left Istanbul on a mission to “establish boundaries” in Hungary, he never got
beyond Transylvania; a quarrel with Szapolyai loyalists deteriorated into a
small-scale war in which Gritti was captured and then murdered. 79
In Croatia, Gritti had sought to carve out a principality. In 1529, the
Signoria bestowed on him lordship of two fortress-towns in Habsburg Croa-
tia, Senj and Klis. Since Venice was then involved in difficult negotiations
with Charles V, the grant had a restriction: he must not use force to lay claim
to his new possessions. In fact, force was directed against Klis by Ghazi
Husrev Beg, who will not have coordinated his plans with Gritti. In the
summer of 1532, after the sancakbeg’s second assault had failed and while
Klis’s commander was in Italy recruiting troops, an agent sent by Gritti
persuaded the garrison of Klis to accept Gritti as their lord—albeit not for
long. 80 The expedition that destroyed the fortress at Solin restored Habsburg
rule at Klis. 81
Gritti tried another tack in the fall of 1533. One of his trusted advisers
came as an “ambassador” to key castles on the Una, making promises to
important lords in the name of Croatia’s new ban—that is, Gritti: incursions
from Bosnia would cease, the lords could rebuild their castles and repopulate
 The Ottoman Advantage 101

their lands, and Gritti would bring two thousand arquebusiers from Italy to
guard the border. This effort too came to naught because Gritti’s envoy was
captured by Habsburg officials, and his correspondence was sent on to Ferdi-
nand by one of those he visited, Count Nikola III Zrinski. 82 Finally, in May
1534, before leaving Istanbul on his last trip to Hungary, Gritti made one
more promise. Ghazi Husrev Beg had been transferred to Belgrade to replace
Mehmed Beg Jahjapašić, whom Suleyman took along on his expedition to
Iran. Gritti assured Ferdinand’s ambassador that the new sancakbeg in Bos-
nia—appointed at his behest—would not cause trouble along the border. 83
Indeed, there were no major incursions into Croatia during this man’s tenure
(1534–1536), even though Gritti himself was killed a few months later.

Ottoman Objectives Achieved, 1536–1541

After his reconquest of Koroni (1533–1534) and his victorious campaign in

Iran (1534–1535), Sultan Suleyman had no further reason to rein in his forces
in Rumelia. Hence when Mehmed Beg Jahjapašić and Ghazi Husrev Beg
returned to their erstwhile posts in Belgrade and Sarajevo by May 1536, the
two sancakbegs picked up where they had left off. Klis was left to Bosnia’s
Murad Beg Tardić in collaboration with the sancak of Herzegovina. The
Ottomans began, as before, by building a counter-fortress at Solin, a point
where the besiegers could be supplied from the Adriatic. 84 Klis’s command-
er, Petar Kružić, was not idle. With the help of forces sent from Austria and
Croatia by Ferdinand and from Italy by Pope Paul III, he hoped to repeat the
success he had had in 1532. But the Ottomans showed once again that they
did not readily fall victim to the same plan twice. On 10 March 1537, after
the attackers had conquered the fortress at Solin, they were then set upon and
scattered by Murad Beg Tardić. Two days later, when Murad Beg displayed
Kružić’s severed head before the castle of Klis, the garrison surrendered.
Murad Beg himself became the first governor of the new sancak of Klis. 85
As before, the main action lay to the north, along the Sava. In June and
July 1536, Ghazi Husrev Beg and Mehmed Beg Jahjapašić mobilized an
estimated eighteen thousand men to occupy some of the places that had
belonged to Stjepan Berislavić, an Ottoman vassal recently killed in battle:
Kobaš on the right bank and Slavonski Brod on the left bank. 86 The Ottoman
plan was obvious, and Ghazi Husrev Beg was not deterred by a feeble protest
from Vienna: Ferdinand wanted the sancakbeg to know that any provoca-
tions from the Habsburg side to which he might now be responding had been
carried out contrary to his will. 87 By late August, Ghazi Husrev Beg had
102 Chapter 2

erected a fortress at Slavonski Brod, protected by enough artillery to keep

Habsburg forces at bay and linked to Bosnia by a pontoon bridge across the
Sava. Over the next few months, Mehmed Beg began digging in around the
important city of Požega while one of his vojvods conquered one fortress-
town and moved on to Valpovo, just south of the Drava. Ghazi Husrev Beg’s
men marched up both sides of the Sava; on the right bank they captured a
Habsburg fortress at Gradiška, and on the left bank they got as far as Jaseno-
vac, an island in the Sava just above the point where the Una flows in from
the south. In keeping with their usual procedures, the two sancakbegs sent
out word that all inhabitants of Slavonia who submitted to the sultan and to
his vassal, János Szapolyai, would be able to keep their possessions and live
in peace. Požega capitulated in late January 1537. 88 Thus in the space of six
months the Ottomans gained control of more than half of Slavonia, pushing
the Habsburgs back behind a line running from the Drava to the Sava east of
Požega. 89 Mehmed Beg Jahjapašić stayed on to see to the establishment of a
new Ottoman province with Požega as its capital; his son was the first san-
cakbeg. 90
Ghazi Husrev Beg had further work to do along the lower Una. In one
sense, he was continuing the Ottoman reclamation of the lands of Stjepan
Berislavić, who while he lived had been lord of two key strongholds on the
right bank of the lower Una, Kostajnica and Dubica. In another sense, he was
confronting the Zrinski clan, 91 a major local adversary of the Ottomans.
Their lands were concentrated not far to the south, near the left bank of the
Una. Castle Zrin—from which the family took its name—was in this region,
as was Gvozdansko, a silver-mining town in whose castle Count Nikola III
normally resided. Upon the death of Berislavić, Nikola IV and his brother
Ivan gained possession of Kostajnica 92 and Dubica, 93 making a kind of for-
ward shield on the right bank to protect their holdings on the left bank. Ghazi
Husrev Beg laid siege and captured Dubica in January or early February
1537. 94 During the summer, commanders from the sancaks of Bosnia and
Smederevo took up a defensive posture to await a Habsburg attack that was
led by Hans Katzianer. It was probably during this period that the Zrinskis,
enrolling their miners as soldiers, were able to recapture Dubica. 95 But the
disintegration of Katzianer’s army ceded the initiative to the Ottomans. Bos-
nian forces recaptured Dubica in May 1538 96 and were reportedly building
walls around the town in October 1539. 97 Yet the Zrinskis regained control:
in January 1540, their miners beat off an attack on Dubica by “cavalry and
naval forces.” 98
 The Ottoman Advantage 103

In March 1540, Anna of Hungary, Ferdinand’s queen, got a report that

Murad Beg Tardić was mobilizing cavalry, infantry, artillery, and gunboats
at Gradiška while awaiting reinforcements from Ghazi Husrev Beg and from
Mehmed Beg Jahjapašić of Belgrade. In her informant’s opinion, the in-
tended target was either the Zrinski lands or the island of Jasenovac, where
Habsburg forces had recently burned down an Ottoman fortress. 99 Count
Nikola IV Zrinski already knew that “three sancakbegs” were coming against
him, but he and his brother got little help from Vienna or from the Austrian
military establishment in Styria and Carniola. By June, Kostajnica had fallen.
While the towns of Zrin and Gvozdansko held out, “all the mines and out-
works were entirely burned and destroyed.” 100 Although the Zrinskis re-
gained Kostajnica, they found it prudent to develop better relations with
Ferdinand. The family may already have hoped to relocate their center of
gravity farther west, beyond the immediate threat of attack. 101
Conquests made during Ghazi Husrev Beg’s tenure were not wholly at-
tributable to him. Joint operations by Balkan sancakbegs indicate high-level
planning at the Porte or possibly by the beglerbeg of Rumelia based in
Edirne. A top-down command structure has its problems. But for the period
covered in this chapter, their capacity to fix on sensible strategic objectives
and concentrate forces against them repeatedly gave the Ottomans an enor-
mous advantage.

VENETIAN DALMATIA

Strategic Priorities of the Venetian Republic

Having fought Maximilian I for nine years (1508–1517), Venice in 1526

readily signed on to an anti-Habsburg coalition, the League of Cognac. 102 In
1528, the allies seemed poised on the brink of triumph. Spanish Naples was
besieged from land by a French army and blockaded from the sea by a
Genoese fleet under Andrea Doria; meanwhile, Venice reestablished its erst-
while control of the port cities of Puglia. But Doria changed the course of the
war by defecting to Charles V. In 1529 the emperor brought an army to Italy;
subdued a rebellious Florence for the sake of his new ally, the Medici
pope 103; and forced Venice to accept a treaty that restored the status quo of
1517. 104 These developments portended Spanish hegemony in Italy. In Ven-
ice, still an independent power, suspicion of the Habsburg dynasty became a
fixed element of state policy.
104 Chapter 2

Opinion regarding the republic’s options was divided. Venetians who

traveled in the sultan’s lands showed a consistent aversion to Turkish “des-
potism,” and there were leading patricians who argued passionately for Ven-
ice’s duty to join in the defense of Christendom. 105 But other prominent men
saw their city’s “interests” (interessi) as aligned with those of the sultan, the
Habsburgs’ great foe. 106 Commercial considerations certainly favored an en-
tente with the Porte. Portugal’s capture of the import of Asian spices to
Europe threatened Venice’s Mediterranean trade. In the late 1520s, for exam-
ple, merchant galleys returning from Alexandria brought back only negli-
gible quantities of spices. 107 The solution was to encourage those Ottoman
officials who wanted the sultan to vindicate his title as Commander of the
Faithful by projecting power into the Indian Ocean. In 1533, Ferdinand’s
man at the Porte sent word of “a Venetian named Giustinian,” who, having
been to Portugal, brought “charts for a voyage to Calicut.” 108 The Porte did
not take up his offer to command a fleet for India. But the conquest of Aden a
few years later (1538) made the Red Sea safe for Portugal’s Asian-Muslim
rivals. Imports from Alexandria steadily recovered, and by about 1560 Ven-
ice was again queen of the European spice trade. 109
There was also military collaboration against Habsburg Austria. In its
hour of crisis in 1509, the Signoria asked for and got a contingent of Turkish
troops after declining a proposal to seek massive assistance. 110 In 1529 one
of Ferdinand’s spies reported that Venice offered to pay for forty thousand of
the sultan’s cavalry in Hungary. Reportedly, the Council of Ten, overriding
strong opposition, was urging Suleyman to attack up the Danube. 111 In Dal-
matia, Venetian officials provided victuals and armaments for the Ottoman
fuste that were meant to attack Habsburg territory. 112 Klis was a special case
because raiders from the fortress did not discriminate between Venetian and
Ottoman targets. In 1532, the Council of Ten told Charles V’s ambassador
that while Venice would not countenance an attempt by Alvise Gritti to
conquer Klis, Split’s officials had orders to prevent victuals from getting
through to the Habsburg defenders of Klis. In 1536, Venetian warships again
prevented Klis from being supplied through Solin, and rendered assistance to
the Ottoman troops building a fortress there. 113 But some Venetians recog-
nized Charles V’s claim to be Christendom’s defender, 114 and even those
who did not understood that Christendom was under threat. Thus Charles V’s
ambassador was allowed to read avvisi (correspondence) from Istanbul in the
presence of a member of the Council of Ten. 115 When Alvise Gritti’s man
 The Ottoman Advantage 105

briefly gained control of Klis in 1532, his father, the doge, was harshly
criticized in Venice for giving the Ottomans a toehold on the Adriatic. 116

Dalmatia under Pressure

Officials returning to Venice after duty in Dalmatia regularly complained

about the quality of the soldiers. Although regulations prohibited enrolling
local peasants, no one else would serve because the pay was low and in some
cases reduced by half or doled out in the form of grain and cloth rather than
cash. Trogir’s rector expressed a common view: the country would not be
safe unless “foreigners” were brought in at full pay. 117 Instead, the Signoria
decided in 1530 to save money by reducing the number of men on duty. 118
From instructions given to officials, it seems Venetian policy was guided by
the idea that the best or at least the cheapest way of protecting Dalmatia was
by “caressing” Ottoman officials. 119 This meant regular “presents” for men
of various ranks. For the rector of Kotor, the gift list included the sancakbegs
of Montenegro and Herzegovina (whenever the latter visited nearby Castel-
nuovo), as well as “presidents” (kadis?), the vojvods of important fortresses,
and their assistants (subaşi). 120 Being a “good neighbor” also required offi-
cials to use only “sweet words” whenever Ottoman personnel committed
“insults,” like “stealing boys and animals” from peasant families. 121
Neither bribes nor tactful circumlocution could reverse the steady decline
of Venetian control in the Dalmatian countryside. Zadar’s important contado
was protected against attack from the east by three fortresses in a north–south
line: Novigrad on the Novigrad Sea, an arm of the Adriatic; Nadin, built on a
solitary hill in a flat countryside, from which one could see for miles 122; and
Vrana, on the Adriatic. After Ottoman conquests in the Croatian districts of
Lika and Krbava during the 1520s, one could now see three Ottoman forts
from Nadin. There was also Obrovac on a river that enters the Novigrad Sea
opposite Novigrad, Karin on an arm of the Novigrad Sea, and Ostrovica
some ten miles from Vrana. 123 This westward shift of the Turkish frontier
had real consequences for rural settlement. Much of Zadar’s contado was
abandoned, and there were now 45 functioning villages instead of 180. Za-
dar’s noble families had no source of income because their rural possessions
were ruined. Vrana’s “lovely countryside” was now “completely uncultivat-
ed and deserted for fear of the Turks and of the Morlacchi [Vlachs] who have
come to dwell in the sultan’s lands.” 124 If there were no major Ottoman
incursions into Dalmatia during this period, 125 it was in part because the
pickings were small.
106 Chapter 2

The Veneto-Ottoman War of 1537–1538

Following a failed invasion of Provence by Charles V in 1536, 126 Francis I

and Sultan Suleyman agreed to a joint attack on the Habsburgs. Venice’s
refusal to participate (January 1537) was interpreted as a rebuff, and in light
of the Porte’s reaction, Venice commissioned a war fleet. When France failed
to invade Italy as promised, Suleyman diverted Admiral Hayreddin Barba-
rossa’s fleet from Italy to Venetian Corfu. Aided by French galleys, Barba-
rossa began in August 1537 a yearlong but ultimately futile siege of Corfu.
Over the winter, Pope Paul III (r. 1534–1549) brokered a Holy League that
brought two unlikely allies together, Charles V and the Venetian Republic.
When Andrea Doria’s fleet joined the Venetians off Corfu (September 1538),
Barbarossa took refuge in the Gulf of Prevesa, south of Corfu. After the allies
failed to conquer Ottoman forts in the gulf, they withdrew, at Doria’s orders,
in a spread-out formation, which gave Barbarossa a chance to bring his fleet
out without suffering much damage from his enemies. Doria then captured
the fortress of Herceg Novi (Castelnuovo); it did not sit well with the Vene-
tians—already suspicious of Doria—that he put Herceg Novi under Spanish
control, notwithstanding the proximity of Venetian Kotor. 127 In any event,
neither ally had the will for further war. Herceg Novi was lost in 1539, and
Venice agreed in 1540 to accept Ottoman conquests in Greece and Dalmatia
and to pay the sultan an indemnity of 300,000 ducats. 128
In Dalmatia, no reinforcements arrived until after the Ottomans attacked
Corfu and Kotor. The fullest account of the war comes from a “Descrizione”
by Antonio Longo, an anti-Habsburg patrician. He presents the Signoria as
reluctant to borrow money for Dalmatia’s defenses until a “Doctor Pietro
Badoer” offered to carry there 4,000 ducats of his own money, on which he
was to be repaid with 4 percent interest over three years. 129 As Venice agreed
to engage Italian and then German mercenaries, the Signoria’s commander in
Dalmatia, Camillo Orsini, soon had four thousand infantry. Since precious
resources were being expended—Longo gives a figure of 25,000 ducats a
month—Orsini was under pressure to accomplish something. This was per-
haps why he chose to hold back for garrison duty only 150 men for Nadin
and another 150 for Vrana. The rest he deployed for an offensive meant to
break through the Ottoman border that confined Dalmatia within narrow
limits. Skradin was captured, but “the few brave Turks” who held Obrovac
withstood two sieges. Meanwhile, Ghazi Husrev Beg and Murad Beg gath-
ered at Knin an army estimated by Longo at twenty thousand and sent some
units against Nadin and Vrana. Nadin’s garrison, seeing more than two thou-
 The Ottoman Advantage 107

sand Ottomans approach, deserted; so did the men at Vrana. Soldiers at

Zemunik also ran off, but the fortress was saved when a member of the
Venier family hired fresh troops and led them to Zemunik. 130
The Signoria now faced a choice between spending more money and
abandoning fortresses hitherto seen as vital to the security of Zadar. The
Duke of Urbino, Francesco Maria della Rovere, had been charged with re-
cruiting mercenary companies in Italy and Bavaria. He proposed to recapture
Vrana and Nadin if provided with additional infantry and cavalry and an
artillery train. In the Collegio, one leading official spoke for the plan. He
reckoned that the added infantry the duke requested would cost 26,000 duc-
ats for two pay periods, and the cavalry and artillery a further 24,000, money
that could be gotten from a levy on the clergy. But another important man
argued that it was dangerous to provoke the Turks, that Venice’s allies had
not kept their promises, and that the treasury had no more than 25,000 ducats
on hand. His opinion carried the day. 131 Vrana and Nadin were not worth
encumbering the state with debt.
In peace talks at the Porte (1539–1540), Venetian negotiators were able to
resist Ottoman efforts to claim two valuable properties that (according to the
Venetians) were continually in Venice’s possession all during the war: the
mills on the Krka, vital to the prosperity of Šibenik, and the mountain village
of Parga in western Greece. 132 In subsequent years, Venice’s representatives
at the Porte were able, by spending money in the right places, to reclaim
some territory in the contado of Šibenik. 133 As for Vrana and Nadin, Lorenzo
Gritti (one of Alvise’s brothers), who opened the negotiations on Venice’s
behalf, was authorized to offer 5,000 ducats for their return; not surprisingly,
the Ottomans preferred to keep their new fortresses. 134
Longo’s “Descrizione” suggests that the Ottomans intended to conquer
Zadar, and Ottoman sources indicate that Ghazi Husrev Beg and his army
made camp “before the gates of Zadar.” But this was more a demonstration
than a real attempt at a siege, for Ghazi Husrev Beg had not bought artillery
to make a breach in Zadar’s walls. 135 Still, a threat to its port cities was the
one thing that could cause the Signoria to spend money in this region. After
the war was over, Michele Sammicheli and especially his nephew Giangiro-
lamo, Venice’s top military engineers, were busy almost continuously in
Dalmatia for several years. Even though Kotor’s fortifications were thought
to be impregnable, 136 Giangirolamo was sent to make improvements after a
brief siege by Barbarossa in 1539. 137 At Šibenik, the fortress of San Nicolò,
protecting the entrance to the harbor, was completed by April 1542, save for
108 Chapter 2

finishing touches for which the rector asked for an allotment of 3,000 duc-
ats. 138 Zadar was at the end of a peninsula, facing the Adriatic to the south
and the harbor to the north. Here, Giangirolamo carried out plans made by
his uncle. Since the main weakness was thought to be on the harbor side, a
new basin was constructed, and the high medieval wall was replaced by a
low wall alla moderna, protected by three bastions. Giangirolamo also re-
paired fortifications built at the western end of the city wall in the 1520s and
began work on a new fortress at the eastern side, where the Landward Gate
was completed in 1543. 139 If Venetian control could be extended into the
countryside, well and good. But the main thing was to preserve the cities,
guardians of Venetian traffic in the Gulf.

Rural Dalmatia after the War: Morlacchi and Uskoks

The loss of Vrana and Nadin was a public-relations disaster: “The whole
country was in an uproar. Men came looking for the rector [of Zadar], ad-
dressing him in language that was pretentious and not very respectful, say-
ing, ‘We want to guard and protect our own city so as not to be sold out by
mercenaries as we were at Vrana and Nadin.’” 140
To make matters worse, Vlach herdsmen, once described by a Venetian
official as “living more like animals than men,” moved in from Ottoman
territory. Hence “Turkish Morlacchi” now pastured their flocks and even
sowed crops on Venetian soil. 141 To repopulate the countryside with loyal
peasants, Venetian rectors tried to bring back families that had fled. In Za-
dar’s contado, Antonio da Mula found “no one living in the villages of our
terra ferma, save for a few around the castle of Zemunik.” To bring erstwhile
Dalmatians back from Puglia, “I sent ships to fetch them back, by impress-
ment and by asking the lords of Puglia to let them go.” Now, he boasted,
there were ten inhabited villages with a population of 2,800. 142 As for the
“Turkish Morlacchi,” they now claimed protection, having settled on Vene-
tian soil. But since they were not subjects of the republic, town rectors were
instructed to have as little to do with them as possible. 143 On the other hand,
Alvise Badoer, probably on returning from his post as ambassador at the
Porte, rightly judged that Vlachs were the only likely colonists for a danger-
ous and deserted countryside. He persuaded five thousand Morlacchi to relo-
cate from Ottoman territory to Dalmatia. 144
As the Morlacchi continued their secular drift to the west, bands of uskok
raiders came east from Croatia through Dalmatia to burn and plunder. Cathe-
rine Wendy Bracewell dates “the uskok phenomenon” from the 1520s, as
 The Ottoman Advantage 109

men who were often but not always refugees from conquered lands made
excursions into Ottoman territory from Klis and Senj. 145 In 1536, for exam-
ple, men from Klis attacked the Ottoman customs house and merchant shops
on the lower Neretva. 146 It looks as if the tempo of the raids picked up a
notch at about this time. During the war of 1537–1538, Venice’s town rectors
were ordered to have it proclaimed that “the uskoks have free run.” 147 Need-
less to say, as soon as hostilities were concluded, the uskoks became a
dangerous nuisance, provoking the Ottomans to threaten retaliatory
strikes. 148 But robbing the infidel had become a profitable business. The
uskoks had markets for the resale of plundered goods, not just at Senj but
also at Rijeka in Istria (a part of Carniola) and in smaller Croatian harbors. 149
For traffic by sea, they got tips about rich cargoes from a network of spies
scattered “all through Dalmatia, as far as Kotor.” 150 For raids by land, parts
of Venetian Dalmatia that were now denuded of settlers afforded easy pas-
sage. In 1542, Šibenik’s rector congratulated Venice for making efforts at the
Porte to recover the rural properties of the monastery of St. Nicholas. In
former times, he said, when these villages were inhabited, “the uskoks were
not so bold about passing through to ravage Turkish territory.” 151 Yet if and
when Venice reclaimed and resettled rural districts, would new settlers resist
the uskoks like good Venetians? Or, as the stradioti sometimes did, 152 would
they join in with men who carried the war to the Ottomans?

HABSBURG CROATIA

Archduke of Austria, King of the Romans, King of Bohemia and

Hungary, Defender of Christendom

From 1522, Ferdinand of Habsburg assumed four distinct roles. First and
foremost, he was hereditary lord of the six Austrian duchies and their appur-
tenances. Though not the best governed nor the most cohesive princely terri-
tory in the Holy Roman Empire, Austria had given its Habsburg rulers the
wealth and prestige needed to compete for the imperial office. 153 Yet Maxi-
milian I (d. 1519) had left behind debts of 400,000 Rhine gulden, to be
divided between his grandsons, Charles and Ferdinand. 154 Charles did not
have a liquidity problem; the Cortes of Castile voted handsome subsidies,
and the flow of treasure from overseas gave him revenues against which he
bargained for huge new loans from the bankers of Augsburg, Genoa, and
Antwerp. 155 But Ferdinand’s Austrian lands were still exhausted from paying
110 Chapter 2

for Maximilian’s long war with Venice, and his domain revenues—including
mining rights—were already pawned. 156 In 1531 Charles gave Ferdinand
another role by procuring his election as King of the Romans, heir apparent
to the imperial throne. But his new title did not mean Ferdinand could dictate
terms to wealthy and powerful imperial princes. Moreover, Germany in this
age of Reformation was sharply divided over the 1520 Edict of Worms,
which had placed Martin Luther beyond the protection of the law. 157 Like his
brother, Ferdinand was committed to upholding Catholicism as the one true
religion. But with the Protestant Schmalkaldic League functioning as a kind
of federal government for many of Germany’s princely territories and free
cities, he found it prudent not even to convene the diet between 1532 and
1542. 158
Meanwhile, following the death at Mohács of Louis II Jagiello, Ferdinand
stepped into yet another role by claiming his brother-in-law’s thrones in
Bohemia and in Hungary-Croatia. In the lands of the Bohemian crown 159 his
succession was relatively free of controversy, but Ferdinand’s presence there
was often required when the estates of Bohemia or Moravia were in ses-
sion. 160 The Bohemian provinces carried their burden in the Ottoman
wars, 161 but the border sectors (in modern Slovakia) to which they directed
their contributions are not of primary interest here. In Hungary, by contrast,
Ferdinand had a rival, János Szapolyai, who enjoyed wide support among
magnates and nobles. Ferdinand’s real problems began after Austrian troops
defeated Szapolyai near Tokay (September 1527) 162 because Szapolyai now
turned to the Porte for help.
Of necessity, Ferdinand had to confront a rising Ottoman power. As his
Hungarian treasurer commented, “the fisc of any one king, no matter how
potent,” did not suffice to resist the sultan. 163 Ferdinand did not even have
the fisc of a potent king. 164 His revenues came from provincial parliaments
concerned first and foremost with their local interests. These assemblies were
often dominated by magnates—great nobles who aspired to be princes in
their own right and who knew how to defy the sovereign without exactly
rebelling against him. Ferdinand nonetheless showed “unbelievable tenacity”
in facing every difficulty as he contended with the Ottomans for his Hungar-
ian inheritance. 165 One might invoke a putative Habsburg ambition for domi-
nating Europe, but this is a cliché to which historians writing in English and
French have resorted too frequently. 166 Ferdinand gave his reasons for not
abandoning Hungary to the Ottomans in two letters to Charles. The first
speaks the language of chivalry: better an honorable death, he says, than a
 The Ottoman Advantage 111

shameful peace, and better “liberty more precious than gold than a bestial
and perpetual servitude.” In the second letter, Ferdinand evokes his duties as
a Christian prince: “Never will I give so many men and women, boys and
girls, images of God, into the hands of the Turks.” 167 Charles V invariably
presented himself as the defender of Christendom against the infidels—a role
that he in fact assumed in his Mediterranean wars. On land, however, it was
Ferdinand who defended the roughly six-hundred-mile frontier of the Respu-
blica Christiana. 168

Hungary and Croatia

Posonia became the capital when Mary of Hungary, Ferdinand’s sister, chose
it as her residence after her husband’s death at Mohács. 169 Like any new
ruler, Ferdinand had to respect the kingdom’s traditions. In light of wide-
spread anti-German sentiment, he tried to avoid having his privy council
discuss Hungarian affairs unless at least one Hungarian adviser was
present. 170 Routine matters were left to a council of Hungary in Posonia, with
a floating membership of magnates, prelates, and officials. Ferdinand sought
their advice on such matters as whom to choose as ban of Croatia. 171 But
these politic arrangements complicated the business of governing. Even sim-
ple questions sometimes had to go down an Austrian chain of command, then
up a Hungarian chain of command, and back down again. In 1527, men sent
to Bihać by the commander of Austrian troops in Croatia were denied en-
trance: Bihać’s commandant would admit them only on orders from his
superior, who in turn awaited instructions from the council of Hungary via
the ban of Croatia. 172 After Ferdinand was informed by the council of Hun-
gary that only the camera of Hungary could authorize payments, 173 he duti-
fully directed his instructions to the camera. 174 But revenue collection, di-
minished under the Jagiellonians, declined further in the wake of Ottoman
invasions. 175 Meanwhile, magnates in Slavonia directly appropriated taxes
owed by their peasants, leaving nothing for the royal tax collector. 176 Hence
payment orders issued by Hungary’s camera were often found to be “dry.” 177

The Imperial Diet

From 1486, the diet had a quota system by which the empire’s 383 territories
were assessed to raise money for an army in time of need. As of 1521, a full
levy would have yielded six “Roman months”—that is, 768,000 Rhine gul-
den, enough to support twenty thousand Landsknechte and forty thousand
heavy cavalry for six months. 178 In 1529, when the Ottomans laid siege to
112 Chapter 2

Vienna, troops raised by the diet, under a younger brother of the Count
Palatine of the Rhine, joined with Austrian forces under Count Nicholas von
Salm in a successful defense of the Austrian capital. In 1530, the Diet of
Augsburg voted another large Türkenhilfe, on condition that the money
would only be raised if so ordered by a subsequent diet. Two years later,
Ferdinand called upon the Diet of Nuremberg to fulfill its commitment. But
Protestant princes wondered aloud what the Catholic Habsburgs might do
with an army. Thus troops were not mobilized until the diet’s emissaries had
actually laid eyes on Suleyman’s army in Hungary. Imperial troops—thirty-
eight thousand infantry and twelve thousand cavalry—now joined Charles
V’s Danube war flotilla, albeit with orders not to cross the empire’s borders.
Vienna was the diet’s concern; Hungary was not. 179
As for Charles V, he was reluctant to campaign in a part of Europe where
he had no bankers, and he deeply mistrusted Ferdinand’s advisers. 180 He did
send his brother a letter of credit for 100,000 gulden, which Ferdinand used
to build up Hungary’s Danube gunboat fleet, based just downstream from
Vienna at Komárom. 181 In 1529, Charles made vague promises about using
his army in northern Italy to relieve Ottoman pressure on Vienna, but Ferdi-
nand (or at least his advisers) knew better than to take him seriously. 182 In
1532, the emperor turned back to Italy as soon as he learned that Suleyman’s
army was withdrawing. To help Ferdinand recover territory in Hungary, he
left him eight thousand Italian infantry; Ferdinand’s Austrian troops took
Esztergom and other cities, but without the Italians, who had mutinied and
fled. 183

The Austrian Duchies

Ferdinand was thus thrown back on his hereditary lands. For the frontier in
western Hungary, Slavonia, and Croatia proper, he depended on the three
neighboring duchies of Lower Austria, Styria, and Carniola, plus two others
just to the west, Upper Austria and Carinthia. 184 Early in his reign, Ferdinand
created separate councils: for Upper and Lower Austria, for Inner Austria
(Styria, Carniola, and Carinthia), and for Tirol and other lands to the west. 185
The Council of Lower and Upper Austria, based in Vienna, became a de
facto clearing house for making decisions or referring them to the proper
body 186; when Ferdinand was absent and not apprised of key information, the
council had or assumed authority, as needed, to countermand his orders. 187
From 1527 these responsibilities were assigned to a new body, the Hofrat
(court council, or privy council), presided over by the chancellor. Bishop
 The Ottoman Advantage 113

Bernhard von Cles of Trent, who held this post until his retirement in 1534,
was Ferdinand’s chief adviser. Thereafter, the most influential members of
the Hofrat were Wilhelm von Roggendorf, the chief steward; Leonhard von
Fels, the field marshal; and Hans Hoffmann, the treasurer. Among foreign
diplomats accredited to Ferdinand’s court, Cles was universally respected;
the others were seen as less capable and more interested in their personal
agendas. 188
The Inner Austrian lands, with a population of about eight hundred thou-
sand in 1500, sent troops across the border into Croatia almost from the
beginning of Ferdinand’s reign. In 1524, Austrian forces in Croatia were led
by Hans Katzianer, Carniola’s military commander. 189 At the time, his super-
ior was Nikola Jurešić, who would later distinguish himself at the siege of
Köszeg. 190 After Mohács, Ottoman pressure intensified, especially against
Carniola. Raiding parties were not as large as in the 1470s, but there was, for
instance, an attack by four thousand cavalry against a religious procession, in
which a reported 1,100 captives were said to have been taken away. In Styria,
the countryside suffered far and wide when Suleyman and his army marched
through on their way home in 1532. 191 It thus made sense for the three
provinces to formulate a joint strategy of defense. There was already a proce-
dure for consultation through “committee-diets” (Ausschusslandtäge), which
drew up proposals and sometimes acted for the estates. In March 1530, an
Inner Austrian committee-diet agreed on providing troops to defend seven
key strongholds in Croatia, including Senj, Klis, Otočac, Bihać, and Ripac
(near Bihać). 192 By October the “army of the three provinces of His Majesty”
was commanded by Katzianer. In March 1531, the three duchies approved an
annual levy of 25,000 Rhine gulden to support their troops beyond the bor-
der. These decisions may be said to mark the formal beginning of an Austrian
military frontier in Croatia. 193
Styria was the largest and wealthiest of the three duchies. Hans Ungnad,
the Landeshauptmann, frequently called for a joint meeting of the estates of
all of Ferdinand’s lands, including Bohemia, albeit without success until
1542. 194 Ptuj (Pettau), a Styrian town on the lower Mur, 195 was often the
muster point for troops from the three duchies. 196 It was also the financial
nerve center for military operations in Croatia. Austrian and Croatian com-
manders short of funds to pay their men were directed to Ptuj, whose mer-
chant-bankers might agree to advance funds against payment orders issued
by Ferdinand’s revenue officials. 197 If lenders chose not to trust the payment
orders, commanders were thrown back on the timeworn expedient of borrow-
114 Chapter 2

ing on their own credit. 198 Styria was strong enough to oppose command
decisions seen as adverse to the duchy’s interests. For example, the estates
pulled back Styria’s light horse as soon as their contract had run out, even
though Katzianer had ordered the men to proceed to Zagreb. Styria then
agreed to let its cavalry serve another month, but only along the Styrian
border, not in Croatia. 199 If Ferdinand’s Inner Austrian lands agreed in prin-
ciple on the idea of a forward defense, it was not clear how much of Croatia
and Slavonia they were prepared to defend.

Difficult Beginnings: Slavonia

Among Slavonia’s mostly Hungarian magnates, Ferdinand had few support-

ers apart from the two bans, Ferenc Batthyány and Ivan Karlović. But
Batthyány’s loyalty was of little practical use because he lacked funds to put
his retainers into the field. 200 Karlović held important castles in Slavonia
thanks to a grant from Ferdinand, 201 but he spent most of his time in Croatia
proper. In Slavonia, the man of the hour was Krsto Frankopan, hero of the
expedition to Jajce in 1525. In October 1526, Slavonia’s congregatio of
nobles acclaimed him as “defender and governor” of Slavonia, lifting him
three times on their shields in keeping with ancient custom. 202 Ferdinand had
the good sense to offer Frankopan lordship of a cluster of cities and fortress-
es, including Senj, taken from his family in the reign of Matthias Corvi-
nus. 203 But Szapolyai had already granted him Senj, an arrangement con-
firmed by the congregatio of nobles in January 1527. So as not to give the
Ottomans an opening, Frankopan promised to work for reconciliation be-
tween Szapolyai and Ferdinand and arranged for his man to meet with an
Austrian official. 204 But during the summer he mobilized for a strike against
Varaždin and its Austrian garrison. Ferdinand counted himself fortunate that
Frankopan was killed by a stray shot from Varaždin. 205
Leadership of the pro-Szapolyai faction in Slavonia now fell to Simon
Erdödy, the bishop of Zagreb. Erdödy’s enemies—notably the burgher-town
of Zagreb (Gradec), always at odds with the episcopal city (Kaptol)—thus
became allies of Ferdinand. 206 But to protect his large episcopal estates in
Slavonia and Croatia, not yet depopulated by Ottoman raids, Bishop Erdödy
sought a partner, and not in Vienna. In conversation with a Venetian agent at
a congregatio of nobles in March 1528, he suggested that he and his confed-
erates were willing to submit to the Signoria, offering fifteen fortresses in
Slavonia as surety. 207 Meanwhile, Nikola Jurešić advised Ferdinand to avoid
a confrontation: “It would cost Your Majesty a great deal to conquer the
 The Ottoman Advantage 115

lands of the bishop and his backers, only to grant them out again to other
magnates.” 208 Ferdinand was in fact ill placed to respond to calls for action
against the “rebels” in Slavonia; as of May 1528, he still owed 90,000 gulden
to the men who had fought for him in Hungary the previous summer. 209 He
could deploy only the resources his Inner Austrian duchies were willing to
commit. In September they mobilized some five thousand men. The original
plan may have been to strike at the army Bishop Simon was gathering around
his castle of Čazma, including some Ottoman troops. 210 Instead, they wound
up doing battle with Ghazi Husrev Beg’s raiders near Metlika. 211 In August
1529, even as the sultan’s great army converged on Vienna, troops from
Carniola besieged Erdödy in his castle in Zagreb; this too was part of the
struggle against “infidels.” 212
Suleyman’s withdrawal from Vienna deflated the hopes of Szapolyai’s
partisans in Slavonia, but Bishop Simon still conducted raids against Habs-
burg targets during the winter, using Ottoman as well as Hungarian troops. 213
In February 1530, Lajos Pekry, a Habsburg commander who saw his troops
outnumbered, accepted the bishop’s proposal for negotiations. Ferdinand
cautioned against anything less than optimal terms, but Pekry agreed to a
truce; otherwise, he said, the bishop’s camp would have gotten reinforce-
ments from Bosnia. 214 In June 1531, Bishop Simon was said to welcome an
Ottoman incursion into western Slavonia on the assumption that the raiders
would strike only the lands of Habsburg partisans. 215
Letters from Petar Erdödy, the bishop’s brother, convey the ambivalence
felt by many of Szapolyai’s partisans: those who called in Turks against
Christians were “evil,” he said, but he still could not support Ferdinand, for
“the Hungarians will never accept him.” 216 In 1533, after the second Otto-
man attack toward Vienna and after he had a good look at a Buda that was
temporarily under Turkish control, Bishop Simon had his own doubts about
the Ottomans as allies. 217 In 1534, the Erdödy brothers made peace with
Ferdinand, and Bishop Simon became ban of Slavonia and Croatia. This
agreement brought peace to Slavonia.
As long as the civil war in western Slavonia lasted, Austrian officials
focused on the danger there, giving short shrift to problems farther east. In
1527, Stjepan Berislavić, Lord of Kostajnica on the lower Una, offered his
services to Ferdinand, but it seems Vienna did not follow up; in 1529 and
1530 he was known to be negotiating with the Ottomans. 218 In October 1530,
as soon as Katzianer disbanded his light horse for the winter, Habsburg
positions came under pressure as far west as a fortress-town that is now a
116 Chapter 2

suburb of Zagreb. 219 In 1531, despite being warned, Katzianer took no action
to prevent the Ottomans from building a fort on the Sava at Kobaš. The
Ottomans then dismantled the fort as a goodwill gesture arranged by Szapol-
yai. 220

Difficult Beginnings: Croatia Proper

Croatia’s Sabor took pride in having been the first parliamentary body to
recognize Ferdinand as king of Hungary. Yet the agreement of 3 January
1527 papered over an important difference in objectives. The nobles, needing
help to protect their castles and their peasants, demanded that the king sup-
port one thousand light horse in Croatia, as had been the custom. Ferdinand’s
negotiators accepted the Sabor’s terms with reluctance. 221 In fact, just as
officials in Posonia had no money to pay Ban Batthyány his arrears, 222 offi-
cials in Vienna could not find money to keep one thousand light horse in
Croatia. 223 A sovereign always had resources—for instance, Ferdinand could
keep an ecclesiastical benefice in Croatia vacant and apply its revenues to
garrison wages, as at Bihać. 224 But the only recurring stream of revenue
available for Croatia was the money allocated by the Inner Austrian duchies.
The idea was to hold a jagged line running west from the Una to the Adriatic:
Bihać and Ripac, Otočac, Brinj, and Senj. 225 Once the Sabor agreed to make
Bihać and Ripac royal castles, various expedients were found to keep garri-
sons there, and this well-defended region would remain reasonably well pop-
ulated into the 1570s. 226 At Brinj, Ferdinand used his rights of guardianship
to take temporary possession of the castle, promising to restore it to the
Frankopan heirs when peaceful conditions returned. 227 At Senj, the “German
troops” who arrived in May 1527 stayed on under an Austrian captain. 228
Following the Ottoman conquest of Obrovac, posing a threat of attack by sea,
Austrian troops also occupied some of the late Bernardin Frankopan’s castles
in the Vinodol region, between Senj and Rijeka. 229
This strategy may have served to prevent major attacks into Carniola, but
it did not help Croatian magnates and nobles defend lands south and east of
the Bihać–Senj line, where Ottoman raiders made roads unsafe for travel. 230
For example, Count Nikola III Zrinski apparently took it upon himself to
decide that the royal fortress of Krupa would be safer under his control than
as a dependency of distant Bihać. 231 Klis, an anchor fortress in Matthias
Corvinus’s era, was now on the far side of Croatian lands held by the Otto-
mans. 232 As of 1528, Petar Kružić had commanded here for sixteen years. He
resigned his position as captain of Senj for non-payment of arrears, but
 The Ottoman Advantage 117

Ferdinand would not accept his resignation as captain of Klis. Instead, he

assigned payment for the Klis garrison on Carniola, and subsequently on the
camera of Hungary, albeit to little or no effect. 233 Meanwhile, Klis was a
destination of choice for uskoks, refugees from newly conquered lands who
hoped to recoup their losses by plundering Ottoman territory. Unpaid garri-
son soldiers joined the uskoks in raids against Ottoman and Venetian sub-
jects. 234 Ferdinand could not countenance attacks that jeopardized his already
delicate relations with Venice. 235 Yet Klis also prevented the Ottomans from
having access to the Adriatic. Thus in September 1532, when it seemed Klis
was lost, the Austrian captains of Senj and Rijeka joined with troops raised
by Kružić in Italy to destroy the fort at Solin and expel Alvise Gritti’s man
from Klis. 236 In this uneasy alliance, Kružić and his Austrian counterpart
gave sharply different accounts of their victory. 237
Austrians held the Croatian lords suspect because some of them paid
tribute to the sultan. Austrian fears of a general settlement between the Sabor
and the Ottomans proved to be unfounded. 238 But individual nobles reported
approaches by Ghazi Husrev Beg’s vojvods, 239 and some acknowledged pay-
ing protection money. In 1530, Vuk Frankopan, hoping to regain possession
of the fortress of Brinj, offered to give Ferdinand the tribute he had previous-
ly given the sultan. 240 According to Ivan Karlović, who boasted of never
having paid tribute himself, Nikola III Zrinski (d. 1534) had “a treaty with
the Turks,” allowing Bosnian forces to sail down the Una, past Zrinski’s
fortresses, to attack the lands of Karlović and Petar Keglević. 241 One could
make a case that border lords had to acknowledge the sultan’s authority in
order to hold on to their possessions. But this was a logic that made no sense
in Vienna, Graz, or Ljubljana.

Interlude for Diplomacy

Charles V’s advice to his brother was always the same: since Ferdinand
lacked the resources for a long war, he should seek a diplomatic solution,
first with Szapolyai and second with the sultan. 242 In 1531, Charles dis-
patched a seasoned diplomat, Cornelis de Scepper, to give courage to Ferdi-
nand’s partisans in Hungary and to promote negotiations with Szapolyai that
had already resulted in a one-year truce. 243 As for the Porte, Ferdinand sent
envoys, 244 but Sultan Suleyman had no reason for negotiations until the fall
of 1532, when he faced both a challenge at Koroni in southern Greece and an
opportunity on the Iranian frontier. 245 Not long after the siege of Köszeg,
Ferdinand got word from what he deemed a reliable source that peace with
118 Chapter 2

the Ottomans was now possible. He seems to have been referring to a mes-
sage delivered by a Bohemian confidant of Szapolyai offering mediation by
Szapolyai’s father-in-law, the king of Poland-Lithuania. 246 Having commu-
nicated the news to Charles, Ferdinand entrusted Hieronimo of Zadar, a
capable military man, with a “secret” mission to Suleyman. 247 Meanwhile,
Charles sent Scepper to find out more about what Ferdinand had been told. 248
Ferdinand kept him in the dark for a time, hoping to pursue the mediation
suggested by Szapolyai’s confidant but mistrusted by Charles. 249 Unexpect-
edly, Hieronimo of Zadar sent back a triumphant dispatch: “By God’s grace,
I have concluded a much-desired peace.” To obtain Ferdinand’s agreement,
Zadar’s son Vespasiano was returning with a çavuş, who was a man of “great
authority” at the Porte; they reached Vienna on 12 March 1533. 250 At Poso-
nia, where negotiators for Ferdinand and Szapolyai were meeting, the Tran-
sylvanians scoffed that Ferdinand had given away Slavonia to get peace.
Ferdinand’s men indignantly denied the charge, but Alvise Gritti was the
source of the rumor. 251
Vespasiano of Zadar left Vienna in early April. Scepper, who followed
soon after, was to speak only for Ferdinand, not Charles; in keeping with
orders from the Porte, he carried the keys to Esztergom in token of Ferdi-
nand’s submission to the sultan as his lord (dominus). In Ferdinand’s instruc-
tions for Vespasiano, the question of borders was hedged in by conditions: if
Charles should yield Koroni to the sultan, and if Suleyman should confirm
Ferdinand in possession of Transylvania and of the rest of Hungary as far
west and south as the Drava, then “this river [the Drava] can be the border
between us.” 252 It was in fact highly unlikely that Suleyman would ever grant
so much territory to Charles V’s brother, even on the proviso that the as yet
childless Szapolyai should hold for his lifetime the lands assigned to him by
the sultan’s immutable word. 253 It seems Ferdinand was making a wish list,
and this document shows where his priorities lay. Transylvania was Hun-
gary’s “best province.” 254 Buda was the historic capital, and the
Buda–Esztergom corridor would secure the approaches to Vienna. As for the
lands south of the Drava, Slavonia’s nobles were still fighting against “the
Germans,” and the Croatians were about to make a bargain with the sultan—
or so Vienna suspected. Even as shields for the Austrian duchies, Slavonia
and Croatia were not as valuable as Hungary or Transylvania.
At the Porte, Ibrahim Paşa treated Scepper and Hieronimo of Zadar with
respect. He praised their “grace in speaking,” he magnanimously waved
aside the proffered keys to Esztergom, and when presented with a written
 The Ottoman Advantage 119

greeting from Charles V to the sultan, he kissed the letter and “pressed it to
his forehead, after the manner of the Turks.” 255 After five weeks, and seven
meetings with the grand vezir—or his deputy, Alvise Gritti—Scepper was
able by July 2 to report an agreement. Ferdinand, the sultan’s devoted “son,”
would keep the lands in Hungary he now held, and Gritti would be sent to
Hungary to fix boundaries. 256 Scepper and Ibrahim Paşa also had a conversa-
tion, hedged in by conditional verbs, about the chivalric virtue of liberalitas,
or generosity. Should Suleyman be so generous as to grant Hungary to Ferdi-
nand, Charles would surely show a like generosity in returning Koroni to the
Ottomans, even though “Christian princes” were opposed to the idea. 257 In
any case, violence along the border had to stop; in the grand vezir’s words,
not even a chicken must be stolen. Accordingly, when Ferdinand proclaimed
the peace in September, he gave strict orders for calm along the border. 258
That border captains on either side held their raiders back is not at all
clear. In October, Petar Kružić’s men were conducting forays from Klis,
even as attacks from Bosnia were reported around Bihać. 259 It was also a
condition of the peace that Gritti set boundaries in Hungary, but he remained
at the Porte. When Scepper returned early in 1534, now representing Charles
as well as Ferdinand, he found a changed situation. The reason Gritti had not
left for Hungary was that he had no authority, since his patron, the grand
vezir, was in Persia. As for the sultan’s hypothetical generosity to Ferdinand,
the equation was canceled when Suleyman himself led an army that recon-
quered Koroni in late 1533. Gritti finally did leave for Hungary in June 1534,
only to become involved in a war with Szapolyai’s partisans, and after he
was murdered in September, it may have seemed that nothing was left of the
“long-lasting” peace between Ferdinand and Suleyman. 260
Yet so long as the sultan was on campaign in the East, his sancakbegs in
the West did not have authorization to take the offensive. Ferdinand thus did
his best to keep the peace; for example, both Hieronimo of Zadar and his son
Vespasiano conducted inquiries into the alleged assassinamenti committed
by the men of Kružić’s garrison at Klis. 261 Through an Ottoman official who
came to Hungary in 1535 to investigate Gritti’s murder, Vienna kept up
contacts with the Porte. Giovanni Maria Barzizza, an ambassador sent by
Ferdinand in 1536, had a polite conversation with Aias Paşa, the new grand
vezir, in which both men agreed that violations of the truce were regrettable
if not altogether preventable. 262 In short, Ferdinand did what he could to keep
alive hopes that were engendered by the amicable discussions of 1533.
120 Chapter 2

Disaster in Slavonia

Following his victory over Ottoman skirmishers in 1529, and possibly aided
by his kinship with Carniola’s influential Rauber family, Hans Katzianer had
been named commander of Inner Austrian forces in Slavonia and Croatia.
One should not let his disastrous campaign of 1537 cast a shadow on Katzi-
aner’s whole career. He was if nothing else a man of considerable wealth; for
example, he held in pawn the Zrinski silver mines at Gvozdansko. 263 Yet
peers spoke about his shortcomings with a frankness seldom seen in corre-
spondence among such men. Cornelis de Scepper called him a useless brag-
gart, and Tamás Szalahazy, the bishop of Eger, complained about the indisci-
pline of his men; they advanced, he said, “at the speed of crabs or tor-
toises.” 264 While others who held his command are well represented in the
archival documents published by scholars, 265 there are few letters from Kat-
zianer to match the many reports and pleas for help sent in his direction.
There is thus no evidence in published sources that he recognized or took
steps to forestall the danger to Slavonia that was announced by Ghazi Husrev
Beg’s occupation of Kobaš in 1531. 266 On the contrary, his subordinates—
like Ban Ivan Karlović—complained that Katzianer did not attend meetings
of the congregatio of nobles in Slavonia and did not visit the lands under his
authority. 267
In July 1536, local officials reported that a large Ottoman force had
occupied both banks of the Sava, at Kobaš and Slavonski Brod. 268 Ferdi-
nand’s initial response was a letter to Ghazi Husrev Beg which presumed that
the sancakbeg was merely responding to some infraction from the Habsburg
side. 269 In fact, the Porte seems to have taken advantage of Ferdinand’s
eagerness for peace. As the Ottomans furnished their new forts on the Sava
with artillery, Vespasiano of Zadar—not so astute as his father—passed on
what he had been told by grand vezir Aias Paşa: if Bosnian forces gathered
on his border, Ferdinand was not to think they were planning anything
against him, for the sultan intended to keep the peace. Ferdinand himself
admitted that he was slow to respond to events in Slavonia because of his
desire to avoid provoking the Ottomans. 270 Meanwhile, Slavonia’s nobles,
despite some reported dissension among themselves, had built a field camp
that was apparently too close to Slavonski Brod: with their newly placed
artillery, the Ottomans broke up and scattered the camp. 271 When Katzianer
arrived, the Slavonians were eager to attack; since they had no artillery, he
persuaded them to take up defensive positions instead. 272 According to the
archbishop of Lund, who was then representing Charles V in talks with
 The Ottoman Advantage 121

Szapolyai, Habsburg troops in Slavonia outnumbered the Ottomans, but they

were hampered by a dispute as to who should have supreme command. Over
the next several months the Ottomans occupied a large number of fortified
positions in central Slavonia, culminating with the capture of Požega in
January 1537. 273
Ferdinand had to respond. Katzianer proposed a plan to reclaim control of
the Drava and the Sava; by mortgaging his lands and investments, he also
raised enough money to hire twelve companies of Swiss infantry. In March
1537, Ferdinand sent word that Katzianer would lead an expedition to eastern
Slavonia. 274 The target was Osijek, an Ottoman military base that guarded
the sultan’s bridge across the Drava into Hungary. 275 Over the summer, the
various Habsburg lands mobilized an army of sixteen thousand infantry and
eight thousand cavalry. This campaign was part of a general assault against
Ottoman power envisioned by the Holy League. 276 In Katzianer’s telling of
the story, the leaders disagreed almost from the start. As the army marched
up the right bank of the Drava in September, the Bohemian commander
insisted on following his own separate route. At Virovitica, where 350 sup-
ply wagons were to be ready and waiting, only 50 were found. “The Hungar-
ians”—that is, the Slavonians—insisted that victuals could be found at Val-
povo, just short of Osijek. More supplies did come as the army neared Valpo-
vo, but not enough, and much was lost to Ottoman attacks as wagons crossed
a small stream. From Valpovo, the commanders could see Osijek’s gun em-
placements; no one advised a direct assault from the west, but some action
had to be taken to forestall the expected arrival of Ottoman reinforcements.
“The Hungarians” proposed a quick march south around the city so as to
attack from the east. When Katzianer and others expressed reservations—this
would mean leaving the supply train behind—“the Hungarians” accused “the
Germans” of wanting to run off and leave them in the lurch. Hence the plan
was adopted. But Ottoman units blocked the advance and threatened to cut
off the route back to Valpovo, forcing the army southward into swampy
ground. Retreat was now the only option. Even before the signal was given,
Ferdinand’s “mighty army” melted into the darkness, leaving their artillery
behind. 277
Even a capable and politic commander would have had trouble melding
“Germans” and “Hungarians” into an effective fighting force; after all, many
Slavonians had been fighting to throw off Austrian rule only a few years
previously. But in the wake of disaster, men look for excuses, and Katzianer
was easy to blame. Hans Ungnad, Styria’s commander, produced formal
122 Chapter 2

attestation that he had not been the cause of the precipitate retreat. A promi-
nent Hungarian official criticized the whole idea of attacking Osijek only
from the landward side without the support of gunboats on the Drava. Ferdi-
nand in effect excused himself by claiming that Katzianer “disobeyed our
orders” by separating his forces from their supply train. 278 Katzianer was
thus placed under arrest in Vienna. Slavonia’s congregatio of nobles refused
to recognize him as a member without His Majesty’s approval, but there
must have been some sympathy for Katzianer because when he escaped from
captivity, many Croatian notables came to see him, including Count Nikola
IV Zrinski. Katzianer now allied with Szapolyai and spoke of delivering to
the Ottomans Zrinski’s castle of Kostajnica. During a meal at Kostajnica, he
was stabbed to death by his host (January 1539). Although Zrinski acted with
Ferdinand’s knowledge, his noble peers blamed him for betraying the laws of
hospitality. 279

A Strategy for the Inner Austrian Duchies

Ferdinand could not allow his subjects to think there would not be another
campaign to reclaim lands conquered by the Ottomans. Hence one of the
questions put to Slavonia’s congregatio of nobles, meeting in November
1537, was how to organize the supply depots that would be needed for a
future generalis expeditio. But the focus of the deliberations was on how to
preserve the lands that still remained under Habsburg rule. At a minimum,
the deputies thought, Slavonia needed two thousand light horse, five hundred
heavy cavalry, one thousand arquebusiers, and one thousand crewmen (na-
zadisten) for the gunboats needed—forty on the Drava and sixty more on the
Sava. But wood for building them would have to come from elsewhere, since
Slavonia had few stands of timber. 280 Meanwhile, Ferdinand was asking a
committee-diet of the five Austrian duchies for a grant of 60,000 gulden to
support the two thousand light horse he had sent to hold the castles in Slavo-
nia occupied by Habsburg troops during the summer. 281 There was also an
effort to regularize administrative arrangements for troops serving in Slavo-
nia and Croatia, but paid from Styria or Carniola; the army of the three
provinces now had a paymaster and a master of victuals as well as a supreme
commander. 282 But things did not work well in practice. As of January 1538,
the two bans—Petar Keglević and Tamás Nádasdy—had only four hundred
light horse under their command, hardly enough to patrol a line from the
Sava to the Drava, especially since the Ottomans controlled all the fords on
the Sava. 283 They did send men to burn a wooden fortress built by the
 The Ottoman Advantage 123

Ottomans on the island of Jasenovac, near where the Una enters the Sava,
and then reported completion of a new wooden fortress there. Two months
later, however, Jurešić had to “marvel” at their latest message, which was
that the fortress on Jasenovac had not been built after all. 284
Either Ferdinand or—more likely—his Inner Austrian lands decided that
firmer direction was needed. From May 1538, there was a permanent war
council (Kriegsrat) in Ptuj, presided over by Hans Ungnad, Landeshaupt-
mann of Styria. The war council collected intelligence, summoned the bans
and other commanders for periodic meetings, and made decisions as to which
castles would be defended by troops on Austrian pay and which would be
defended (if at all) only by their noble proprietors. The council was presum-
ably also responsible for decisions by which nobles judged to be incapable of
defending important positions were dispossessed, at least temporarily. For
example, in May 1539, Nicholas Rauber, acting as lieutenant-commander of
Carniola’s troops in Croatia proper, demanded that Stjepan Frankopan hand
over his castles in the Vinodol region between Rijeka and Senj. 285 Ungnad’s
authority as president of the council was no doubt strengthened when he was
named commander of the army of the three provinces in January 1540. Ung-
nad was an energetic and perceptive commander, but he also had a mind of
his own. When Ferdinand’s ambassador to the sultan passed through Ptuj, he
expected the council to buy two silver cups to be used as gifts, as he had been
promised by no less a personage than Ferdinand’s field marshal, Leonhard
von Fels. Ungnad refused to authorize money for the gifts or for travel
expenses, possibly because he disapproved of the ambassador’s mission. 286

Croatian Raiders

During the period when peace negotiations seemed promising, officials anx-
ious to keep the frontier calm were bedeviled by the unauthorized raids of
Croatia’s uskoks. In 1533, Hieronimo of Zadar wrote Katzianer on behalf of
Sultan Suleyman and Ghazi Husrev Beg, urging him to stop the uskoks from
attacking around Udbina. A few months later, Scepper was surprised to find
“so-called uskoks” meeting in a church near Rijeka’s harbor; Rijeka’s vice-
captain knew that these men came “for the purpose of plunder,” but he
assured Scepper that “they will do us no harm.” Meanwhile, Petar Kružić
sent Ferdinand a list of broken promises by the sovereign: in the two years
since they met, he had not had more than 400 Rhine gulden from His Majes-
ty, so that he and his deputies had to borrow 7,000 for the defense of Klis. 287
In other words, it seems that Ferdinand was reaping as he sowed. With little
124 Chapter 2

support from Austria, even when Klis was reportedly under siege for thirty-
seven days, 288 Kružić and his men provided for themselves, and not just by
loans from local merchants. When Hieronimo of Zadar was deputed to inves-
tigate, he confirmed Ottoman charges of truce violations; moreover, the raid-
ers came not just from Klis and Senj, but from Rijeka and from smaller
harbors on the Vinodol coast, such as Bribir. 289 In former times, Senj was a
terminus for traffic from Hungary by way of Zagreb to Venice, including the
rich trade in Hungarian cattle. Now, the near-constant presence of Ottoman
raiders in Croatia had pushed the route west so that cattle and other goods
came to Venice via Ljubljana, the Postojna Gap, and Udine. In effect, the
Habsburgs confronted a new regional economy based on the sale of
plundered goods at Senj and Rijeka. 290
The raiders did not spare Venetian subjects. 291 When Venice complained
and Vienna demanded answers, Kružić had excuses: the animals stolen be-
longed to Turks, not Venetians; the raiders were “refugees” from Apulia and
thus subjects of Charles V (as king of Naples), not Ferdinand; and the Vene-
tians were even now taking soundings in the harbor at Solin to aid the Turks
in building a new fort there. 292 In late May or early June 1536, uskoks
attacked the Ottoman customs house on the lower Neretva in Herzegovina,
taking the goods they found there and killing or wounding Christian and
Muslim merchants alike. The rector of Split had troops waiting at Solin for
the small vessel that was bringing back the booty, but at a signal from the
ship, “two hundred men” charged down from Klis and drove the Venetians
back to Split, where the attackers burned houses and mills in the suburbs. 293
By the end of August, Klis was again under siege, as Ghazi Husrev Beg and
his colleague from Herzegovina built a new fortress at Solin. Ferdinand
instructed Sprinzenstein—sent to the Porte in November—to see about get-
ting the siege lifted but otherwise took no action. He may have hesitated to
send relief; in an apologetic letter to Ghazi Husrev Beg, he claimed to have
done so only because of the “continuous complaints of our subjects.” In any
case, the troops he sent—who suffered defeat, along with Kružić and his
Italians—did not arrive until six months after the siege had begun. 294
The loss of Klis did not solve Ferdinand’s uskok problem. Senj’s garri-
son, together with venturini who signed on for a share of booty, picked up
where Klis had left off. There was not a direct connection, because a garrison
pay list for 1540 has few names from Klis. Rather, the burghers of Senj—the
Senjani—now had a vital interest in the raiding economy. By tradition, the
captain, appointed by Ferdinand’s commander in Croatia, 295 served as chief
 The Ottoman Advantage 125

civil magistrate, governing from his citadel in an angle of the town wall.
Many officers of the garrison were local patricians, and local merchants
welcomed the trade in plundered goods as a substitute for opportunities lost
to the Ottomans. 296 Also, as at Klis, Vienna made promises that were not
kept. In 1538, the captain had no money to pay the peasant volunteers he
needed, and merchants had reportedly stopped lending to soldiers. In 1540,
when Queen Anna was standing in for Ferdinand, she hoped that Carniola
would advance some of the money for a subsidy the estates had approved so
she could pay the captain’s salary. Senj pleaded for Anna’s intervention since
Rijeka would not let Italian grain pass through and had even thrown two of
the city’s “ambassadors” into prison. 297
Meanwhile, the attacks that officials in Rijeka were trying to stop contin-
ued, as is clear from Venetian complaints. Venice had contributed to the
problem by giving “free rein” to uskoks during the 1537–1540 war, and
when men who had come to fight in Dalmatia were expelled a few years
later, many went to Senj as venturini. 298 A Venetian secretary sent to Senj
gives a detailed account of one uskok operation. From their “spies,” the
uskoks learned that an Ottoman marsilian carrying thirty-four Jewish mer-
chants and cloth worth 10,000 scudi had put in at the Venetian island of Rab.
By night, five barks from Senj came and took away the vessel with its
passengers and cargo. In Trieste, the secretary learned that Ferdinand’s or-
ders for restitution were entrusted to an official hostile to the Signoria. In
Rijeka, he found that the captain of Senj had come and gone, to collect extra
ransom extorted from the captive merchants. In Senj, where the ship’s cargo
had been quickly divided up and sold, the secretary accused the captain of
disobeying his sovereign. “My king may command me as he pleases,” he
responded, “but if he bids me not to harm infidels, or to restore their goods, I
would sooner lose my head.” 299 Senj posed a dilemma for Ferdinand. Unlike
Klis, it had to be defended as the anchor fortress of the Inner Austrian line in
Croatia, but its garrison and especially the venturini could not and would not
be controlled.
The Porte seems to have had some tolerance for the lawlessness of the
garrison at Senj, remote from Habsburg lines of supply. But Counts Nikola
IV and Ivan Zrinski posed a different kind of problem. In 1534 and again in
1536, Aias Paşa claimed that the Zrinskis were rebels, since they did not pay
tribute, as their father had done; the sultan would thus have to punish them,
letting Ferdinand know beforehand. 300 In fact, the Zrinski brothers were then
battling Ghazi Husrev Beg for control of castles on the lower Una that had
126 Chapter 2

belonged to the late Stjepan Berislavić. 301 Meanwhile, they were also trying
to secure the inheritance of their mother, a sister of Ban Ivan Karlović (d.
1533). Since the ban had no children, the important fortresses of Medvedgrad
and Rakovec, near Zagreb, passed to his sister and were de facto occupied by
her two sons. The Sabor of Croatia proper endorsed the Zrinskis’ claim: if
they did not have the revenues of Medvedgrad and Rakovec, Ferdinand
would have to provide the brothers with other means to defend their holdings
along the Una. But the two castles lay in Slavonia, and Ferdinand chose to
follow the Hungarian law in use there, which, unlike Croatian law, did not
allow noble properties to pass down by the female line. 302 He may also have
been sensitive to the undercurrent of hostility to the Zrinskis—a family that
had truck with the Ottomans—that one sees in the correspondence of Inner
Austrian notables. 303 Finally, Hans Ungnad, a prior claimant to Medvedgrad
and Rakovec whom the Zrinskis displaced, was also Landeshauptmann of
Styria and, from 1540, commander of the army of the three provinces in
Slavonia and Croatia. 304
When Dubica and other Zrinski castles came under attack from Bosnia in
February 1540, it was with Ferdinand’s prior knowledge. Queen Anna as-
sured Carniola that in the truce recently concluded by Ferdinand’s ambassa-
dor, Hieronim Łaski, only the Zrinski lands were excluded. 305 But Łaski’s
report, delivered in Ghent to both Ferdinand and Charles, indicated that he
had tried to dissuade the sultan from “punishing” the Zrinskis. 306 Ferdinand
then sent Łaski back to the Porte with instructions to see if the attack could
be called off. 307 Meanwhile, when Nikola Zrinski came to the war council in
Ptuj, Hans Ungnad told him he would get no help because peace with the
Ottomans was “firm” 308; in other words, any problem the Zrinskis had was of
their own making. The upshot was that the Zrinskis were indeed “punished”:
their lands and their mines were ravaged and burned. 309 In effect, the broth-
ers were taken down a peg to encourage their submission to Vienna. In late
1540 Ferdinand approved money for the Zrinskis to maintain four hundred
light horse. In 1541 he confirmed them in possession of Medvedgrad and
Rakovec, and by 1542 Nikola IV Zrinski was ban of Croatia. 310 His immedi-
ate superior, the commander of Austrian forces in Croatia, was Hans Ung-
nad, the erstwhile Lord of Medvedgrad and Rakovec.
 The Ottoman Advantage 127

CONCLUSION

Nikola Zrinski’s acceptance of a royal appointment that made him subordi-

nate to Hans Ungnad is an apt symbol for the slow and necessary process by
which the leading men of various provinces fitted themselves willy-nilly into
a common administrative framework. While Slavonians and Croatians stood
on the front line, the Austrians held the purse strings, and hence presided
over command decisions. In keeping with the conservative traditions of the
Austrian estates, the war council in Ptuj was well suited for allocating re-
sources along a defensive line, not for planning an offensive. At the same
time, if any lesson was to be learned from the first fifteen years of Ferdi-
nand’s rule in Hungary and Croatia, it was that the resources of the Habsburg
Monarchy did not suffice for a major assault into Ottoman territory. This was
surely a bitter lesson: European princes of this era were expected to take the
war to their enemies. Against the infidels in particular, war had always meant
grand expeditions, as in the time of the Crusades, or in plans agreed to by
signatories to the Holy League of 1537–1538. Ferdinand might be excused
from leading his armies in person—men remembered what had befallen Hun-
gary after the king was killed at Mohács—but he could not be absolved from
the duty of mounting a generalis expeditio to reclaim lost ground. To be sure,
Charles V warned against a trial of strength with the Ottomans, but he him-
self was arguably the greatest military impresario of the age; his campaigns
set an example that made a seemingly passive Ferdinand look pusillanimous.
In the end, the imperative to attack was more political than strategic, and the
enormous sums expended could only be justified by achieving something
worthwhile. When Camillo Orsini staked too much on a single attack in
Dalmatia, Vrana and Nadin fell to the Ottomans; when Katzianer did the
same along the Drava, the disintegration of his army left much of Slavonia
open to the enemy.
These were not mistakes that the Ottomans made. The sancakbegs did not
have to stake so much on any single campaign because they had the re-
sources to mount attacks year after year. When the time came for a major
attack, the Ottoman commissariat had long experience in making sure that
needed supplies were stockpiled at key points along the way. Although it is
often said that European armies had the advantage of superior technology, a
good case can be made for “Ottoman military superiority,” not just in logis-
tics but in some aspects of gunpowder technology—notably in siege artil-
lery—and especially in defensive warfare. While Ottoman attacks against
128 Chapter 2

Habsburg fortresses were usually successful, it was rare for an Ottoman

fortress to succumb to a Habsburg or a Venetian assault. 311 This was because
Ottoman commanders were patient enough to advance step by step, making
sure each newly won stronghold was properly fortified, garrisoned, and sup-
plied. In sum, the humbling recognition that one had to fight a defensive war
was only the first step. For Habsburg officials and the Habsburg lands, the
larger question was whether they could muster the resources, the political
cohesion, and the strategic patience needed to defend their positions as well
as the Ottomans did.

NOTES

1. 1521–1529, 1536, 1542–1544, and 1552–1559.

2. R. J. Knecht, Renaissance Warrior and Patron: The Reign of Francis I (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1994), and The Rise and Fall of Renaissance France, 1483–1610
(2nd ed., Oxford: Blackwell, 2001).
3. The kingdoms of Castile and Aragon preserved separate identities under Ferdinand and
Isabella’s heirs.
4. Archduke of the Netherlands from 1514, king of Castile and Aragon (and of Naples and
Sicily) from 1517, and Holy Roman Emperor from 1519.
5. Elected by the electoral princes of the empire to succeed his grandfather, Maximilian I.
6. Thomas A. Brady Jr., German Histories in the Age of Reformations, 1400–1650 (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), part I. The Habsburgs’ hereditary lands in Austria
were ruled by Ferdinand.
7. Parker, The Military Revolution; Ramón Carande Thobar, Carlos V y sus banqueros (3
vols., Madrid, 1943–1967, reprinted Barcelona, 2000).
8. In 1525 France suffered a disastrous defeat at Pavia, and the king was taken captive. In
1528 Genoa, a naval power, switched to the Habsburg side. In 1536, Milan came under direct
Spanish rule.
9. Michael Hochedlinger, “Die französisch-osmanische ‘Freundschaft’ 1525–1792. Ele-
ment antihabsburgischer Politik, Gleichgewichtsinstrument, Prestigeunternehmung. Aufriss
eines Problems,” Mitteilungen des Instituts für Österreichische Geschichte 122 (1994): 108ff.
10. Ferdinand to Charles, Linz, 19 September 1529, contrasts the sultan’s “merveilleux
equippaige” with his own “petit appareil,” Gévay III, doc. XXI, 412–413.
11. In 1527 he was elected king by Bohemia’s estates, in succession to his brother-in-law,
Louis II Jagiello.
12. Winkelbauer, Österreichische Geschichte, I, 13–14; Halil İnalcik, An Economic and
Social History of the Ottoman Empire, vol. I, 1300–1600 (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1994), 28–29.
13. Winkelbauer, Österreichische Geschichte, I, 488–490 (2,150,000 Rhine gulden). For a
gulden–ducat ratio of 4 to 5, see Ferdinand to Ban Hieronim Łaski, 13 July 1540, HSS II, 298,
Letter 196.
14. İnalcik, Economic and Social History of the Ottoman Empire, 82 (537,900,000 silver
akçe). In Venetian sources of these years, the reported ducat–akçe ratio is 1 to 50.
15. Götz Freiherr von Pölnitz, Anton Fugger (5 vols., Tübingen: Mohr, 1958–1986).
 The Ottoman Advantage 129

16. René Quatrefages, “L’organisation militaire de l’Espagne, 1492–1592” (Ph.D. disserta-

tion, Université de Paris-IV, 1989).
17. E.g., the failed Habsburg invasion of Provence in 1536: Tracy, Emperor Charles V,
Impresario of War (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), chapter 8.
18. For the Treaty of Bologna, see Gleason, “Confronting New Realities.”
19. Bracewell, The Uskoks of Senj.
20. Sanjay Subrahmanyam, “Sixteenth-Century Millenarianism from the Tagus to the Gan-
ges,” in his Explorations in Connected History: From the Tagus to the Ganges (New Delhi:
Oxford University Press, 2005), 102–137.
21. Karl Brandi, “Berichte und Studien zur Geschichte Karls V,” Nachrichten von der
Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen, Philologische-Historische Klasse, nos. I–XIX
(1930–1941), no. XIX (1941), Doc. 2, 211–213. From Alvise Gritti and Bailo Piero Zen,
Constantinople, 28–29 January 1530, Sanudo Izvodi, 162, and Ágoston, “Information, Ideolo-
gy, and Limits of Imperial Policy,” 100.
22. E.g., the province of Holland obstructed a war he wanted to fight to install his niece on
the Danish throne: Tracy, Emperor Charles V, 20–21.
23. Hieronimo of Zadar and Cornelis de Scepper to Ferdinand, Vienna, 27 September 1533,
Gévay, VII, 27–65, here 57–59, quoting Suleyman: “Once I have spoken, my word does not
change.”
24. Chapter 1, notes 24, 25. For the submission to Charles by the burghers of Ghent (1540)
and the Duke of Cleves (1543), see Tracy, Emperor Charles V, 167–168, 190.
25. Maurits van den Boogert and Kate Fleet, The Ottoman Capitulations: Text and Context
(Rome: Istituto per l’Oriente, 2004).
26. Dispatch from Bailo Pietro Zen, 29 December 1526, Sanudo Izvodi, 184–185: Grand
Vezir Ibrahim Paşa says that if Louis II had been taken alive after Mohács, Suleyman would
have entrusted Hungary to his care.
27. Suleyman to Ferdinand, late November 1528 (translated by a captive Turk), Gévay II,
doc. XX, 43–44: “Yo ha ganado con el espado y destruido toda aquella territoria [Hungary].”
For Suleyman’s claims to the caliphate, see Giancarlo Casale, “Tordesillas and the Ottoman
Caliphate: Early Modern Frontiers and the Renaissance of an Ancient Islamic Institution,”
Journal of Early Modern History 19 (2015): 485–512.
28. In 1527, Gattinara asked Erasmus (in vain) to do a new edition of De Monarchia,
Dante’s treatise on world monarchy: The Correspondence of Erasmus: Letters 1658 to 1801,
translated by Alexander Dalzell, annotated by Charles Nauert (Collected Works of Erasmus in
English, vol. XII) (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003), 474–476; Imber, The Ottoman
Empire, 125–127.
29. Ágoston, “Information, Ideology, and Limits of Imperial Policy,” 92–100. Ágoston
rejects the argument (cf. chapter 1, note 138) that Suleyman merely responded to opportunities
as they arose.
30. Petritsch, “Die Ungarnpolitik Ferdinands I,” 17–18.
31. Klaus Peter Maschke, Das Kreuz und der Halbmond. Die Geschichte der Türkenkriege
(Düsseldorf, Zurich: Artemis & Winkler, 2004), 246–247; Hengel, Renaissance und Gegenref-
ormation, 58–62.
32. Tracy, Emperor Charles V, 138–141, 149–154; Maschke, Das Kreuz und der Halb-
mond, 252–254; Voje, Slovenci pod pirtiskom turškega nasilja, 33. For Suleyman’s aims in
1532, see Ágoston, “Information, Ideology, and Limits of Imperial Policy,” 101. For the de-
fense of Köszeg, see Jurešić to Ferdinand, Köszeg, 22 August 1532, Monumenta Habsburgica
Croatiae, II, Letter 136, 121–125.
33. Allouche, Origins and Development of the Ottoman-Safavid Conflict, 135–140.
130 Chapter 2

34. Margrave Joachim of Brandenburg; Pálffy, The Kingdom of Hungary, 45–48.

35. M. Tayyib Gökbilgin, “Ibrahim Pasha,” Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., 908–915.
36. Hieronimo of Zadar and Cornelis de Scepper to Ferdinand, Vienna, 27 September 1533,
Gévay VI, 3–48, here 20–25; Nikola Jurešić and Joseph von Lamberg to Ferdinand, Linz,
February 1531, Gévay IV, 25–41, here 38–39; for Ottoman court style on the imperial title, see
Imber, The Ottoman Empire, 125.
37. Zadar and Scepper to Ferdinand, 27 September 1533, Gévay VI, 3–48, here 7–9: “Quic-
quid ego facio inquit factum est” (When I do something, it stays done).
38. Ágoston, “Information, Ideology, and Limits of Imperial Power,” 99. I concur with his
view that Charles V took “with a degree of skepticism” the memoranda on monarchia or
universal rulership authored by his grand chancellor, Mercurino Gattinara.
39. Tracy, Emperor Charles V, 306.
40. Contarini to the Signoria, Sarajevo, 21 May 1528, Sanudo Izvodi, 195.
41. Gerhard Neweklowski, ed., Benedikt Curipeschitz Itinerarium oder Weyrayss Küniglich
Mayestät potschaft gen Constasntinopel zu dem Türckischen Keiser Soleyman. Anno 1530
(Klagenfurt: Wieser, 1997), 56–59.
42. Nikola Jurešić and Joseph von Lamberg.
43. Neweklowski, Benedikt Curipeschitz Itinerarium, 55.
44. Possibly at Višegrad. In Habsburg sources, vojvods commanding frontier towns are
given various titles, including locumtenens. Sprinzenstein was the younger son of Paulus Ri-
cius, a physician and philosopher who corresponded with Erasmus (Contemporaries of Eras-
mus, III, 157–160).
45. Sprinzenstein’s summary report to Ferdinand, Vienna, early October 1537, Gévay IX,
8–26, here 22–24.
46. Advice from the Diet of Posonia, 9 October 1543, in Vilmos Franknoí, ed., Magyar
Országgyülési Emlékek / Monumenta Comitalia Regni Hungariae (vols. I–III, Budapest: Ráth
Mor, 1874–1876), hereafter abbreviated as MOE II, 525–529; Ivan Alapy and István Gyula to
the council of Styria, reporting what Ottoman captives say, Križevci, 7 March 1542, in Prilozi
Styria, 167–168; Klára Hegyi and Vera Zamányi, Muslime und Christen. Das Osmanische
Reich in Europa (Budapest: Corvina Kiadó, 1986), 189.
47. Josip Žontar, Obveščevalna služba in diplomacija austrijskih Habsburžanov u Boju
proti Turkom v 16. Stoletju (Ljubljana: Slovenska Akademija Znanosti, 1973), 211, citing a
1530 letter to Ferdinand from Sprinzenstein, then in Dubrovnik.
48. Zlatar, Ghazi Husrev Beg, 37.
49. Paulus Bakith to Ferdinand, Jaurino, 29 July 1532, Monumenta Habsburgica Croatiae,
II, Letter 130, 114–115.
50. The fact that they often combined their forces for a particular attack suggests direction
from the Porte.
51. Between Osijek and Vukovar.
52. A point made by Ive Mažuran, Hrvati i Osmansko Carstvo (Zagreb: Matica Hrvatska,
1998), 81.
53. Chapter 1, e.g., notes 69–71.
54. Zlatar, Ghazi Husrev Beg, 42–43.
55. Zlatar, Ghazi Husrev Beg, 40. For the battle near Metlika (October 1528), see Batthyány
to Mary (quoting Karlović), Nemethwywar, 15 October 1528, Monumenta Habsburgica Croa-
tiae, I, Letter 134, 119–120. Reports of a Habsburg defeat by Zuan Basadona, rector of Udine,
24 and 26 October 1528, Sanudo Izvodi, 211–212, seem to refer to a later loss at the hands of
pro-Szapolyai forces: cf. Klaić, Povijest Hrvata, 86–87.
 The Ottoman Advantage 131

56. Batthyány to Ferdinand, Kermendy, 4 March 1530, Monumenta Habsburgica Croatiae,

I, Letter 257, 267–270.
57. Presumably the modern Bosanska Kobaš, a few miles downstream from Gradiška.
58. Ivan Karlović to Katzianer, Novigrad, 18 November 1530, Monumenta Habsburgica
Croatiae, I, Letter 484, 453–454; Petar Keglević to Katrzianer, Kostel, 25 November 1530,
Monumenta Habsburgica Croatiae, I, Letter 485, 454–455.
59. Stephen Deshazy to Katzianer, Susedgrad, 3 January 1531, Monumenta Habsburgica
Croatiae, II, Letter 4, 3–4; Deshazy to Karlović, Stubica, 5 June 1531, HSS II, Letter 210, 284;
and Toma Nemanić to Hieronimo of Zadar, Senj, 9 April 1532, Monumenta Habsburgica
Croatiae, II, Letter 123, 106–107, a reference to the “former” (condam) oppidum at Kobaš.
60. Mažuran, Hrvati i Osmansko Carstvo, 81: northern Croatia proper was secondary for
Ottoman war plans.
61. In 1522; see chapter 1.
62. Zlatar, Ghazi Husrev Beg, 40–41.
63. Friar Bernardino Pozamanić to Ferdinand, Constantinople, 1 March 1530, Monumenta
Habsburgica Croatiae, I, Letter 271, 263–265; for Pozamanić, see Žontar, Obveščevalna
služba, 205–206.
64. Copy of a letter from Šibenik to the captain of Rijeka, 24 March 1530, Monumenta
Habsburgica Croatiae, I, Letter 302, 298–299.
65. Zlatar, Ghazi Husrev Beg, 41.
66. Žontar, Obveščevalna služba, 199, 207; Zlatar, Ghazi Husrev Beg, 49–50: Venice com-
plained about attacks by Obrovac fuste on Adriatic shipping.
67. Zlatar, Ghazi Husrev Beg, 45, 47; Petar Kružić to Andrea del Burgo, Klis, 22 September
1532, Monumenta Habsburgica Croatiae, II, Letter 139, 127–128; Lamberg to Ferdinand,
Ljubljana, 28 September 1532, Monumenta Habsburgica Croatiae, II, Letter 140, 128–129.
68. 8 August 1532. For the reconquest of Koroni (1533–1534), see Roger Crowley, Empires
of the Sea (London: Faber & Faber, 2008). For the Iran campaign of 1534–1535, see Allouche,
Origins and Development of the Ottoman-Safavid Conflict, 136–140.
69. Žontar, Obveščevalna služba, 15–16.
70. For this paragraph, see Gizella Nemeth Papo and Adriano Papo, Ludovico Gritti. Un
Principe Mercante del Rinascimiento tra Venezia, i Turchise la Corona di Ungheria (Mariano
del Friuli: Edizioni di Laguna, 2002), 24–41.
71. Combining Vespasiano of Zadar to Ferdinand, Prague, 5 March 1534, Gévay VII, doc.
XXVII, 104–123, here 120–121, and Scepper to Ferdinand, Prague, 2 August 1534, Gévay VII,
27–65, here 51.
72. Sanjay Subrahmanyam and C. A. Bayly, “Portfolio Capitalists and the Political Econo-
my of Early Modern India,” Indian Economics and Social History Review 25 (1988): 401–424.
73. Nemeth Papo and Papo, Ludovico Gritti, 31, 7 (“in practica fu re di fatto”).
74. Nemeth Papo and Papo, Ludovico Gritti, 113–114. Above, note 15.
75. Vespasiano of Zadar to Ferdinand, Prague, 5 March 1534, Gévay VII, doc. XXVII,
104–123, here 112–118, and Hieronimo of Zadar and Scepper to Ferdinand, Vienna, 27 Sep-
tember 1533, Gévay VI, 3–48, here 5–6.
76. Thurzo to Ferdinand, Posonia, 8 March 1533, Gévay VI, doc. XXIV, 91–92.
77. Cf. Scepper to Ferdinand, Prague, 2 August 1534, Gévay VII, 217–265, here 37: Szapol-
yai owes Gritti 300,000 ducats.
78. The Ottoman nickname for Gritti, meaning son of the ruler, i.e., the doge.
79. Nemeth Papo and Papo, Ludovico Gritti, chapter 8.
80. Nemeth Papo and Papo, Ludovico Gritti, 113.
81. Cf. Sprinzenstein to Ferdinand, Vienna, early October 1537, Gévay IX, 8–26, here 8–11.
132 Chapter 2

82. Petar Keglević to Ferdinand, Bužim, 24 October 1533, Monumenta Habsburgica Croa-
tiae, II, Letter 187, 170–172; Ferdinand to Zrinski, Vienna, 3 November 1533, Monumenta
Habsburgica Croatiae, II, Letter 196, 179–180.
83. Vespasiano of Zadar to Ferdinand, Prague, 5 March 1534, Gévay VII, doc. XXVII,
104–123, here 112–118; Zlatar, Ghazi Husrev Beg, 49–50: Ghazi Husrev Beg was in fact
replaced by the man mentioned by Gritti, Mehmed Beg Mihalbegović, who died early in 1536
(cf. Biščević, Bosanski namjesnici, no. 46).
84. The siege began at the end of August: Klaić, Povijest Hrvata, V, 118–119.
85. Mažuran, Hrvati i Osmansko Carstvo, 87; Zlatar, Ghazi Husrev Beg, 56.
86. Mažuran, Hrvati i Osmansko Carstvo, 81; for estimates of Ottoman troop strength, see
Jurešić to the Council of Lower Austria, Köszeg, 6 August 1536, Monumenta Habsburgica
Croatiae, II, Letter 299, 292; and the archbishop of Lund to Charles V, Friedrich Wilhelm
Lanz, ed., Lanz, Korrespondenz des Kaisers Karl V (3 vols., reprint, Frankfurt/M: Minerva,
1966), hereafter abbreviated as Lanz, II, Letter 441, 247. Zlatar, Ghazi Husrev Beg, 51–52,
gives a figure of thirty thousand to forty thousand troops.
87. Zlatar, Ghazi Husrev Beg, 51–52; Mažuran, Hrvati i Osmansko Carstvo, 81; Ferdinand
to Ghazi Husrev Beg, Innsbruck, 18 July 1536, Gévay VIII, doc. XCII, 116–117.
88. Mažuran, Hrvati i Osmansko Carstvo, 82–87; Zlatar, Ghazi Husrev Beg, 53–56.
89. Maps given by Mažuran, Hrvati i Osmansko Carstvo, 53, 123, show Ottoman gains up
to 1552, without distinguishing between conquests made in 1537 and in 1552. As of 1538, the
line defended by the Habsburgs ran through Velika (just north and east of Požega) and Viroviti-
ca, just south of the Drava: Bans Petar Keglević and Simon Erdödy to Ferdinand, Cristalocz, 30
January 1538, HSS II, Letter 100, 156–163.
90. Bans Keglević and Erdödy to Ferdinand, Cristalocz, 30 January 1538, HSS II, Letter
100, 156–163.
91. For the family, see the early chapters of Štefanec, Heretik njegova Veličanstva.
92. Universitas of nobles in Croatia (i.e., the Sabor) to Ferdinand, s.l., 24 February 1530,
MOE I, 302–306; Ivan Zrinski to Hans Ungnad, Zagreb, 9 June 1540, Monumenta Habsburgica
Croatiae, II, Letter 497, 495–496.
93. Ivan Zrinski to Ferdinand, mid-February 1540, Monumenta Habsburgica Croatiae, II,
Letter 467, 459–460.
94. F. Tahy to Katzianer, Gorbonok, 4 February 1537, HSS II, Letter 6, 11–12; Ban Simon
Erdödy to Ferdinand, Dubrava, 29 January 1537.
95. Above, note 93; cf. Ban Petar Keglević to Ferdinand, from Zagreb, 21 May 1538, MOE
II, 262–264, and from Novigrad, 30 September 1538, Monumenta Habsburgica Croatiae, II,
Letter 403, 400–402.
96. Andreas Tarnocz to Tamás Nádasdy, Križevci, 8 May 1538, HSS II, Letter 129,
213–215; Keglević to Ferdinand, Zagreb, 21 May 1538, MOE II, 262–264.
97. Keglević to Ferdinand, Lobor, 12 October 1539, HSS II, Letter 178, 276–278.
98. Ivan Zrinski to Ferdinand, s.l., mid-February 1540, Monumenta Habsburgica Croatiae,
II, Letter 467, 459–460.
99. Keglević to Queen Anna, Topuska, 24 March 1540, Monumenta Habsburgica Croatiae,
II, Letter 476, 469–470.
100. Nikola Zrinski to Queen Anna, Ptuj, 14 March 1540, Monumenta Habsburgica Croa-
tiae, II, Letter 473, 464–466 (referring to the sancakbegs of Bosnia, Smederevo, and Klis); Ivan
Zrinski to Hans Ungnad, Zagreb, 9 June 1540, Monumenta Habsburgica Croatiae, II, Letter
497, 495–496.
101. Cf. below, note 302; James Tracy, “The Road to Szigetvár: Ferdinand I’s Defense of His
Hungarian Frontier, 1548–1564,” Austrian History Yearbook XLIV (2013): 17–46.
 The Ottoman Advantage 133

102. Organized by France in reaction to a treaty imposed on Francis I during his captivity in
Spain: Knecht, Renaissance Warrior and Patron, 253–259.
103. Clement VII (d. 1534), a sponsor of the League of Cognac, who now agreed to crown
Charles as emperor.
104. Tracy, Emperor Charles V, 45–49; Mallett and Hale, Military Organization of a Renais-
sance State, 225–227.
105. Gaetano Cozzi, “La vicenda storica,” in Tenenti and Tucci, Storia di Venezia dalli
origini alla caduta della Serenissima, vol. VI, 3–128, here 31–32; Paolo Preto, Venezia e i
Turchi, 157–159.
106. For a statement of this view, see the oration, apparently from 1538, by an influential
member of the Senate, Marco Foscari: CRV II, doc. XVII, 131–136.
107. C. H. H. Weake, “The Changing Pattern of Europe’s Pepper and Spice Imports, ca.
1400–1700,” Journal of European Economic History 8 (1979): 361–404, here 372–373.
108. Hieronimo of Zadar to Ferdinand, Constantinople, 4 March 1533, Gévay VI, doc.
XXVIII, 81–83. Cf. Sanudo Izvodi, II, 176, a reference from 1531 to a “Pollo Justiniani” who
speaks Turkish.
109. Casale, The Ottoman Age of Exploration; Weake, “The Changing Pattern of Europe’s
Pepper and Spice Imports.”
110. Preto, Venezia e i Turchi, 37–52.
111. Ivan Pastor to Ferdinand from Dubrovnik, 10 March, 1 April, and 5 May 1529, Monu-
menta Habsburgica Croatiae, I, Letters 156, 159, 170, 141–142, 144–147, 160–161. I have not
found confirmation in other sources.
112. The judices (judges) of Senj to Captain Joannes Rizan of Rijeka, 9 August 1531, Monu-
menta Habsburgica Croatiae, II, Letter 86, 70–71.
113. Nikola Jadrijević to Ferdinand, Venice, 10 May 1532, Monumenta Habsburgica Croa-
tiae, II, Letter 124, 107–108; Hieronymus Seraphinus to Ferdinand, Rijeka, 27 May 1536,
Monumenta Habsburgica Croatiae, II, Letter 280, 273–275.
114. Above, note 105.
115. Žontar, Obveščevalna služba, 17; this was part of the 1530 settlement with Charles V.
116. Nemeth Papo and Papo, Ludovico Gritti, 166.
117. Report of Syndics Lunardo Venier and Hieronimo Contarini, 27 October 1525, CRV II,
doc. 1, 9–34, here 12, 14–15, 27–29; from Alessandro Lippomani, rector of Trogir, 16 July
1527, ASV-DAC, Busta 61, vol. 1, 68–69v.
118. Tomislav Raukar, Ivo Petricioli, Franjo Švelec, and Šime Peričić, Zadar pod mletačkom
upravom (Zadar, 1987), 207.
119. Lippomani’s report, as cited in note 117: he obeyed his instructions, by “accarezzando
continuamente con ogni possible modo le vayvodi e altri suoi magistrate.” Cf. the instructions
for rectors, with clauses said to date from 1479: 1530, CRV II, doc. 8, 68–81, here 72; and CRV
II, doc. XII, 89–104.
120. Domenico Gritti’s report as rector of Kotor, 29 December 1528, CRV II, doc. IV, 47–51.
121. Report of Andrea Valier as rector of Kotor, 12 August 1536, CRV II, doc. XV, 109–113.
122. From Bertucci Civran, rector of Zadar, 20 December 1527, ASV-DAC, Busta 61, vol. 1,
57–58v: “un poco eminente . . . posto nel mezzo del contado che discopre tutte le campagnie a
torno a torno.”
123. Raukar et al., Zadar pod mletačkom upravom, 206. Civran (cited in note 122) mentions
that Korlat, Bencovac, and Perušić, “seven or eight miles distant,” could all be seen from
Nadin.
134 Chapter 2

124. Report of Syndics Venier and Contarini, 27 October 1525, CRV II, doc. I, 9–34, here 13;
report of Victor Barbadico as rector of Zadar, 24 June 1527, CRV II, doc. III, 41–46, here 41
(the quote), 44–45.
125. Raukar et al., Zadar pod mletačkom upravom, 190.
126. In reaction to France’s conquest of Savoy, a Habsburg ally: Tracy, Emperor Charles V,
chapter 8.
127. CRV II, doc. XVI, 113–131, here 117: “Descrizione della Guerra seguita tra la serenissi-
ma republica di Venezia e sultan Soliman imperator de Turchi l’anno 1537.” Francesco Longo
(b. 1538) says at the end that he has edited a work by his father, Antonio Longo (a member of
the Council of Ten, d. 1567), in order to show that “l’unico remedio de nostri mali sia conser-
vare la pace con Turchi.” Doria’s strategy (highly suspect to the Venetians) has been much
discussed, e.g., John F. Guilmartin, Gunpowder and Galleys: Changing Technology and War-
fare at Sea in the 16th Century (revised ed., Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2003),
57–69; Géraud Poumarède, Pour en finir avec la Croisade. Mythes et réalités de la lute contre
les turcs aux XVIe et XVIIe siècles (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2004), 238.
128. Mallett and Hale, Military Organization of a Renaissance State, 228–232; Tracy, Em-
peror Charles V, 164–166; Setton, The Papacy and the Levant, IV, 431. For an account by the
commander of the French galleys, Baron de Saint-Blancard, see E. Charrière, Négotiations de
la France dans le Levant (4 vols., Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1844–1860), hereafter abbrevi-
ated as Charrière, I, 340–353.
129. “Descrizione della Guerra,” CRV II, doc. XVI, 113–131, here 126–127.
130. Raukar et al., Zadar pod Mletačkom Upravom, 209–211; Zlatar, Ghazi Husrev Beg, 58;
“Descrizione della Guerra,” CRV II, doc. XVI, 119–123. Jakšić, Zemunik, 44.
131. “Descrizione della Guerra,” CRV II, doc. XVI, 122–125: Lunardo Emo spoke for the
plan (“Without those two fortresses, we cannot say that Zadar is ours”), and Alvise Gradenigo
spoke against it.
132. Dispatch of Alvise Badoer, sent as ambassador to the Porte, Constantinople, 8 October
1540, CRV II, doc. XVIII, 133–144. Ghazi Husrev Beg and Murat Beg were eager to lay hold
of the mills: report of Zuanfrancesco Sagredo, rector of Šibenik, 17 May 1539, CRV II, doc.
XXI, 148–150; and Badoer, cited above, p. 140.
133. Final relatio of bailo Alvise Rhenier, 7 January 1550, CRV II, doc. XXXV, 187–188.
134. “Descrizione della Guerra,” CRV II, doc. XVI, 123–126. Cf. Pelissier to Francis I,
Venice, 10 September 1540, Charrière, I, 439–440.
135. Raukar et al., Zadar pod mletačkom upravom, 210; Muvekkit, I, 124.
136. From rector Alvise de Rippa, 24 October 1542, CRV II, doc. XXVII, 167–170.
137. “Descrizione della Guerra,” CRV II, doc. XVI, 126.
138. “Relatio di messer Girolamo de San Michele delle misure del castello di San Nicolò di
Sebenico,” 1540, CRV II, doc. XXII, 150; from rector Jacopo Boldu, 7 May 1542, CRV II, doc.
XXV, 155–159.
139. For the rebuilding of Zadar’s fortifications, see Žmegač, Bastioni jadranske Hrvatske,
31–47; see also Raukar et al., Zadar pod mletačkom upravom, 211; Michela Dal Borgo and
Guglielmo Zanelli, Zara. Una fortrezza, un porto, un arsenale (secoli XV–XVIII) (Rome:
Viella, 2008), 28–29. Donna Calabi, “Citta e territorio nel dominio del mar,” in Tenenti and
Tucci, Storia di Venezia dalli origini alla caduta della Serenissima, vol. VI, 943–977, here
957–958.
140. Final report of Hieronimo Cicogna, rector of Zadar, 17 November 1538, CRV II, doc.
XX, 146–148.
 The Ottoman Advantage 135

141. From Alvise Calbo in Trogir, 12 August 1530 and 9 January 1532, Sanudo Izvodi, 169,
195–196. Cf. Šarić, “Planini i Morlacchi Svijet u Dalmaciji,” 63, 69: the Vlachs were not pure
pastoralists or nomads in the classic sense.
142. Final report of Antonio da Mula [1542 or 1543], CRV II, doc. XXVIII, 170–175.
143. E.g., Monumenta Habsburgica Croatiae, II, Letter 487, 456–457, instructions for a
mission to Petar Kružić, captain of Klis, whose men stole cattle from a “Murlacchi named
Popovich.” Kružić insisted the cows had been “in Turkish territory.” Cf. CRV II, doc. XXI,
148–150, report of 17 May 1539: Zuanfrancesco Sagredo, rector of Trogir, offers a justification
for having raised needed cash by selling salt to “Turkish Morlacchi.”
144. Da Mula’s report (note 142), here 172–173.
145. Bracewell, The Uskoks of Senj, 46.
146. From the rector of Split, 9 June 1536, Monumenta Habsburgica Croatiae, II, Letter 283,
277.
147. “Descrizione de la Guerra,” CRV II, doc. XVI, 115.
148. Final report of Jacopo Boldu, rector of Šibenik, 7 May 1542, CRV II, doc. XXV,
155–159: the sancakbeg [of Klis?] complains constantly, and if nothing is done his vojvods
threaten to go and destroy Senj and Rijeka.
149. CRV II, doc. XXVI, 159–167, report of Antonio Mazza, 8 June 1542: sent to demand
restitution after a raid on an Ottoman merchantman, Mazza found that the goods had already
been sent on to Rijeka for resale.
150. Mazza’s report, as above, 149.
151. From Boldu’s report, as above, note 148.
152. From Alvise Calbo in Trogir, 13 August 1530, Sanudo Izvodi, 169.
153. On the duchy of Bavaria, see Brady, German Histories, 97–100. For the imperial office,
the Habsburgs’ main competitors had been the Wittelsbachs of Bavaria and the Luxemburgs of
Bohemia.
154. Winkelbauer, Österreichische Geschichte, I, 476–377; Wiesflecker, Maximilian I, V,
195, 563.
155. Carande Thobar, Carlos V y sus banqueros; Pölnitz, Anton Fugger.
156. Winkelbauer, Österreichische Geschichte, I, 471–477, 487–488.
157. James D. Tracy, Europe’s Reformations, 1450–1650 (2nd ed., Lanham, MD: Rowman
& Littlefield, 2006), 55, 71–79.
158. Brady, German Histories, 222.
159. Kenneth J. Dillon, King and Estates in Bohemia, 1526–1564 (Études presentées à la
Commission Internationale pour l’Histoire des Assemblées d’État, LVII) (Brussels: Librairie
Encyclopédique, 1976), chapter 1. The lands of the crown were Bohemia proper, Moravia,
Silesia, and Upper and Lower Lusatia.
160. Joachim Bahlcke, Regionalismus und Staatsintegration im Wiederstreit. Die Länder der
böhmischen Krone im ersten Jahrhunder der Habsburger-Herrschaft, 1526–1619 (Munich:
Oldenbourg, 1994).
161. E.g., Ferdinand to Mary, Prague, 8 June 1532, Gévay V, doc. XIX, 78–79.
162. Pálffy, The Kingdom of Hungary, 35–44.
163. Alexius Thurzo to Ferdinand, Schempte, 5 December 1531, Monumenta Habsburgica
Croatiae, II, Letter 110, 93–94.
164. Ferdinand to Mary, Prague, 31 May 1528, Familienkorrespondenz, II, Letter 190,
228–230: for troops who served him the previous year, he owes 90,000 Rhine gulden in back
wages.
165. Petritsch, “Die Ungarnpolitik Ferdinands,” I, iii.
136 Chapter 2

166. A point made by Paul Sonnino, Mazarin’s Quest: The Congress of Westphalia and the
Coming of the Fronde (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008), 22; cf. Tracy, Em-
peror Charles V, 305–307.
167. Ferdinand to Charles, Linz, 17 February 1531, and České Budéjovice, 17 March 1531,
Wolfram, Familienkorrespondenz, Letters 459, 445–448, and 470, 70–80.
168. Tracy, Emperor Charles V, chapters 7, 8; Jan Paul Niederkorn, “Argumentationsstrate-
gien für Beständnisse gegen die Osmanen in Gesandtschaftsberichten,” in Kurz et al., eds., Das
Osmanische Reich und die Habsburgermonarchie, 205–212.
169. Orsolova Réthelyi, Mary of Hungary: The Queen and Her Court, 1521–1531 (Budapest,
2005).
170. Ferdinand to Alexius Thurzo, Innsbruck, 25 November 1531, Monumenta Habsburgica
Croatiae, II, Letter 108, 90–92.
171. Tamás Szalahazy, Bishop of Eger, to Ferdinand, Košice, 16 September 1531, HSS I,
Letter 217, 291–292.
172. Nikola Jurešić to Ferdinand, Tschernembl, 22 January 1537, HSS I, Letter 53, 78–80;
Christoph Rauber et al. to the council of Lower Austria, Posonia, 5 March 1527, HSS I, Letter
58, 91.
173. The locumtenens and the council to Ferdinand, Buda, 20 July 1528, Monumenta Habs-
burgica Croatiae, I, Letter 122, 107–108.
174. E.g., Ferdinand to the camera of Hungary, Greiffenberg, 3 January 1529, Monumenta
Habsburgica Croatiae, I, Letter 143, 133.
175. Pálffy, The Kingdom of Hungary, 121–131: royal mining rights were already pledged;
customs revenue improved, but Ferdinand granted away royal estates to win support.
176. Ban Ferenc Batthyány to the Palatine, Rač, 6 July 1528, HSS I, Letter 102, 157–160; cf.
Krsto Frankopan to Franciscus Josević, Bishop of Senj, Križevci, 29 May 1527, HSS I, Letter
74, 115–118.
177. E.g., Ivan Karlović to Ferdinand, Rakovec, 15 February 1529, HSS I, Letter 115, 119.
178. Peter Rauscher, Zwischen Ständen und Gläubigern. Die kaiserlichen Finanzen unter
Ferdinand I und Maximilian II (1556–1576) (Munich/Vienna: Oldenbourg, 2004), 78–91; in
1521, the six “Roman months” were for a suitable military escort for Charles V’s expected
journey to Rome for his coronation as emperor.
179. Rauscher, Zwischen Ständen und Gläubigern, 94; Tracy, Emperor Charles V, 138–139.
180. Minute by Francisco de los Cobos (with Charles’s comments at the end), Manuel
Fernández Alvarez, ed., Corpus Documental de Carlos V (5 vols., Salamanca: 1973–1981), I,
Letter XCVI, 261.
181. Ferdinand to Charles, Prague, 14 March 1527, Gévay I, doc. XXXIII, 51–55.
182. Tracy, Emperor Charles V, 119; Miklós Oláh to Paulus Gerebius, Znaim, 4 September
1529, Oláh Miklós Levelezeése, ed. Ipolyi Arnold = Monumenta Hungariae Historica / Magyar
Törtnélmi Emlékek (Budapest: Akadémia Könykiado Hivatala, 1875), hereafter abbreviated as
OML, I, 15–18.
183. Tracy, Emperor Charles V, 141; Ferdinand to Mary, Vienna, 2 October 1532, and
Villach, 21 October 1532, Gévay VI, docs. I and II, 51–54.
184. Esztergom was taken by troops from Tirol, but this duchy, separated from the others by
the lands of the prince-archbishop of Salzburg, had its own border issues: Johann Loserth,
Innerösterreich und die militärischen Massnahmen gegen die Türken im 16. Jahrhundert
(Graz: Styria, 1934), 29–33. Even after the military reforms of 1577, Tirol’s contribution to the
Hungarian frontier was a mere 30,000 gulden per year: Zuane Michele and Lunardo Donato to
the Venetian Senate, Innsbruck, [August/September] 1577, in Joseph Fiedler, Relationen Vene-
 The Ottoman Advantage 137

tianischer Botschafter über Deutschland und Östererich im 16en Jahhrhundert (Vienna: Hof-
und Staatsdrückerei, 1877), Letter VIII, 355–385, here 363–364.
185. Winkelbauer, Österreichische Geschichte, I, 40.
186. E.g., Council of Lower Austria to Bernard Trumpić, Vienna, 9 August 1526, Monumen-
ta Habsburgica Croatiae, I, Letter 14, 15–16; and to Ferdinand, Vienna, 26 May 1527, MOE I,
177–182.
187. Council of Lower Austria, Vienna, 25 September 1527, note for a letter to an Austrian
commander, Monumenta Habsburgica Croatiae, I, Letter 83, 74–75.
188. Helmut Götz, “Die Geheimen Ratgeber Ferdinands I (1503–1564),” Quellen und Fors-
chungen aus Italienischen Archiven und Bibliotheken 42/43 (1963): 453–494.
189. Winkelbauer, Österreichische Geschichte, I, 13; chapter 1, note 220.
190. Jurešić to Ferdinand, Cetina, 16 July 1526, Monumenta Habsburgica Croatiae, I, Letter
5, 4–5; Ivan Karlović, Vuk Frankopan, and Juraj Frankopan to Ferdinand, 29 August 1526,
Monumenta Habsburgica Croatiae, I, Letter 17, 17–19.
191. Voje, Slovenci pod pritiskom turškega nasilja, 33.
192. Loserth, Innerösterreich und die militärischen Massnahmen, 29–30. For versions of the
proposal, see an undated document from the Ljubljana archives, Monumenta Habsburgica
Croatiae, I, Letter 505, 469–470, and Lower Austrian Council to Ferdinand, Vienna, 26 May
1527, MOE I, 177–182. Both mentioned the five strongholds listed above. The Ljubljana
document adds Brinj (east of Senj) and Kamengrad (in the banate of Jajce), while the Vienna
document adds Starigrad and Krupa.
193. Exercitus trium provinciarum regie majestatis to Katzianer, Zagreb, 1 October 1530,
Monumenta Habsburgica Croatiae, I, Letter 455, 428; Loserth, Innerösterreich und die
militärischen Massnahmen, 30.
194. Loserth, Innerösterreich und die militärischen Massnahmen, 29.
195. Then part of Upper Styria, now part of Slovenia.
196. E.g., Vuk Frankopan to Ferdinand, Križevci, 2 October 1532, Monumenta Habsburgica
Croatiae, II, Letter 141, 129–131.
197. Sigmund von Dietrichstein (commander of Styria’s forces) to Stephan Graswein, 16
October 1527, Monumenta Habsburgica Croatiae, I, Letter 93, 83–84; Ivan Karlović to Katzi-
aner, Lukavec, 5 November 1530, Monumenta Habsburgica Croatiae, I, Letter 477, 445–446;
Karlović to Erasmus Grazmann, Klokoč, 14 November 1530, Monumenta Habsburgica Croa-
tiae, I, Letter 482, 452. For Ptuj’s role in the lucrative Hungarian cattle trade, see Othmar Pickl,
“Die Auswirkungen der Türkenkriege auf den Handel zwischen Ungarn und Italien im 16en
Jahrhundert,” in his Die wirtrschaftlichen Auswirkungen der Türkenkriege (Graz: Selbstverlag
der Lehrkanzel für Wirtschafts- und Sozialgeschichte der Universität Graz [Self-Publication of
the Chair for Economic and Social History, University of Graz], 1971), 71–129.
198. E.g., Lajos Pekry to Ferdinand, Varaždin, 3 April 1530, Monumenta Habsburgica Croa-
tiae, I, Letter 307, 303–306; J. Castellanffy to Katzianer, Bykzad, 3 June 1530, Monumenta
Habsburgica Croatiae, I, Letter 348, 337–338; Caspar Karschan to Katzianer, Grdjevcu, 20
September 1530, Monumenta Habsburgica Croatiae, I, Letter 450, 424–425.
199. Estates of Styria to Katzianer, Graz, 2 August 1530, Monumenta Habsburgica Croatiae,
I, Letter 414, 391–393.
200. Mary to Batthyány, Posonia, 8 December 1526, HSS I, Letter 35, 38; Batthyány to
Ferdinand, Nemethwywar, 21 December 1526, HSS I, Letter 38, 409–442; and HSS I, Letter
55, 85–87, Posonia, 16 February 1527, sums still owing to Batthyány from his service as ban
under Louis II.
138 Chapter 2

201. Contract between Ferdinand and Karlović, involving the castles of Medvedgrad and
Rakovec (near Zagreb), Vienna, 28 November 1526, Monumenta Habsburgica Croatiae, I,
Letter 30, 28–29.
202. Frankopan to Zuan Antonio Dandolo, Koprivnica, 29 September 1526, HSS I, Letter 7,
11–12; Hieronimo of Zadar to Dandolo, Somogy, 22 October 1526, Sanudo Odnošaji, VIII,
246–253.
203. Ferdinand to Frankopan, Hainburg, 9 November 1526, HSS I, Letter 20, 23–25; Klaić,
Povijest Hrvata, 5, 77–80.
204. Batthyány to Ferdinand, Nemethwywar, 21 December 1526, HSS I, Letter 38, 40–42;
Gaspar Pastor to Francesco di Zuane, Zagreb, 8 January 1527, HSS I, Letter 52, 77; Jurešić to
Ferdinand, Tschernembl, 22 January 1527, HSS I, Letter 53, 78–80; and a report from Udine, 6
May 1527, Sanudo Izvodi, 181.
205. Ferdinand to Mary, 4 October 1527, Gévay I, doc. XC, 112.
206. E.g., Ivan Pastor to Ferdinand, Zagreb, 18 June 1529, HSS I, Letter 126, 188–190.
207. A relatio read to the Collegio, 13 May 1528, HSS I, Letter 95, 147–148.
208. Jurešić to Ferdinand, Zagreb, 20 October 1527, HSS I, Letter 90, 137–140.
209. Batthyány to Ferdinand, Sarwar, 22 September 1528, Monumenta Habsburgica Croa-
tiae, I, Letter 110, 171; Ferdinand to Mary, Prague, 31 May 1528, Familienkorrespondenz, II,
Letter 190, 228–230.
210. Reports from Basadona in Udine, 1 September, 10 October, and 24 October 1528,
Sanudo Odnošaji, VIII, 206–212; Klaić, Povijest Hrvata, V, 86–87; cf. Sanudo Izvodi,
130–131, report of 7 August 1529 from Gregorio Pizamano in Cividale: Bishop Simon dresses
some of his men as Ottomans.
211. Above, note 55.
212. Christoph Rauber (bishop of Ljubljana) and Nicholas von Thurn to Petar Keglević,
Zagreb, 18 August 1529, Monumenta Habsburgica Croatiae, I, Letter 231, 211.
213. Pálffy, The Kingdom of Hungary, 43; Ferdinand to Charles, Linz, 9 December 1529,
Familienkorrespondenz, I, Letter 383, 542–543; Lajos Pekry to Ferdinand, Varaždin, 31 Janu-
ary 1530, HSS I, Letter 141, 211–213.
214. Pekry to Ferdinand, Toplice, 21 February 1530, HSS I, Letter 143, 214–216, and 3 April
1530, HSS I, Letter 307, 303–306; Ferdinand to Pekry, [March 1530?], Monumenta Habsburgi-
ca Croatiae, I, Letter 304, 300–301; and Pekry to Ferdinand, 17 April 1530, HSS I, Letter 158,
231–234.
215. Commander in Zagreb to Katzianer, 22 June 1531, Monumenta Habsburgica Croatiae,
II, Letter 68, 52.
216. Petar Erdödy to Katzianer, Monyorokerek, 20 May 1530, HSS I, Letter 165, 238–239;
and a letter of the same date from Petar Erdödy, intercepted and brought to Christoph Rauber,
Monumenta Habsburgica Croatiae, I, Letter 332, 324–325.
217. Simon Erdödy to Tamás Nádasdy, Buda, 9 June 1533, Monumenta Habsburgica Croa-
tiae, II, Letter 157, 145–146.
218. Mary to Ferdinand, Posonia, 26 March 1527, Familienkorrespondenz, II, Letter 36, 46;
petition from Ivan Karlović, s.l., 28 June 1529, HSS I, Letter 126, 188–190; Croatian Sabor to
Ferdinand, s.l., 24 February 1530, MOE I, 302–306. Berislavić was titular despot of Serbia; for
his dealings with Ghazi Husrev Beg, see above, note 58.
219. Susedgrad; István Deshazy to Katzianer, Susedgrad, 15 October 1530, Monumenta
Habsburgica Croatiae, I, Letter 465, 436–437.
220. Deshazy to Katzianer, Susedgrad, 3 January and 14 April 1531, Monumenta Habsburgi-
ca Croatiae, I, Letter 4, 3–4, and Letter 34, 25–26; Deshazy to Ivan Karlović, Stubica, 5 June
1531, HSS I, Letter 210, 284; above, note 59.
 The Ottoman Advantage 139

221. Universitas of nobles (the Sabor) to Ferdinand, s.l., 24 February 1530, MOE I, 302–306;
Jurešić, Katzianer, et al. to Ferdinand, Cetina, 1 January 1527, MOE I, 86–88, and Cetina, 3
January 1527, HSS I, Letter 47, 57–64. Cf. MOE I 177–182 (May 1527): Croatia has petitioned
to be detached from Hungary and joined to Austria.
222. E.g., Batthyány to the Lord Palatine, Rač, 6 July 1528, HSS I, Letter 102, 157–160.
223. Lower Austrian Council to Ferdinand, Vienna, 26 May 1527, MOE I, 177–182: since
cavalry in Hungary and Slavonia could be used in Croatia, they could be counted as meeting
Ferdinand’s commitment.
224. Ferdinand to Petar Keglević, Vienna, 23 October 1533, and Prague, 29 January 1534,
Monumenta Habsburgica Croatiae, II, Letter 182, 165, and Letter 203, 187: for Bihać and
Ripac, Keglević will have disposal of the revenues of the vacant abbey of Topuska.
225. Above, note 192.
226. The Sabor to Ferdinand, Cetina, 27 April 1527, MOE I, 169–175; Ferdinand to the
Sabor, Vienna, [May 1527], MOE I, 182–184; Ferdinand to the camera of Hungary, Greiffen-
berg, 3 January 1529, Monumenta Habsburgica Croatiae, I, Letter 143, 133 (Ferdinand is
taking control of Bihać); Ferdinand to Petar Keglević and to Erasmus Thurm, Vienna, 14 and
29 October 1533, Monumenta Habsburgica Croatiae, II, Letter 182, 165, and Letter 193, 178;
and Karl Kaser, Freier Bauer und Soldat: Die Militarisierung der agrarischen Gesellschaft in
der Kroatisch-Slawonischen Militärgrenze (1535–1881) (Habilitationsschrift: University of
Graz, 1986), 33.
227. Notes for a letter from Ferdinand to Juraj and Vuk Frankopan and Stjepan Blagay,
before 10 March 1530, Monumenta Habsburgica Croatiae, I, Letter 283, 280–282; notes on
talks with Vuk Frankopan, March 1530, Monumenta Habsburgica Croatiae, I, Letter 306,
302–303; Hofrat to Ferdinand, Vienna, 10 March 1530, Monumenta Habsburgica Croatiae, I,
Letter 278, 273–274.
228. Krsto Frankopan to Franjo Joševic, bishop of Senj, Križevci, 29 May 1527, HSS I, Letter
74, 115–118.
229. Ferdinand to the Frankopans, Speyer, 23 April 1529, Monumenta Habsburgica Croa-
tiae, I, Letter 165, 154.
230. Ivan Pastor to Ferdinand, Rijeka, 25 February 1529, Monumenta Habsburgica Croatiae,
I, Letter 155, 140–141 (since getting through by land was impossible, he traveled by sea from
Rijeka to Dubrovnik).
231. Ferdinand to Zrinski, Kaufbeuren, 26 October 1531, Monumenta Habsburgica Croatiae,
II, Letter 106, 89.
232. Following Ottoman gains in the districts of Lika and Krbava: above, note 62.
233. A servant of Kružić to Ferdinand [December 1527], Monumenta Habsburgica Croatiae,
I, Letter 106, 93–94; petition from Kružić in 1528, Monumenta Habsburgica Croatiae, I, Letter
139, 125–129, here 128; Senj to Bishop Toma Jegarsko, 1528, Monumenta Habsburgica Croa-
tiae, I, Letter 140, 129–130; Kružić to Ferdinand, Rab, 27 April 1529, Monumenta Habsburgi-
ca Croatiae, I, Letter 166, 155–156.
234. Bracewell, The Uskoks of Senj, 47–48.
235. Above, note 111; instructions for commissioners sent to Kružić, Vienna, November
1530, Monumenta Habsburgica Croatiae, I, Letter 484, 453–454.
236. Above, notes 67, 81; Andreas von Lamberg to Ferdinand, Ljubljana, 28 September
1532, Monumenta Habsburgica Croatiae, II, Letter 140, 128–129.
237. Letter patent of Kružić, 26 September 1532, Monumenta Habsburgica Croatiae, II,
Letter 139, 127–128; Erasmus Sauer to Ferdinand, [Senj?], 27 October–2 November 1533,
Monumenta Habsburgica Croatiae, II, Letter 190, 175–176.
140 Chapter 2

238. The Sabor to Ferdinand, Cetina, 27 April 1527, MOE I, 169–175, referring to oratores
sent by the sultan in 1526; the Sabor to Katzianer, Steničnjak, 8 May 1530, HSS, I, Letter 162,
235–236, 236–237; Karlović to Kristof Purgstall, Lukavec, 2 August 1530, HSS I, Letter 185,
257–258; Thurzo to Ferdinand, Posonia, 20 July 1531, Monumenta Habsburgica Croatiae, II,
Letter 82, 65–66; and Karlović to Ferdinand, Lukavec, 2 August 1531, Monumenta Habsburgi-
ca Croatiae, II, Letter 84, 69.
239. Ivan Kobasić to Katzianer, Brekovic, 8 June 1530, Monumenta Habsburgica Croatiae,
I, Letter 359, 346–347, reporting an approach by Murat Beg Tardić.
240. Vuk Frankopan to Ferdinand, s.l., 10 March 1530, Monumenta Habsburgica Croatiae, I,
Letter 278, 273–274; cf. the same to the same, Križevci, 2 October 1532, Monumenta Habsbur-
gica Croatiae, II, Letter 141, 129–131.
241. Karlović to Katzianer, Novigrad, 22 October 1530, Monumenta Habsburgica Croatiae,
I, Letter 470, 440.
242. Charles to Ferdinand, Valladolid, 29 April 1527, Familienkorrespondenz, II, Letter 48,
61–62; Palencia, 8 September 1527, Familienkorrespondenz, II, Letter 104, 120–121; Bologna,
11 January 1530, Familienkorrespondenz, III, Letter 388, 551–553; and Brussels, 14 March
1531, Familienkorrespondenz, IV, Letter 555, 325.
243. Ferdinand to Batthyány, Prague, 27 April 1531, HSS I, Letter 209, 283; Ferdinand to
Charles, Prague, 23 June 1531, Familienkorrespondenz, IV, Letter 500, 165–166; and Ferdi-
nand to Thurzo, Innsbruck, 25 November 1531, Monumenta Habsburgica Croatiae, II, Letter
108, 90–92.
244. For the missions of Ivan Habardanecz and Sigmund Weixelberger (1528–1529), Nikola
Jurešić (1529), and Jurešić and Joseph von Lamberg (1530–1531), see Petritsch, “Die Ungarn-
politik Ferdinands I,” 21–44.
245. Above, note 68.
246. Szigmunt I. Ferdinand to his negotiators in Posonia, Linz, 7 March 1533, Gévay IV, doc.
XXXII, 88–90; for Smyl Cuna’s message, see the notes to Charles’s instructions to Scepper,
Mantua, 13 November 1532, Familienkorrespondenz, IV, Letter 672a, 645–649.
247. He was an erstwhile partisan of Krsto Frankopan who now enjoyed the patronage of
Bernhard von Cles, head of Ferdinand’s Hofrat: Hieronimo of Zadar to Zuane Antonio Dando-
lo, Somogy, 22 October 1526, Sanudo Odnošaji, VIII, 246–253; and to Cles, Constantinople,
21 January 1533, Gévay VI, doc. XII, 64.
248. Scepper to Miklós Oláh, Vienna, 2 April 1533, OML I, 330–346, here 332; Ferdinand’s
instructions for Hieronimo of Zadar, November 1532, Gévay VI, doc. IV, 55.
249. Notes to Charles’s instructions to Scepper, cited in note 246; Scepper to Charles, Inns-
bruck, 3 December 1532 and 17 January 1533, Lanz, II, Letters 320, 35–37, and 330, 47–48.
250. Hieronimo of Zadar to Ferdinand, Istanbul, 21 January 1533, Gévay VI, doc. XI, 63. The
Ottoman dignitary is identified as Mehmed Celeby in Scepper’s letter of 2 April 1533 (note
248), 229.
251. Oratores to Ferdinand, Posonia, 6 March 1533, Gévay VI, doc. XXXI, 85–88; Thurzo to
Ferdinand, Posonia, 8 March 1533, Gévay VI, doc. XXXIV, 91–92.
252. Instructions for Vespasiano of Zadar, Vienna, 7 April 1533, Gévay VI, doc. XLIX,
114–119, here 116. Cf. Müller, “Der umworbene Erbfeind,” 266.
253. Hieronimo of Zadar and Scepper to Ferdinand, Vienna, 27 September 1533, Gévay VI,
3–48, here 5–6; Vespasiano of Zadar to Ferdinand, Prague, 5 March 1534, Gévay VII, doc.
XXVIII, 106–110.
254. Mary to Ferdinand, Posonia, 6 January 1527, Familienkorrespondenz, II, Letter 6, 9–11.
255. Zadar and Scepper to Ferdinand, Vienna, 27 September 1533, Gévay VI, 3–48, here
41–42, 7–8, 9–10.
 The Ottoman Advantage 141

256. Petritsch, “Die Ungarnpolitik Ferdinands I,” 61–66; Scepper to Miklós Oláh, Constan-
tinople, 8 July 1533, OML I, 385.
257. Zadar and Scepper to Ferdinand, Vienna, 27 September 1533, Gévay VI, 3–48, here
11–15.
258. Petritsch, “Die Ungarnpolitik Ferdinands I,” 67.
259. Vespasiano of Zadar to Ferdinand, Gabela [mouth of the Neretva], 25 October 1533,
Gévay VII, doc. IV, 17–18; Ferdinand to Petar Keglević, Vienna, 25 October 1533, Monumen-
ta Habsburgica Croatiae, II, Letter 188, 173–174.
260. Petritsch, “Die Ungarnpolitik Ferdinands I,” 58–75; Scepper to Ferdinand, Prague, 2
September 1534, Gévay VII, 27–65, here 51.
261. Hieronimo of Zadar to Ferdinand, Rijeka, 27 February 1534, Gévay VII, doc. XXVI,
102–104; memorandum by Vespasiano of Zadar, [April or May 1534], Gévay VII, doc.
XXXV, 135–138.
262. Yunus Beg, the chief court dragoman: Petritisch, “Die Ungarnpolitik Feredinands I,”
76–85.
263. Bishop of Modruš to Katzianer, Rijeka, 18 October 1530, Monumenta Habsburgica
Croatiae, I, Letter 467, 438; Maschke, Das Kreuz und der Halbmond, 261.
264. Scepper to Miklós Oláh, Vienna, Linz, 8 February 1533, OML I, 279–290, here
285–286; Szalahazy to Ferdinand, 23 January 1529, Gévay II, doc. XXIII, 58; cf. István
Báthory, Pal Varday, and Szalahazy to Ferdinand, Buda, 28 January 1529, Gévay II, doc.
XXIV, 59–60.
265. Cf. the many letters in HSS and Monumenta Habsburgica Croatiae from Nikola Jurešić
and Hans Ungnad.
266. Above, note 220.
267. Karlović to Katzianer, Steničnjak, 8 May 1530, HSS I, Letter 163, 236–237; both bans
and others to Katzianer, Zagreb, 10 July 1530, HSS I, Letter 183, 256; Kaspar von Karschan
and Lajos Pekry to Katzianer, Križevci, HSS I, Letter 187, 260; Kriegsrat to Katzianer, Vienna,
3 January 1531, Monumenta Habsburgica Croatiae, II, Letter 2, 2–3.
268. Above, note 86; Hans Püchler to Katzianer, Mihovljan, 6 July 1536, Monumenta Habs-
burgica Croatiae, II, Letter 287, 280–281; Lower Austrian Council to Pal Bakith, Vienna, 31
July 1536, Monumenta Habsburgica Croatiae, II, Letter 293, 286–287.
269. Above, note 87.
270. Vespasiano of Zadar to Ferdinand, Rijeka, 8 August 1536, Gévay VIII, doc. XCVII,
125–126; Ferdinand to Thurzo, Innsbruck, 5 August 1536, Gévay VIII, doc. XCI, 123–125.
271. Ptuj to Michael Meixner, 4 August 1536, Monumenta Habsburgica Croatiae, II, Letter
297, 289–290; Thurzo to Ferdinand, Galgocz, [August 1536], Monumenta Habsburgica Croa-
tiae, II, Letter 298, 290–292; Jurešić to the council, Köszeg, 6 August 1536, Monumenta
Habsburgica Croatiae, II, Letter 299, 292.
272. To Ferdinand, Zagreb, 13 August 1536, MOE I, 632–637; he does not say why he
brought no artillery.
273. Above, notes 88–90; Johann von Weeze to Charles, Oradea, 20 August 1536, Lanz,
Letter 441, II, 247; Monumenta Habsburgica Croatiae, II, Letter 304, 298–299 (reports on
places lost between 15 September and 6 November 1536).
274. Ferdinand to the nobles of Slavonia, Prague, 11 March 1537, HSS II, Letter 19, 26–27;
Maschke, Das Kreuz und der Halbmond, 262.
275. Chapter 1, note 35.
276. Above, note 127. Klaić, Povijest Hrvata, V, 120.
277. For Katzianer’s undated missive, see Johann Weichard von Valvasor, Die Ehre des
Herzogthums Krain (4 vols., Rudolfswerth: J. Krajec, 1877–1879), hereafter abbreviated as
142 Chapter 2

Valvasor, III, 31–41; Klaić, Povijest Hrvata, 121. The Bohemian commander was Count Albert
Schlick.
278. HSS II, Letter 95, 137–138; Thurzo to Ferdinand, Sempthe, 24 January 1538, HSS II,
Letter 99, 151–156; Ferdinand to Jurešić, Vienna, 27 October 1537, MOE II, 208–219, here
212.
279. Jurešić and Albertus ___ to Ferdinand, Dombrow [Dobrovac?], 7 November 1537, MOE
II, 220–222; Bans Simon Erdödy and Petar Keglević to Ferdinand, Ustilonj, 20 and 28 Febru-
ary, HSS II, Letters 110, 181–182, and 113, 183–185; Balint Terek to Nádasdy, Papa, 6
November 1539, Monumenta Habsburgica Croatiae, II, Letter 456, 450–451.
280. Resolutions of the November 1537 congregatio of nobles, MOE II, 226–235.
281. Ferdinand to the estates of Styria, Graz, 12–23 November 1537, HS II, Letter 56, 82–86;
cf. Ferdinand’s instructions for Jurešić and Batthyány, Krems, 18 December 1537, MOE II,
243–253.
282. Ferdinand to Bihać and Ripac, Prague, 30 December 1537, Monumenta Habsburgica
Croatiae, II, Letter 363, 355–356.
283. Keglević and Nádasdy to Ferdinand, Cristalocz, 30 January 1538, HSS II, Letter 100,
156–163.
284. Keglević and Nádasdy to Ferdinand, Ustilonj, 24 February 1538, HSS II, Letter 106,
171–172; Jurešić to Keglević and Nádasdy, Celje, 7 March 1538, Monumenta Habsburgica
Croatiae, II, Letter 118, 194–195, and Ptuj, 9 May 1538, Monumenta Habsburgica Croatiae,
II, Letter 381, 378.
285. Ferdinand to Keglević and Nádasdy, Prague, 10 May 1538, HSS II, 217–218; Jurešić to
Ferdinand, Ljubljana, 21 July 1538, Monumenta Habsburgica Croatiae, II, Letter 396,
391–394; Keglević to Ferdinand, Topusko, 30 September 1538, Monumenta Habsburgica
Croatiae, II, Letter 403, 400–402, and Novigrad, 26 October 1538, HSS II, Letter 151,
242–243; Stjepan Frankopan to Ferdinand, Bakar, 30 May 1539, Monumenta Habsburgica
Croatiae, II, Letter 442, 438–439.
286. Ferdinand to his Austrian and Croatian lands, Vienna, 12 January 1540, HSS II, Letter
183, 285–286; Hieronim Łaski to Anna, Zagreb, Gévay X, doc. XLIX, 49–50; war councilors
to Keglević, Ptuj, 23 June 1540, Monumenta Habsburgica Croatiae, II, Letter 499, 497. For
Łaski’s mission, see below, note 306.
287. Hieronimo of Zadar to Katzianer and to the Lower Austrian council, 21 January 1533,
Gévay VI, docs. XIII, XIV, 65–67; Scepper to Mary, Rijeka, 29 April 1533, Gévay VI, doc.
LVII, 126–127; Kružić to Ferdinand, Klis, before 19 June 1533, Monumenta Habsburgica
Croatiae, II, Letter 159, 147–149.
288. Kružić to Pope Paul III, Lepoglava, 27 January 1535, Monumenta Habsburgica Croa-
tiae, II, Letter 231, 200–201.
289. Hieronimo of Zadar to Ferdinand, Rijeka, 27 February 1534, Gévay VI, doc. XXVI,
102–104; cf. Scepper to Ferdinand, Prague, 2 August 1534, 27–65, here 60–61, recounting a
conversation with Aias Paşa.
290. Kaser, Freier Bauer und Soldat, 32; Pickl, “Die Auswirkungen der Türkenkriege auf
den Handel zwischen Ungarn und Italien im 16en Jahrhundert”; Bracewell, The Uskoks of Senj,
chapter 4, “The Raiding Economy.”
291. Note for a letter to Kružić, Vienna, before 24 October 1535, Monumenta Habsburgica
Croatiae, II, Letter 258, 251–252; Ferdinand to Kružić, 30 November 1535, Monumenta Habs-
burgica Croatiae, II, Letter 164, 258–259.
292. Kružić to Ferdinand, Klis, 27 January 1536, Monumenta Habsburgica Croatiae, II,
Letter 270, 264–265; Hieronymus Seraphinus to Ferdinand, Rijeka, 27 May 1536, Monumenta
Habsburgica Croatiae, II, Letter 280, 273–275.
 The Ottoman Advantage 143

293. Reports from the rector of Split, 9 and 11 June 1536, Monumenta Habsburgica Croa-
tiae, II, Letters 283, 284, 277–288; Kružić to Ferdinand, Lepoglava, 6 September 1536, Monu-
menta Habsburgica Croatiae, II, Letter 3092, 295–297.
294. Above, notes 84 and 85; Ferdinand to Ghazi Husrev Beg, Prague, 28 May 1537, Gévay
IX, doc. VIII, 38.
295. Ivan Lenković to Ferdinand, Ljubljana, 18 October 1538, Monumenta Habsburgica
Croatiae, II, Letter 407, 406–407.
296. Bracewell, The Uskoks of Senj, 51–57, 119–125.
297. Erasmus von Thurn to Ferdinand, Senj, 6 August 1538, Monumenta Habsburgica Croa-
tiae, II, Letter 397, 394–395; Lenković to Ferdinand, Ljubljana, 18 October 1538, Monumenta
Habsburgica Croatiae, II, Letter 407, 406–407; Anna to Jurešić, Vienna, 19 April 1540, Monu-
menta Habsburgica Croatiae, II, Letter 485, 477–478; Senj to Anna, 26 August 1540, Monu-
menta Habsburgica Croatiae, III, Letter 8, 5–6. Cf. Ferdinand to J. Seryl, Prague, 13 January
1541, Monumenta Habsburgica Croatiae, III, Letter 54, 55–57, ideas on how to find 7,000
gulden for arrears in Senj.
298. Above, note 147; Bracewell, The Uskoks of Senj, 57.
299. Antonio Mazza’s report, 8 June 1542, CRV II, doc. XXVI, 159–167.
300. Scepper to Ferdinand, Prague, 2 August 1534, Gévay VII, 27–65, here 60–61; Barzizza
to Ferdinand, Innsbruck, 23–24 August 1536, Gévay VIII, doc. XCIX, 128–132. On Nikola III
(d. 1534) as an Ottoman tributary, see Karlović to Katzianer, Vywar, 22 October 1530, Monu-
menta Habsburgica Croatiae, II, Letter 470, 440; Szalahazy to Ferdinand, Kassa, 16 September
1531, HSS II, Letter 217, 291–292.
301. Above, notes 91–98.
302. Ferdinand to Jelena Karlovića, Vienna, 13 January 1535, ZML, Letter 1, 1–3; Sabor to
Ferdinand, Topusko, 9 September 1535, HSS II, Letter 250, 337–342; Štefanec, Heretik njego-
va Veličanstva, 15, 22–23.
303. A. von Hollneckh to Katzianer, Graz, 21 September 1530, Monumenta Habsburgica
Croatiae, I, Letter 452, 426–427; Hans Pühler to Ferdinand, Mihovljan, 5 June 1532, Monu-
menta Habsburgica Croatiae, II, Letter 128, 112–113.
304. Ferdinand to Karlović, Vienna, 28 November 1526, Monumenta Habsburgica Croatiae,
I, Letter 30, 28–29.
305. Zrinski brothers to Ferdinand, s.l., mid-February 1540, Monumenta Habsburgica Croa-
tiae, II, Letter 467, 459–460; Anna to the estates of Carniola, Vienna, 12 May 1540, Monumen-
ta Habsburgica Croatiae, II, Letter 494, 492–493. For the truce, see HSS II, Letters 187–189.
306. Archivios de Simancas, “Estado,” 638, 6, “La relacion que hize Laschi del Turco,” here
paragraph 13.
307. Anna to Łaski, Vienna, 1 April 1540, Gévay X, doc. XLII, 46–47; Thurzo to Ferdinand,
Schintau, 10 April 1540, Gévay X, doc. XLVI, 53–53.
308. Nikola Zrinski to Anna, Ptuj, 14 March 1540, Monumenta Habsburgica Croatiae, II,
Letter 473, 464–466.
309. Ivan Zrinski to Ungnad, Gvozdansko, 4 May 1540, Monumenta Habsburgica Croatiae,
II, Letter 489, 483–484, and 15 July 1540, Prilozi Styria, 164; Anna to Nádasdy, Vienna, 8 May
1540, Monumenta Habsburgica Croatiae, II, Letter 492, 487.
310. Ferdinand to the Zrinski brothers, Wiener Neustadt, 20 October 1540, Monumenta
Habsburgica Croatiae, III, Letter 25, 23–24; Štefanec, Heretik njegova Veličanstva, 37.
311. Gábor Ágoston, Guns for the Sultan: Military Power and the Weapons Industry in the
Ottoman Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 192–195. Ottoman fortified
positions defended successfully included Prevesa in Greece, Obrovac in Dalmatia, and Osijek
in Slavonia.
 Chapter Three

Diplomacy and Kleinkrieg, 1542–1556

During Rüstem Paşa’s years as grand vezir (1544–1553, 1555–1561), Euro-

pean and Ottoman observers were fascinated by political infighting at the
Porte. 1 As the son-in-law of Hürrem Sultan (d. 1558), the concubine whom
Suleyman had made his wife, this grand vezir had a stake in the question of
succession. The army favored Prince Mustafa, the son of another concubine,
but Hürrem’s faction hoped to see one of her sons enthroned. When Suley-
man had Mustafa strangled in 1553, on allegations that he was plotting a
revolt, the anger of the Janissaries was quieted only by Rüstem Paşa’s dis-
missal. He was, however, allowed to live quietly in his palace and was
reappointed in 1555. 2 Yet if Habsburg ambassadors saw Ottoman policy as
guided by Rüstem’s ambition, 3 Ottoman historians see a government pursu-
ing the same strategic aims as before. To the west, there were no more long
marches to Vienna, 4 but every Habsburg challenge to the Ottoman order in
Hungary provoked a forceful response.
In 1541, Ferdinand, hoping to make good his claim as the lawful heir to
János Szapolyai (d. 1540), 5 sent an army against Buda. Szapolyai’s widow,
Isabella Jagiello, held out until the sultan’s forces came and drove off Ferdi-
nand’s army. But instead of confirming Isabella in her position, as promised,
the Ottomans detained her supporters and installed a paşa in Buda. 6 The
paşas of Buda would subsequently rule like kings, with an entourage of some
five thousand garrison soldiers, plus officials and craftsmen. 7 Fifteen san-
caks reported to the paşa, including Požega in Slavonia, and twelve new
Ottoman provinces were established between 1541 and 1556. 8 The sancak-
beg of Bosnia still reported directly to the Porte, but Buda’s governor-general

145
146 Chapter 3

sometimes presumed to give orders to his junior colleague in Sarajevo. 9 In

keeping with the paşa’s status, Habsburg ambassadors now had to present
their credentials in Buda before proceeding to the Porte. 10
Notwithstanding this intervention in Hungary, Suleyman remained preoc-
cupied with Shi’ite Iran. 11 Hence Rüstem Paşa opened peace talks with
Habsburg envoys in 1545, resulting in the 1547 Treaty of Edirne, which was
to last for five years: for the right to hold his remaining lands in Hungary and
Croatia, Ferdinand agreed to pay 30,000 Hungarian florins a year. 12 Suley-
man then embarked on a failed campaign to install on the Persian throne a
dissident prince who had fled to the Porte (1548–1549). During the sultan’s
absence in the east, Ferdinand again arranged a transfer of power in Transyl-
vania, this time through negotiations with Isabella’s chief adviser and with
the estates of Transylvania. The response came in 1552, when Ottoman
forces and made Timosoara (Temesvár) the capital of a new paşaluk. 13 In the
East, Suleyman led a successful expedition to the foothills of the Caucasus
(1553–1554), followed by a 1555 treaty: Iran’s Shah Tamasp accepted Otto-
man rule of Iraq, Azerbaijan, and Kurdistan. 14
Charles V wanted peace in Hungary, too, and for analogous reasons:
Latin Christendom was torn by religious conflict. In Charles’s Low Coun-
tries provinces, Lutheranism was driven underground by ruthless enforce-
ment of laws that made heresy a capital crime. But Ferdinand’s territories
were not so closely governed. In the eastern Habsburg lands, too, specific
acts of dissent were banned under pain of death by a 1527 edict, but relative-
ly few were in fact burned at the stake. 15 The Lutheran movement expanded
rapidly in Austria and among German-speaking burghers in Bohemia and
Hungary. When priests proclaimed the 1527 edict from their pulpits, many
parishioners absented themselves while the edict was read. Ferdinand’s ef-
forts at church reform fared no better, because numbers dwindled among a
demoralized Catholic clergy. Beyond the towns, the new doctrines gained
adherents among lesser nobles and in villages where they used their patron-
age rights to appoint Lutheran pastors. Not even the magnates saw eye to eye
with their sovereign. Hans Ungnad, president of the Inner Austrian war coun-
cil, was a devout Lutheran. Count Nikola IV Zrinski (d. 1566) may have been
a Protestant; Count Juraj, his son and heir, certainly was. 16
Unlike Ferdinand, Charles V did not have to deal every day with powerful
subjects who were also Protestants. For him, heresy anywhere in his heredi-
tary lands was a great scandal; heresy in the Holy Roman Empire was worse,
for it permitted France’s King Francis I to fish for allies among German
 Diplomacy and Kleinkrieg, 1542–1556 147

Protestant princes. Charles’s remoteness from the scene allowed him to think
German Lutherans could be returned to the fold one way or another. Some of
his advisers favored a “hard hand” against “those gone astray,” 17 but a costly
war was not the obvious first choice. Hence the emperor in 1540 threw his
prestige behind theological colloquies in which carefully selected Catholic
and Lutheran scholars were tasked to work out their differences. In 1541,
when the conferees announced agreement on the key issue, the doctrine of
justification, Regensburg’s church bells rang out in celebration. Dismay soon
followed, however, because other questions, including the Eucharist, proved
intractable. 18 As Charles left Regensburg, 19 headed for his Mediterranean
armada, Francis I was preparing to launch a new war. 20
Meanwhile, the Ottoman conquest of Buda had shifted the balance of
power in Hungary. With two thousand Janissaries, six thousand cavalry, and
a fleet of gunboats, 21 Hungary’s capital was now a potential springboard for
further advances. 22 Accordingly, the imperial diet, meeting in Speyer, voted
for the first time to send an army to Hungary, provided that the Habsburg
lands increased their contributions. In Prague, in January 1542, a first-ever
assembly of all Ferdinand’s territories responded with new taxes expected to
yield over a million Rhine gulden. Yet the splendid fifty-thousand-man army
that marched against Pest abandoned its siege for want of supplies (October
1542). 23 The next spring Suleyman led an army into Hungary as far as
Valpovo on the Drava; his commanders then marched north to capture the
important towns of Pécs, Székesfehérvár, and Esztergom, each of which
became the capital of a new sancak. 24 Both the imperial diet and the Habs-
burg lands now voted still more subsidies, but Ferdinand’s planned army of
forty thousand did not materialize, owing to resistance from the estates of
Bohemia and Moravia, which were to supply half the troops. 25 To cap every-
thing off, Ferdinand’s failures imperiled his political base in Hungary. In
November 1543, his envoys mollified the Diet of Hungary only by promising
yet another campaign, to be led by none other than His Imperial Majesty,
Charles V. 26
In fact, Charles had no intention of leading an army to distant Hungary.
He had other plans. During his latest war with France (1542–1544), his
representatives assured German princes of the emperor’s continuing interest
in a peaceful end to the religious divisions. Yet his 1544 treaty with France
included a secret clause by which Francis I promised not to interfere in
Germany’s affairs. Charles was already contemplating a war against the Prot-
estant Schmalkaldic League, and this would require peace on the Ottoman
148 Chapter 3

front. Thus, instead of sending an army to Hungary, Charles sent a senior

diplomat who, acting on Ferdinand’s behalf, eventually concluded the Peace
of Edirne in 1547. Meanwhile, other Habsburg diplomats quietly won allies
among the imperial princes, including Duke Moritz of Saxony, a Lutheran.
By 1546, Protestant leaders knew that war was coming, but they missed a
chance to strike a decisive blow before the emperor had gathered his forces.
Over the next year, Charles defeated the league’s two leading princes. In
1548, the Diet of Augsburg proclaimed a religious peace known as the Inter-
im 27: pastors could preach Luther’s doctrines but had to restore Catholic
ceremonies. 28 Some Lutherans fiercely resisted the Interim, but the real rea-
son for its failure was that Charles broke his promises to now-Elector Moritz
of Saxony, a Lutheran ally who had been crucial to his victory. 29 With
remnants of the Schmalkaldic alliance, Moritz formed an army, paid by
French gold; Charles had to flee across the Alps into Carinthia (March 1552).
If Charles needed peace with the Turks to fight the Protestants, Ferdinand
needed religious peace in Germany if he were ever to launch another offen-
sive in the East. This was why he now seized the initiative from his brother.
In private talks at Passau (April 1552), Ferdinand and Elector Moritz agreed
that Lutheran and Catholic princes should henceforth have the same rights
under imperial law: each state would determine the religion of its territory.
Moritz’s part of the bargain was to send troops in support of Ferdinand’s
flagging venture in Transylvania. 30 In fact, he did not, but his mere promise
to do so betokened a sea change in imperial politics. Charles resisted the idea
of letting heretic princes do as they pleased, but the collapse of the great
army he had led against Metz in late 1552 left him broken in spirit. The
Peace of Augsburg, proclaimed in 1555, consolidated the agreement by Fer-
dinand and Moritz. Charles abdicated in 1556, leaving to his brother an
empire in which Catholics and Lutherans were at peace. 31
Until 1556, Ferdinand’s position was comparable to that of his new ad-
versary, the paşa of Buda. The paşa lacked the constitutional dignity of a
European prince, since even the highest Ottoman officials were slaves to the
sultan. Yet both the paşa of Buda and the King of the Romans answered to
superiors who needed only a semblance of peace in Hungary. Border infrac-
tions, even by thousands of troops, were not of sufficient gravity to distract
Suleyman from his wars in Persia, nor Charles from his wars in France and
Germany. Hence Ferdinand, like the paşas of Buda, had to deal with border
captains whose troops were enriched by booty and with angry subjects who
demanded retaliation. Thus the counterpart of diplomacy at the imperial level
 Diplomacy and Kleinkrieg, 1542–1556 149

was Kleinkrieg in Croatia and Hungary. This chapter will deal with both, but
more with the latter.

OTTOMAN BOSNIA

Ottoman Strategic Aims, as Seen from Buda

For two decades, the Ottomans trundled supplies into Hungary across bridges
over the Danube and its tributaries. In 1542, Rüstem Paşa boasted that bridge
engineers were at work at three sites, at Petrovaradin (Pétervárad) on the
Danube and, on the Drava, at Osijek and near Varaždin. 32 But once Buda
was conquered, the Ottomans had a forward position that could be supplied
by water, along the Danube corridor from Belgrade. 33 In 1556, for example,
in reaction to troubling news from Hungary, the sultan’s divan had gunpow-
der and “thirty thousand cannon balls” loaded onto five galleys for shipment
across the Black Sea and up the Danube to Buda. 34 From Buda, Vienna was
the obvious target, but one could also strike into Hungary’s mining region, or
south and west toward Habsburg Slavonia. No government took the trouble
of acquiring an advantage like this without exploiting it. Yet how did Buda’s
paşas 35 comport themselves when a treaty with the Habsburgs was in force?
Since Ottoman provinces often preserved both the borders and the prerog-
atives of their historic predecessors, Buda’s paşas saw themselves as step-
ping into the shoes of Hungary’s monarchs. Thus Kasim Beg (1548–1551)
had established markets in fortress-towns, “just as they existed in the time of
the kings.” ‘Ali Paşa Semiz (1551–1553, 1556–1557), 36 who called Ferdi-
nand his “son,” presented himself as a kind of vice-sultan: “Do not think of
me like the other ordinary beglerbegs who have come, for I am a servant of
the blessed Padishah . . . . My word holds true, just like his.” 37 Behavior of
this kind led Vienna to regard the paşas as independent personalities, some
amenable to peace, others more hostile. Mehmed Beg, who served in Buda
from 1543 to 1548, provoked complaints from Vienna by extorting taxes
from Habsburg peasants. Rüstem Paşa, presenting himself as having the
power to redress legitimate grievances, told Ferdinand’s ambassador that
Mehmed Beg had been removed, for the “evil deeds” by which he hoped to
provoke a rupture of the peace. 38 Why Mehmed Beg was in fact replaced is
unclear. 39 But published letters of Buda’s governor-generals 40 indicate that
any personal predilections they had were held in check by the Porte. When
some paşas styled themselves “ever victorious,” the usage was forbidden—
150 Chapter 3

this was a title reserved for the sultan. 41 Toygun Paşa (1553–1556) struck a
markedly agreeable tone in his first letter to Vienna. If a recent Habsburg
infraction had been provoked from the Ottoman side, Ferdinand was to “let
your friend know,” for when the soldiers gave their account, “we did not
believe them.” Not by chance, this letter was written while Suleyman was far
to the east, with an army that was angry over the death of Prince Mustafa. 42
Conversely, an opportune moment or a Habsburg provocation, as reported
from Buda, could bring orders for a targeted campaign in Hungary, even
when the sultan and his main army were far away on the Persian front. In
1554 the Ottomans attacked and occupied Fülek, a fortress north of Buda that
controlled roads leading north to the mining region and east to Transylvania.
Toygun’s initial explanation to Vienna was that one of his vojvods was
feuding with Fülek’s noble proprietor. As the paşa’s own involvement be-
came clear, he shifted his argument, suggesting that Ferdinand should be
glad to be rid of a notorious troublemaker like the Lord of Fülek. 43 In 1555,
Toygun obtained permission for an assault on the fortress of Szigetvár in
southwestern Hungary, from which hajduks (freebooters) raided into Otto-
man territory. The sequel to this story is recounted below. Here, Toygun
Paşa’s initiatives in 1554 and 1555 may suffice to indicate that when Buda’s
paşas launched an offensive, they did so with prior approval.

Ulama Beg in Bosnia

For the 1540s and 1550s, the internal affairs of Bosnia are occluded in
Habsburg and Venetian documents. Tranquillus Andronicus 44 was the last of
Ferdinand’s ambassadors to travel to the Porte via Sarajevo, in 1542. Du-
brovnik’s traders still did business there, notwithstanding a 1543 dispute that
caused Ragusan merchants in the sancak of Bosnia to be put in chains. 45 But
Dubrovnik’s usefulness to Ferdinand as a source of information was blocked
by a lingering private war that broke out when a leading patrician was found
to have worked as a Habsburg spy without telling his government. 46 As for
Dalmatia, Venetian rectors dealt mainly with the sancak of Klis, which now
occupied the land between Bosnia and Dalmatia. 47 It is clear that Bosnia
remained the premier power of the western Balkans; the sancaks of Bosnia
and Požega had a combined military force estimated by the Hungarian Diet
at eight thousand or nine thousand men. Habsburg sources are better in-
formed about military campaigns originating from Bosnia, especially those
led by Ulama Beg, who was sancakbeg of Bosnia (1541–1546) and then of
Požega (1550–1554).
 Diplomacy and Kleinkrieg, 1542–1556 151

Ulama Beg was born in Safavid territory and fought for the shah before
switching to the Ottoman side around 1531. Andronicus, who knew the Otto-
man court well, described him as a protégé of Rüstem Paşa. 48 As governor of
Bosnia, he joined Ottoman forces in Hungary every year between 1541 and
1545. In between campaigns in Hungary, Ulama and his colleagues, the
sancakbegs of Herzegovina and Klis, resumed the Ottoman advance in Sla-
vonia fortress by fortress. Three castles west of Požega were taken in the
spring of 1543. North and east of Požega, the stronghold of Valpovo held out
for two months before surrendering in July 1543. Herzegovina’s Murad Beg
Tardić added yet another fortress to his conquests after learning that half its
garrison was away on training exercises. The dismal results of this year’s
fighting so demoralized Ungnad that he insisted on resigning as captain-
general in Hungary-Croatia. 49
In January 1544, Carniola’s commander reported to the estates that Ula-
ma Beg had orders from the sultan to conquer all of Slavonia, “up to the
German [Austrian] border.” Velika fell in July 1544, reportedly betrayed by
peasants who had fled into the city for shelter. 50 In August, Ferdinand’s new
captain-general for Hungary and Croatia, Leonhard von Fels, sent a man to
remind Ulama Beg of the truce Vels had concluded with Mehmed Beg, the
paşa of Buda. Keeping the messenger in chains for three weeks while he
collected munitions, Ulama Beg finally gave a verbal response: “I know of
no peace, except between the Danube and the Drava [i.e., in Hungary].
Whether there will be a general peace or not, we shall see. But for now the
ever-victorious sultan has entrusted me with capture of this land [i.e., Slavo-
nia].” 51 Mehmed Beg himself evidently did not think the truce with Vels
applied to Slavonia, for he brought troops to join in Ulama Beg’s march
against Velika. 52
In January 1545 Rüstem Paşa agreed to a general truce. 53 Negotiations
began in earnest in August with the arrival of Geraard Veltwijck, represent-
ing Charles V, and Nicholas Sick, representing Ferdinand. After several
months, both men came back to report to their respective sovereigns. In July
1546, when it was time for Veltwijck to return to the Porte, Ferdinand named
him his ambassador, too, since he could not find a suitable replacement for
Sick. As talks continued into the following year, the Ottomans became in-
creasingly concerned about Iran. For example, Rüstem asked Veltwijck if
Charles V had a treaty with Shah Tahmasp (he did not, though not for want
of trying on both sides). 54 By the time terms were agreed to in June 1547,
Veltwijck was sure that Suleyman would march to Persia in the spring of
152 Chapter 3

1548, taking with him the shah’s brother, who was then at the Porte. In fact,
the sultan was gone from his capital from March 1548 until December 1549.
He was accompanied by many of his commanders in the West, including
Ulama Beg, who briefly served as sancakbeg of Erzurum in eastern Anato-
lia. 55
On the whole, the years between 1545 and 1549 were relatively calm
along the war front in Hungary. Vienna complained that Habsburg peasants
were being compelled to pay Ottoman taxes 56 and that several castles in
Hungary had wrongfully been occupied during the truce. Neither issue
seemed insoluble. The Treaty of Edirne had language about joint commis-
sions to fix the border, and, as for the castles, both sides settled on a face-
saving explanation: Buda’s governor-general had not been officially in-
formed of the general truce. 57 South of the Drava, however, Ulama Beg and
his peers continued their campaign as if Suleyman had indeed commanded
the conquest of Slavonia. In May 1545, the three sancakbegs led a reported
ten thousand men into the hill country between Zagreb and Varaždin. Zrinski
sent cavalry to intercept them, as did Styria’s commander for Slavonia,
Georg Wildenstayn. The ban’s men suggested a chivalric contest between
champions, to which the Ottomans agreed. But as Habsburg troops dis-
mounted to watch the spectacle, Ulama Beg, noting their lack of battle-
readiness, suddenly called a halt to the truce. In the ensuing attack, Zrinski
and Wildenstayn lost 1,500 horses and an uncertain number of men, leaving
the Ottomans free to raid in various directions. 58 Some six thousand men
advanced into Carniola, where they burned seventeen villages along the Sava
and carried off hundreds of captives. In August 1545 they conquered a town
west of Valpovo. 59 Meanwhile, raids by Zrinski and by the garrison of Senj
provoked repeated Ottoman complaints. Rüstem Paşa wanted Zrinski ex-
cluded from the truce, as in 1540, but did not get his wish. 60

Ulama Beg in Požega

With the war in the east concluded, Ulama Beg returned to the Balkans, as
sancakbeg not of Bosnia 61 but of Požega, which served the Ottomans as a
forward base in Slavonia. Action on this front was limited at first because of
heavy fighting in southeastern Hungary, touched off by Ferdinand’s latest
intervention in Transylvania. In March 1552, Ulama Beg was in Hungary
helping to fight off a Habsburg siege of a fortress-town. Meanwhile, his
colleague in Bosnia, on orders from the Porte, had built a stone tower at a
river town that helped secure the link by water between Bosnia and Požega. 62
 Diplomacy and Kleinkrieg, 1542–1556 153

As the rival governments sent in reinforcements, commanders on either side

had no idea where attacks might come. The Habsburgs struck first, capturing
a fortress near the river that flowed to the Sava from Požega. With Lukas
Szeckel, Styria’s commander for Slavonia, Zrinski attacked another fortress,
but Ulama Beg held them off.
Recognizing that Ulama Beg needed help, the Ottoman high command
sent orders for the sancakbegs of Bosnia, Herzegovina, and Klis to muster
their men in Bosnia near Banja Luka. At Gradiška, Bosnia’s sancakbeg re-
ceived authorization to draw on the central Ottoman treasury for repairs to
the fortress so as to avoid a repetition of the successful Habsburg attack there
in 1542.
Seeing mobilization on the Sava, Zrinski and Szeckel expected the enemy
to head upstream toward Zagreb and made their preparations accordingly.
Instead, the Ottomans struck north toward Virovitica, whose surrender they
forced after a monthlong siege. Ulama Beg then pulled back from the Drava
because of a raid down the Sava by the younger Petar Erdödy that resulted in
a brief reoccupation of Velika. In September Ulama Beg and his colleagues
pushed north again, surprising the under-manned fortress of Čazma, which
quickly surrendered. In a letter announcing this conquest to the Porte, Bos-
nia’s sancakbeg called Čazma “the key to the country of the infidels.” It was
made the capital of a new sancak, with 1,400 men placed under the govern-
or’s command. 63 The fall of Virovitica and then Čazma caused neighboring
garrisons to desert, leaving more castles to be occupied. At the beginning of
October, the Ottomans moved on to the countryside of Varaždin. Having
good information this time about the foe’s plans, Zrinski and Szeckel quickly
brought up their cavalry and attacked from hiding, first at the Ottoman camp
and then as they retreated; among the dead left behind was Ulama Beg’s
son. 64 This setback notwithstanding, Ulama Beg had brought the Ottoman
border to a point roughly forty-five miles from Varaždin along the Drava and
thirty-five miles from Zagreb along the Sava. 65 In late October he and his
peers were back in Velika, where Ottoman soldiers, including Janissaries
stationed in newly won fortresses, lined up to collect their quarterly wages
from the sultan’s paymaster. Zrinski warned that recent Ottoman successes
had so terrified rural folk that villages were “writing secretly” to the Turks
declaring their readiness to submit. 66
During the sultan’s last campaign in Iran, the war front in Slavonia was
relatively quiet. In 1553, Petar Erdödy reported that while the Ottomans had
a workforce of five thousand busy with fortifications at Čazma, “they are
154 Chapter 3

trying to keep the peace.” 67 In fact, although no one could have known it at
the time, the frontier as it was established in Slavonia in 1552 was to remain
remarkably stable through the sixteenth century and much of the seventeenth
century. 68 There was, however, an active battle front just to the north on the
Hungarian side of the Drava. For reasons better discussed below, Slavonia
would be drawn into the fighting across the Drava.

VENETIAN DALMATIA

Scaled-Back Priorities

The 1530 Treaty of Bologna marked an end to Venice’s ambitions for expan-
sion, either against the rising power of the Ottomans in the East or against a
now-established Habsburg hegemony in Italy. 69 It took a while to draw the
proper inference: Venice should now focus on making the most of the territo-
ries that remained under the banner of St. Mark. In northeastern Italy, the
Signoria organized its urban defenses into a coherent system. To help quiet
murmurs of discontent, town statutes were revised to make them better con-
form to local custom. By about 1550, some patrician families were relocating
to the cities of Terraferma and were urging their peers to consider the pos-
sibilities of judicious investment in agriculture. 70 Meanwhile, opinion in
Venice was still divided as to whether the Habsburgs or the Ottomans were
the real enemy, and diplomats at the Porte mirrored this division. If one bailo
was frankly hostile to Habsburg interests, 71 another rendered valuable assis-
tance to Ferdinand’s beleaguered ambassador. 72 When an opportunity arose
to occupy the fortress of Marano, near Trieste, Venice did so, bringing a
vigorous protest from Vienna. But Ferdinand’s representatives were still al-
lowed to look at the information-rich avvisi coming from Venetian subjects
in Ottoman lands. 73
Overseas, Venice’s historic Eastern trade was reviving, thanks to good
relations with the Ottomans. 74 Huge quantities of silks and various grades of
woolens—notably the popular, lightweight kerseys from Flanders and Eng-
land—were shipped to Alexandria or to Aleppo in Syria. Back to Venice
came Asian spices, Persian silk, and the Syrian cotton that was increasingly
in demand in Italy’s industrial towns. 75 This traffic served Ottoman interests
too, most obviously at the sultan’s customs houses. According to information
gathered by Veltwijck, 10 percent of the value of spices coming up the Red
Sea was collected at each of three separate locations. 76 Bernardo Navagero, a
 Diplomacy and Kleinkrieg, 1542–1556 155

Venetian bailo on cordial terms with Rüstem Paşa, estimated that about a
sixth of the sultan’s gross income derived from “Egypt and the rest of Ara-
bia.” 77 Rüstem Paşa expressed disapproval of the Ottoman elite’s penchant
for fine silks and other European luxuries, but he also had a personal stake in
the flow of goods from the West because of the extensive if little-known
trade network controlled from his palace in Istanbul. 78
On the other hand, Venice and the Porte had conflicting interests in regard
to the vital grain trade, or so it would seem. Around 1550, as the pressures of
a growing population strained traditional sources of grain supply in the West,
Venice became more dependent on wheat from the sultan’s lands. At about
the same time, and for the same reasons, Ottoman officials tightened restric-
tions on exports to the West and improved enforcement. There were, howev-
er, gaps in the system, especially at coastal estates owned by high personages
at court, such as Rüstem Paşa or his wife Mihrimah, the sultan’s favored
daughter. Sales were at European market prices, not the low prices mandated
by Ottoman regulations. 79 Such unofficial agreements probably strengthened
the acknowledged community of interests that bound Venice and the Porte
together.

Sea Lanes and Harbors

The revival of trade reinforced Venice’s long-standing interest in control of

the Gulf. Ottoman corsairs based in Albania operated freely in the southern
Adriatic, and warships of the sultan’s Mediterranean fleet sometimes joined
in their operations. So as to tell which predator-vessels were fair game and
which were off limits, Bailo Alvise Rhenier obtained from the admiral paşa 80
in 1548 a list of the twenty captains whose galleys patrolled the seas under
his orders. Venetian commanders took advantage of their hunting license by
capturing and killing a notorious corsair not on the list. The Signoria had to
disavow his murder—the proper course would have been to send him to the
Porte for trial—but Venice’s diplomats at the Porte evidently did what was
needed to have their excuses accepted. 81 Dragut Reis, the boldest corsair of
the moment, presented a more delicate problem because he had the favor of
Rüstem Paşa. Rhenier obtained a command for the admiral paşa to capture
Dragut and bring him back a prisoner, only to see him released at Rüstem’s
behest. Still, those who clamored for war against Venice did not get their
way. 82 In the end, Ottoman interest in breaking into the Gulf was not nearly
so strong as Venice’s interest in keeping the Turks out.
156 Chapter 3

Control of the sea meant protecting Adriatic ports that afforded safe har-
bor. Of the eight Venetian coastal towns, 83 only three had large harbors well
protected by natural features: Zadar, which occupied the end of a peninsula,
shielding the inner harbor from the sea; Šibenik, on the estuary of the Krka
river, accessible from the Adriatic by a channel between two prongs of land;
and Kotor, at the inmost corner of the sinuous Bay of Kotor, separated from
the open sea by three narrow passageways. The first two sites received con-
siderable sums for fortification, the one category of peacetime expenditure in
Dalmatia that the Signoria willingly supported. 84 At Šibenik, Fort St. Nicho-
las, guarding the entrance to the harbor, was completed by 1553. 85 At Zadar,
work on the “bulwark” that guarded the connection between the walled city
and the mainland had cost 40,000 ducats by 1557, though there was still
more to be done. 86 Kotor’s ability to withstand a six-month siege in 1530
probably confirmed the common opinion that the mountaintop fortress above
the city was impregnable. Then in 1539 Hayreddin Barbarossa, after recon-
quering Herceg Novi (Castelnuovo) from its Spanish garrison, pushed deeper
into the bay and made a feint at Kotor. 87 This action might have been written
off as an accident of the 1537–1540 war. Yet the bay, eighteen miles long,
could “accommodate all the armadas of the world.” The Kotor channel,
where ships were “safe here from every wind,” was especially sensitive: “If
the Turks occupy this channel, our shipping on the Gulf is lost.” Hence
Barbarossa’s feint was taken as confirming reports that Suleyman was medi-
tating a strike on Kotor. 88 Venice authorized new expenses here, albeit not
the fortress on the Kotor channel recommended by the syndics in 1553. 89
The Dalmatian-Ottoman frontier was relatively quiet, despite the new
forts built by the Ottomans after the conquests in 1537–1540. The Signoria
meant to keep the peace, and it looks as if the Porte was of the same mind.
Indeed, complaints about border infractions seem to have come more fre-
quently from the Ottoman than from the Venetian side. 90 Yet Ottoman voj-
vods still caused trouble by allowing incursions into Venetian territory by
unsalaried martolossi, or by threatening to do so if not compensated for
alleged slights. According to Antonio Diedo, one of the syndics for 1553,
officials in Dalmatia had in the previous thirteen years paid out some 30,000
ducats in “presents” for Ottoman dignitaries. 91 The province was expected to
pay for itself, including expenses of this kind. Diedo reported, no doubt with
satisfaction, that total expenses for the past year exceeded receipts by only
1,300 ducats, or about 2.5 percent. 92 But he made no mention of the debts
carried by town treasuries, and he was perhaps too optimistic about the
 Diplomacy and Kleinkrieg, 1542–1556 157

current-accounts balance. Zadar’s treasury was in trouble in 1550, largely

because “the Turks continually twist things so that they have to be placated.”
Money for bribes had to be gotten by cutting back elsewhere, for example, by
keeping fewer soldiers on the payroll. The infantry garrison for Zadar, a city
of roughly 6,500 people, fluctuated in the 1550s between forty and eighty
men. 93

Town and Country

A port city depended on an integral relationship with its hinterland. In this

respect, Kotor, despite its geographical isolation, was probably the most
secure Venetian harbor town. Montenegro came under Ottoman control after
1498, and it was at times governed as part of the sancak of Shkoder/Scutari.
But the Orthodox Slav population was neither displaced by newcomers nor
converted to Islam. The great clans of the fifteenth century were still power-
ful in the countryside. 94 Provided that Ottoman taxes were duly paid, most of
Montenegro, high in the mountains, was ruled by an elected governor who
was also the Orthodox metropolitan. 95 In other words, Ottoman rule did not
change the traditional social ecology by which Catholic traders and Orthodox
peasants provided for one another’s needs. Kotor’s merchants, sailing to
Venice and Puglia, brought back salt from Venetian Corfu, together with
European cloth and other luxuries, in exchange for grain, wax, skins, and
wool. 96
Šibenik was a relatively populous harbor town, 97 but its connections to
the hinterland were not secure. According to Giovanni Battista Giustiniano,
the other syndic for 1553, the “three hundred villages” Šibenik once had
were reduced to forty-five, of which only fifteen were still inhabited, most of
them clinging to the seacoast. Choice land surrounding an important rural
castle had been “given by Your Lordships to the sultan at the behest of
Rüstem Paşa.” Venetian diplomats attempted in the 1550s to recover thirty-
two villages “wrongfully occupied” by the Ottomans during the 1537–1540
war, but the effort foundered because officials in Dalmatia could not get
timely authorization from Venice for the 300 ducats that the sancakbeg of
Klis demanded for his support of the project. 98 To be sure, the villages that
remained under Šibenik counted 8,000 inhabitants and 1,200 arms-bearing
men. 99 But most of the contado was worked by “Turkish Morlacchi,” who
were subjects of the sultan and followed their own rules. According to capit-
ulations granted by the Porte, Turkish subjects were to have their grain
ground at Šibenik’s mills on the upper Krka. Instead, Ottoman officials built
158 Chapter 3

their own mills. They also constructed a bridge across the river, allowing the
Morlacchi to reach the mills without passing a Venetian toll station. 100 They
also came to Šibenik itself for salt supplied by nearby branches of the Vene-
tian state monopoly. Since as many as five hundred or six hundred Morlacchi
might crowd into the city at one time, Giustiniano recommended building a
new tax booth 101 outside the walls for reasons of security. Still, the two-way
traffic was worth more than 50,000 ducats a year. Without it, “Šibenik would
be ruined.” 102
Zadar was hailed as “the umbilicus” of Venice’s dominion in the Gulf.
Captains had to sail through the seventy-mile “canal of Zadar” 103 or risk
exposing themselves to dangerous winds “coming off the Slavic mountains.”
The harbor had facilities for refitting and arming ships, and a customs house
where non-Venetian ships called to pay the toll. 104 In 1553, Zadar had about
6,500 people, and the islands offshore another 6,000. 105 But its once exten-
sive contado had been drastically reduced in size, especially after the loss of
Vrana and Nadin in the 1537–1540 war. Efforts to remedy the situation were
undertaken at once. As he returned from the Porte in 1540, ambassador
Alvise Badoer induced some five thousand Morlacchi to settle as Venetian
subjects, though they soon moved on to Istria, and only some came back. 106
In 1540 or 1541, Zadar’s rector used force and persuasion to bring Dalmatian
peasants back from Italy, raising the population of Zadar’s contado to about
2,800. He wanted fortresses to be built to protect rural folk, as local notables
had done after the 1497–1500 war. But he seemed to recognize that this was
no longer possible, and he knew the Signoria would not pay for rural fortifi-
cations. 107 Bailo Alvise Rhenier (1547–1550) worked out an agreement
whereby forty-eight villages were returned to Zadar’s jurisdiction. 108 This
was probably why one of the syndics for 1553 reported a population of
twelve thousand for the contado. 109 Yet he and his colleague also said that
there were few laborers for the fields, except for the Morlacchi who came
back from Istria and who were “not very diligent as farmers, caring more for
their animals.” 110 Zadar’s captain for 1553 did not make a cavalcade of the
contado, owing to illness, but he too described a countryside that was de-
serted, save for the thousand or so homesteads of Badoer’s Morlacchi. 111
These conflicting observations—twelve thousand people, but few workers
for the fields—may be reconciled by supposing that Venetian subjects were
found mainly along the coast, as at Šibenik. 112
Like Šibenik, Zadar got its food not from Venetian subjects living in the
countryside, but from the Morlacchi. Although the sultan at one point com-
 Diplomacy and Kleinkrieg, 1542–1556 159

plained that Dalmatian officials were “trying to transfer Ottoman subjects to

Venetian territory,” 113 the Morlacchi likely came of their own accord to trade
or to settle on Venetian soil. 114 Split had only about 2,500 people and seven
inhabited villages, yet traffic with the Morlacchi was worth about 25,000
ducats a year. Trogir, with its villages, had about five thousand people. As
seen by the syndics in 1553, the countryside was deserted, “except in the
north, where for many years the land has been cultivated by Morlacchi who
are subjects of the Turks.” At Kotor, too, Morlacchi came to get salt, and
they never left “without causing trouble.” 115 For Dalmatia as a whole, Diedo
estimated that trade with the Morlacchi had an annual value of 400,000
ducats. They brought wheat and meat to the cities, along with leather, wool,
cheese, red wax, and female slaves. In turn, they took away salt, salted fish,
cloth, oil, sugar, spices, and white wax. There was no question of keeping the
Morlacchi out or preventing the cities from trading with them, for without
this traffic, “Dalmatians would die of hunger.” 116 In sum, an economic mo-
dus vivendi between town and countryside had been achieved. But there was
a political cost: “Turkish Morlacchi” were not under Venetian control.

Uskoks and Morlacchi

Connections between Dalmatia’s Vlachs—the Morlacchi—and their kinfolk

in Ottoman and Habsburg lands complicated relations among the three mega-
states. In some areas, such as the sancak of Klis and parts of Istria, Vlachs
preserved their Aroumanian language for a longer time. Elsewhere, they
adapted the speech of their South-Slav neighbors, some as Catholics or Mus-
lims but most as Orthodox Christians. These differences notwithstanding, the
Vlachs preserved their traditional culture into the eighteenth century: trans-
humance pastoralism, large patrilineal groups bound by real or fictive kin-
ship, and a code of honor that often required acts of vengeance. 117 Govern-
ments could not control the Vlachs, but they also could not dispense with
their services as fighting men. The Byzantines, followed by the Ottomans,
had granted them tax privileges. 118 In the portion of the sancak of Klis just
east of Zadar’s contado, Vlachs made up 30 percent of the households in an
Ottoman census of 1550. 119 In the Habsburg lands, where the first agreement
of this kind was negotiated in 1534, 120 the newcomers angered their neigh-
bors by taking what they needed when and where they wanted. The Morlac-
chi living on Venetian soil were on one occasion described as “molesting”
the Ottomans more than they themselves were molested. 121 In fact, Vlach
pastoralist communities did not have primary loyalty to any state.
160 Chapter 3

After the fall of Klis in 1537, Senj became the principal base for Habs-
burg raids into Ottoman territory. During his tenure as rector of Zadar in the
early 1540s, one Venetian official noted a disturbing pattern. His greatest
difficulties with the Ottomans were caused by uskok raiders, sailing their
swift barks “past Morlacchia to Obrovac.” Morlacchia was the Venetian
name for the Velebit Mountains, a longtime home ground for Vlach pastoral-
ists. 122 Twice in 1544, men from Senj rode across the sancak of Klis to attack
Ottoman strongholds in what had been the contado of Zadar; they burned
Vrana and caused nearly as much damage at Nadin. Altogether, one scholar
estimates that there were one hundred such attacks between 1541 and
1554. 123 The most sensitive issue was that denizens of Venetian soil—either
Morlacchi or Venetian citizens—lent assistance to the raiders, or joined
them. Already in the 1540s there are indications of the kind of collaboration
that is widely reported for later periods. 124 In 1550, Bailo Bernardo Navagero
mentioned that an incident from 1542 or 1543 was still causing complaints at
the Porte: “some of our men” had joined with uskoks to capture an Ottoman
merchant ship whose cargo was then sold in Venice; unfortunately, some
crates of goods had borne the “mark” of Rüstem Paşa. 125
By sea, the uskoks raided all along the coast between Rijeka and Kotor,
striking Venetian and Ragusan as well as Ottoman targets. In 1544, they
struck at Herzegovina’s customs post on the Neretva, roughly 150 miles from
Senj. In 1549, thirty men raided the Venetian island of Pag, “committing a
number of homicides.” In December 1550, a reported four hundred to five
hundred uskoks took a grain ship sailing from Ancona; Jewish merchants on
board, subjects of the sultan, were brought to Senj as captives. On orders
from Ferdinand, the merchants were freed, and owners of the grain were
promised compensation. 126 Incidents of this kind called into question Ven-
ice’s proud claim of dominion over the Gulf. When Venetian officials exe-
cuted captured uskoks as common pirates, they preferred to do so in the
presence of representatives from the Porte. 127 But if the Ottomans were to be
prevented from intervening in the Gulf to protect their own shipping, 128 more
than symbolic gestures was required. Hence Venetian galleys often convoyed
Ottoman merchant ships. Near Šibenik in 1547, the “captain of the galleys
against the uskoks” freed fifty Turkish subjects from captivity. 129 In 1552,
fifteen Ottoman merchants attested to the valor of one Venetian captain. As
they returned in two ships from a local fair, uskoks lay in waiting, but the
captain and his two vessels drove off fourteen barks near Klis and seven
more near Zadar. 130 In 1553, the captain of Zadar recommended stationing
 Diplomacy and Kleinkrieg, 1542–1556 161

warships at a point where they could intercept uskok barks on their now-
familiar route toward Obrovac. 131 Yet even if interdiction at sea often suc-
ceeded, it did not solve Venice’s problems in the countryside. As the Captain
of the Gulf reported in reference to uskok raids toward the Neretva, “your
own subjects often join together to give them victuals as they pass.” 132

HABSBURG CROATIA

Ferdinand as a Ruler

Ferdinand I was not a ruler of decisive temper. To his brother the emperor, he
was diffident in offering suggestions, as if mistrusting his own judgment. 133
The brothers had of course an understanding that their enemies must never
catch any hint of disagreement between them. 134 Accordingly, Charles’s let-
ters always used language that envisioned Ferdinand as a junior partner. 135
Yet Ferdinand sometimes complained that the emperor’s emissaries failed to
accord him proper respect. 136 He would have been unhappier still had he
known how he was spoken of by Charles’s advisers. 137 At other times Ferdi-
nand besought their sister Mary—regent of the Low Countries from 1531—
to intervene with Charles on his behalf. One way or another, the brothers
preserved the appearance of harmony, even at critical moments, as during the
Schmalkaldic War, when Charles was exasperated by Ferdinand’s inability
to bring up troops at the agreed time. 138 They never had a public quarrel—
until Charles provoked one.
In 1519 the brothers agreed that Charles would be succeeded in his realms
by his (future) son, while Ferdinand, after he succeeded Charles as emperor,
would be followed by his eldest son. Thus Philip was to be king of Spain, and
Archduke Maximilian was to be emperor, in succession to Ferdinand. But in
1550 Charles demanded that Philip should succeed Ferdinand, only then to
be followed by Maximilian. Ferdinand balked. Mary came to Augsburg to
broker a tense discussion. Ferdinand agreed that he would, as emperor, ask
the electoral princes to endorse Philip as King of the Romans. 139 But Philip’s
candidacy was never presented. The jovial Maximilian was on good terms
with Germany’s princes, and Ferdinand may have sensed that they would not
accept as heir apparent a taciturn foreigner who spoke only Spanish. The
significance of this open breach was that it made it easier for Ferdinand to act
against Charles’s will by opening talks with Moritz in 1552.
162 Chapter 3

The other prince whom Ferdinand acknowledged as his superior was

Suleyman the Lawgiver. This did not prevent him from attempting to extend
his authority to Transylvania, notably during the Persian campaign of
1548–1549; the ensuing struggle between Habsburg and Ottoman partisans
in Transylvania ended only in 1556. But Suleyman had immense incomes
and a standing army of nearly ninety thousand men. 140 The Ottoman court
style recognized no equal to the sultan, at least not among infidels; he dealt
with European states by issuing commands or by graciously granting conces-
sions. 141 Hence Ferdinand’s efforts in Transylvania were accompanied by a
rhetoric of deference to the sultan. The Habsburg Monarchy, as the weaker
party, had to offer “hard power” 142 the recognition it demanded. Indeed,
trying to make a virtue of necessity, Ferdinand instructed his diplomats to
appeal, as suppliants, to the beneficence of his “gracious father,” the sultan.
They were to say that while the whole kingdom belonged to Suleyman by
right of conquest, generations to come would celebrate his “liberality” 143 if
he were to grant Hungary—or at least Transylvania—to his devoted “son” in
Vienna. 144 As Habsburg mercenaries entered Transylvania, Vienna prepared
new instructions for Ferdinand’s ambassador, showing how he could demon-
strate that this intervention was consistent with Ferdinand’s continued sub-
mission to the sultan. 145 The Ottomans took a dim view of such obedience.
When the Porte got word of the troops in Transylvania, the unfortunate
ambassador was clapped into prison. 146
Both in his letters to Charles and in the instructions for his diplomats at
the Porte prepared by his council, Ferdinand emphasized the weakness of his
position more than was necessary, to the point of sounding at times obsequi-
ous. But a certain desire to please could in other contexts be an asset. Among
the princes of the empire, for example, a habit of considering the amour
propre of his interlocutors will have done Ferdinand no harm. Diplomats
accredited to his court found him affable and willing to answer any reason-
able question. Charles V spoke French and Spanish. So did Ferdinand, but he
also spoke German, Latin, Italian, and some Hungarian and Netherlandish. 147
In dealing with the estates of his realms, 148 he respected local customs and
privileges, sometimes to a fault. 149 Even in defeat he observed the proper
forms: the last act of his brief and tenuous rule in Transylvania was to accept
a petition from the estates allowing them to transfer their allegiance to the
sultan. 150
In the empire, Charles V gradually relinquished authority to his broth-
151
er. Ferdinand stood in for Charles at ten of the eighteen diets held between
 Diplomacy and Kleinkrieg, 1542–1556 163

1521 and 1551; for eight other diets both brothers were present. Even after
Ferdinand’s election as King of the Romans in 1531, a secret agreement
between the brothers required him to seek Charles’s approval for any new
initiative. What Ferdinand needed from the empire was Türkenhilfen, col-
lected either by imperial officials, as a so-called Common Penny tax, or,
more often, by officials of each principality according to a “roster” or quota
approved by the diet. 152 But in a divided Germany, the dignitaries who as-
sembled for diets insisted on discussing the contentious issue of religion first
before anything else. To be sure, in 1541 and again in 1542 events in Hun-
gary 153 broke down the diet’s long-standing reluctance to send troops beyond
the empire’s borders. There was another grant for Hungary in 1543, though it
might have been larger; the Protestant estates had flatly refused to discuss a
Türkenhilfe. Money was voted again in 1544 for use either against France or
against the Ottomans, but since Charles asserted his prerogatives, 154 little
was left over for the Hungarian front. The 1548 Diet of Augsburg, presided
over by a victorious emperor, shifted to a strategy of defense: this
Türkenhilfe was earmarked for building and repairing border fortifica-
tions. 155 Setting aside the crusading tradition, the imperial diet decided that
money spent for an offensive against the infidel Turks would be wasted, as in
the recent past. Another change came at the Diet of Passau in 1552, in the
wake of Ferdinand’s bargain with Moritz: the Türkenhilfe was discussed
first, a practice that now became the norm. 156
In building support in the empire, Ferdinand could rely on close ties to its
two most powerful princes. Bavaria, large and populous, avoided the frag-
mentation that affected so many other German territories by early adoption of
the rule of primogeniture. Its dukes had grievances against their neighbors,
the Austrian Habsburgs, but Charles V’s diplomats won them over in secret
negotiations prior to the Schmalkaldic War. Ferdinand then sealed the alli-
ance by marrying his daughter Anna to the future Duke Albert V (r.
1550–1579), who was to be a leading figure in the German Counter-Refor-
mation. 157 As if to balance this strong Catholic connection, Ferdinand culti-
vated relations with Moritz’s successor, Elector Augustus of Saxony (r.
1553–1586). Augustus 158 built his principality’s prosperity and vigorously
defended orthodox Lutheranism against so-called Crypto-Calvinist tenden-
cies. At the same time he served as a “junior partner” to Ferdinand and his
heirs in maintaining religious peace in the empire. 159
164 Chapter 3

The Hereditary Lands

From incomes he directly controlled, 160 Ferdinand had little to contribute to

the defense of the frontier. When the Hungarian Diet asked how many troops
the monarchy maintained in Hungary, the king’s spokesmen replied that the
Bohemian lands paid for ten thousand men and the Austrian lands for five
thousand; what His Majesty himself paid for was the gunboat fleet, based at
Komárom, just downriver from Vienna. 161 The crown’s principal incomes,
the subsidies, were controlled by provincial parliaments whose officials col-
lected the money. There was a reciprocal relation between what Ferdinand’s
estates did and what the imperial estates did. The diet wanted its contribu-
tions matched by higher levels of taxation in Habsburg lands, and Ferdi-
nand’s Austrian 162 and Bohemian territories wanted German princes to rec-
ognize that the Ottomans were not just a Habsburg problem. Back-and-forth
discussions were eased by personal ties because magnates influential in their
home estates were often sent as representatives to the diet. For example,
Hans Ungnad, representing Styria at the 1530 Diet of Augsburg, was so
impressed by the Augsburg Confession that he became, on the spot, a follow-
er of Martin Luther. 163
It would have been easier for Ferdinand to have the Austrian estates meet
together in what was called a general provincial diet (Generallandtag). But
the general diet of 1525, which compelled the young archduke to jettison his
favorite advisers, had not gone well. Ferdinand also feared that deputies
gathered in larger numbers would be more likely to make their subsidy grants
conditional on religious concessions, just as the imperial diets did. 164 But
estates leaders, like Ungnad, pressed for a general diet that would include the
Bohemian as well as the Austrian provinces. Ungnad finally got Ferdinand’s
attention in 1541 with a proposal for a common tax projected to raise 3
million Rhine gulden. The lands of the Bohemian crown duly agreed to
convene with their Austrian colleagues for the first time. Meeting in Prague
(January–March 1542), the delegates from Austria and Bohemia accepted
some parts of Ungnad’s plan. The levies were now expected to yield
1,175,000 gulden, and the amount actually collected was only slightly less.
Though far less than what Ungnad had hoped for, this was a handsome sum,
and it satisfied the Diet of Speyer’s demand for a show of reciprocity from
Ferdinand’s lands. 165 Yet the experiment was not repeated. 166 Charles V
commandeered the empire’s resources for his war against France in 1543 and
1544, and tensions leading up to the Schmalkaldic War provoked a reaction
 Diplomacy and Kleinkrieg, 1542–1556 165

against Ferdinand in Bohemia. Although the rebellion of 1547 was quickly

put down, it left Ferdinand more dependent on his Austrian duchies. 167
In lieu of general diets, Ferdinand favored “committee-diets”
(Ausschusslandtäge), to which each Austrian duchy sent a delegation with
powers to consent on the province’s behalf. These sessions often took a cue
from deliberations at the imperial diet. In June 1544, when it looked as if
funds voted by the diet would be used against France and not against the
Ottomans, the committee-diet prorogued its discussions. They did, however,
subsequently approve a subsidy of 400,000 gulden, in which the share of the
five duchies that were on or close to the Ottoman frontier was 210,000
gulden. 168 Some delegates were military men with service against the Turks,
but they evidently had difficulty convincing fellow nobles in the estates
about the seriousness of the problem. For Inner Austria—Styria, Carinthia,
and Carniola—annual subsidy levels increased only modestly, from 105,000
gulden in 1537 to 134,000 in 1546. 169

Management of the Frontier in Slavonia

The Hofrat or court council of Vienna, dating from 1527, dealt with judicial
matters. 170 For military affairs there was a seemingly evanescent “war coun-
cil” that issued orders to commanders in 1530 and 1531. 171 There was a
captain-general for the whole frontier in the 1540s, 172 but when the incum-
bent died in 1550, his responsibilities were divided. Hans Ungnad took over
Slavonia, with Ivan Lenković as his deputy for Croatia proper. In Hungary,
Sforza Pallavicini and then Tamás Nádasdy took command. 173 By now, the
frontier had six sectors. From the northeast around to the southwest, these
were Upper Hungary, the mining district, Cis-Danubian Hungary, Trans-
Danubian Hungary, Slavonia, and Croatia. Each sector had an anchor for-
tress 174 and a sector commander. For example, Petar Erdödy, Bishop Si-
mon’s nephew, was named commander of the Trans-Danubian sector in
1547, and Ivan Lenković, captain of the uskoks, became full commander of
the Croatian sector in 1551. 175 The Cis-Danubian district, just downstream
from Vienna, got special attention. 176 Fortifications were built all along the
frontier in Ferdinand’s reign, but military architects from Italy were brought
in only for work in this sector, especially at Győr and Komárom. 177 In 1556,
at the behest of delegates from the five Austrian duchies near the frontier,
Ferdinand created a court war council (Hofkriegsrat) for general oversight of
military affairs. 178 The Hofkriegsrat soon set to work in coordinating deci-
sions made by the estates. Lower Austria and Styria shared responsibility for
166 Chapter 3

the Trans-Danubian sector, from Lake Balaton to the Drava. 179 In the two
southern sectors, the Inner Austrian duchies had “more or less autonomous
administration” of the frontier. 180 Styria took charge of Slavonia, while Car-
niola, with help from Carinthia, had responsibility for Croatia.
All along the frontier, Ferdinand depended not just on the estates but also
on the collaboration of his over-mighty subjects, the magnate or noble pro-
prietors of towns and castles. Even when a vital city or fortress escheated to
the crown, Ferdinand could not afford the costs of assuming control. He
would instead transfer it to a loyal magnate, often in part payment for loans
to the crown by the gentleman in question. For example, Varaždin, the an-
chor fortress of Slavonia, was assigned to Hans Ungnad. Two important
fortresses just west of Zagreb were assigned first to the ban of Croatia at the
time, Hieronim Łaski, and then to Lukas Szeckel, who would soon become
commander of Styrian troops in Slavonia. 181 Ferdinand followed a time-
honored strategy: one defended the frontier by giving the great men an inter-
est in defending it.
In Slavonia, few fortresses were properly garrisoned and supplied. Ac-
cording to a 1540 petition from the Congregation of Nobles in Slavonia,
nineteen towns and fortresses had lords who could not support their up-
keep. 182 At one site, the lord-proprietor gave up hope when the last of his
peasants fled; unless the wealthy Chapter of Zagreb 183 agreed to take over,
he proposed to raze his castle. 184 Fortresses still capable of sheltering taxpay-
ing peasants were too important to abandon. When one such position in
Slavonia was illegally occupied by an impecunious Croatian magnate, Ferdi-
nand tried to have him ejected, albeit in vain. 185
In theory, the Inner Austrian war council in Ptuj was to provide overall
direction. But the council had no budget save as provided by the estates of
the three provinces. The official who mustered and paid Inner Austrian
troops in Slavonia, usually at Varaždin, represented the estates of Styria.
There was thus a natural tendency for field commanders to bypass the war
council and write directly to the semi-permanent estates committee in
Graz. 186 The estates in turn gave particular attention to their inner frontier—
not the border with the Ottomans, but the border between Styria and Slavo-
nia, or between Carniola and Croatia. 187 For example, while experienced
military men stressed the need for gunboats on the Sava, it seems that gun-
boats were stationed only at Ljubljana, the capital of Carniola, more than
seventy miles upstream from Zagreb. 188 Commanders wanted to fight as the
Ottomans fought, by hiring low-paid raiders, called martolossi, to raid into
 Diplomacy and Kleinkrieg, 1542–1556 167

enemy country. Yet the estates were not sure about this added expense.
Having first ascertained how many martolossi Lower Austria supported,
Ungnad asked Styria to take on one thousand raiders. The estates duly voted
a special levy, but only for four hundred men. 189
There was also a question as to how well Austria’s commanders would
collaborate with Nikola Zrinski, who was ban of Croatia from 1542 to 1556.
He had some successes against the Ottomans as a commander, 190 and he used
his office as ban to enforce Ferdinand’s authority in Croatia at crucial
points. 191 But Zrinski comported himself like a frontier baron accustomed to
doing as he pleased. He ignored a court verdict invalidating his possession of
a castle near Zagreb. In a similar case, he refused to recognize the sove-
reign’s right to supersede the ban’s jurisdiction in a lawsuit to which the ban
himself was a party. 192 He exported silver to Italy instead of sending it to the
royal mint, 193 and he held on to an Ottoman hostage requested by Ferdinand
so as to use the man instead to exchange for his own men. 194 He did seek
Ferdinand’s permission before challenging the sancakbeg of Bosnia to a duel
(Zrinski showed up at the appointed place, but Mehmed Beg did not). 195 It is,
however, difficult to imagine Austria’s magnates, schooled in deference to
the sovereign, behaving in quite this way. Ungnad, for one, remained suspi-
cious of Zrinski’s contribution to the war effort. 196 On the other hand, Zrinski
and the Austrians were at least not competing for funds from the same
source; Zrinski had his own budget as ban, from taxes levied in Slavonia. 197
Also, letters between them indicate that Zrinski had a good relationship with
Styria’s commanders in Slavonia, Georg Wildenstayn and then Lukas Szeck-
el. 198 It may be that fractiousness among the commanders in Katzianer’s
campaign had taught a bitter lesson.

Further Losses in Slavonia

Habsburg forces in Slavonia now had the capacity to conduct limited offen-
sives. In March 1542, they assembled at the fortress of Velika, north of
Požega, and marched south and west to the Sava, where they crossed the
river and burned the town and fortress (castrum) of Gradiška, 199 which
served as a base for expeditions from Bosnia into Slavonia. This success
contrasts sharply with the dismal record of Katzianer’s expedition five years
earlier. But Slavonia’s defenses were still not strong enough to withstand the
kind of “sudden strike” which in April 1543 captured three castles west of
Požega. 200 Meanwhile, Łaski’s successor as ban of Croatia, Petar Keglević,
had to be removed from office in 1542 after the Hungarian Diet outlawed
168 Chapter 3

him for occupying properties owned by his daughter’s late husband. 201 He in
turn was succeeded by Nikola Zrinski.
Along a frontier that extended to Valpovo, fifty miles east and north of
Požega, further attacks were to be expected. In fact, the line for which Styr-
ia’s estates were responsible or co-responsible was even longer, for it ex-
tended into the Trans-Danubian sector, across the Drava. When Požega’s
Murad Beg Tardić brought troops before Valpovo in June 1543, Habsburg
commanders made no move to send relief, even though Valpovo’s garrison
held out for two months before surrendering. 202 Their concern was that the
Ottomans would push north from Valpovo, across the Drava toward vulner-
able towns in Trans-Danubian Hungary. This in fact was to be the sultan’s
line of march that summer, though he himself went no farther than Valpovo.
Expecting the brunt of the Ottoman attack in that sector, Zrinski marched to
Hungary, and Ungnad brought his cavalry and artillery to the Drava. Even so,
Habsburg forces could not prevent the loss of centers like Pécs, the seat of a
bishopric, and Székesfehérvár, the coronation city of Hungary’s kings. 203
The next year, Ungnad and Zrinski might have guessed that Velika would be
the target, 204 but when Ulama Beg turned up before Velika in July, it was
again a surprise. Zrinski called for reinforcements, but the city fell almost at
once. 205
To the south, along the Sava, the crown again secured the frontier by
engaging the self-interest of a large landed proprietor, in this case the Chap-
ter of Zagreb, which had extensive holdings just east of the city. In the
summer of 1544, the gentlemen-canons agreed to build a new fortress on
their estate at Sisak, on the right bank, where the Kupa flows into the Sava,
about ten miles east of Zagreb. Ban Zrinski and “the lords of the realm”
agreed to supply peasant laborers, to be paid by the chapter; to further their
efforts, Ferdinand exempted the chapter from certain taxes. 206 When work
was well along, the canons encountered opposition from their longtime ad-
versary, Petar Erdödy, Bishop Simon’s nephew. He too had extensive hold-
ings on the Sava, east of Zagreb, and his lands had to be crossed by workers
and materials bound for Sisak. Erdödy’s officials refused to let them pass,
and for good measure they smashed outbuildings on the construction site;
eventually, an agreement was reached that allowed work to proceed. 207 The
chief promoter of the project was Miklós Oláh (1493–1568), a Hungarian
councilor who served as bishop of Zagreb from 1543 to 1548. By Ferdi-
nand’s “special command” he devoted the bishopric’s revenues for 1548 to
 Diplomacy and Kleinkrieg, 1542–1556 169

artillery and munitions for Sisak. 208 The triangular fortress, with round tow-
ers at the corners, was meant to stall an Ottoman advance on Zagreb. 209
Slavonia’s northwestern corner, along the Drava, presented another secur-
ity problem. Međimurje, the region between the Drava and the Mur, was
controlled until his death by the son-in-law of Ban Petar Keglević.
Keglević’s illegal occupation of his son-in-law’s properties 210 made him a
rebel against the king so that his lands escheated to the crown when Keglević
was removed from office in 1542. But so long as fighting with the Turks
continued, troops could not be spared to expel Keglević from the strategic
fortress of Čakovec on the left bank of the Drava. In 1546, after a truce had
been declared, Ban Zrinski ejected ex-Ban Keglević from his lands on orders
from Vienna. Ferdinand then transferred the escheated properties to Zrinski
in settlement of 20,000 Hungarian florins owed him for unpaid salary and
other debts. Međimurje now became the territorial center of gravity for the
Zrinski family. At Čakovec, which Count Nikola IV made his chief resi-
dence, he built a new and “unconquerable” fortress meant to support a size-
able garrison. 211 Like Sisak on the Sava, Čakovec would be a Habsburg
bulwark on the Drava.

Uskoks in Croatia

From the 1470s on, Croatia’s Ottoman borderlands were first denuded of
population, then resettled, and finally vacated a second or third time, espe-
cially in the middle decades of the sixteenth century. Some people were lost
to Ottoman raiders while others simply moved away or were transplanted by
their landlords. Croatia proper had a longer Ottoman border than Slavonia
and thus a longer zone of devastation. Populous villages could still be found
around the Zrinski castles on the lower Una until the 1550s and around Bihać
until the 1570s. Elsewhere, however, the empty border country offered no
barrier to an invader. Save for the royal town of Senj, whose garrison was on
the king’s payroll, the defense of Croatia proper fell to Carniola, with help
from Carinthia. In 1548, the noble gentlemen of Carniola’s estates calculated
that their expenses need not exceed 13,000 Rhine gulden a year, to pay for
three hundred light cavalry, two hundred martolossi, and a war councilor in
Ljubljana. This level of commitment, though it was accepted by the Habs-
burg government, did not suffice for a war frontier that ran for about 110
miles. 212
Some gaps were filled in by settling Vlachs in deserted land. Fifty fami-
lies of “Turkish Vlachs” or “Vlach uskoks” (refugees) turned up at Bihać in
170 Chapter 3

1530; they and a larger group the next year were directed to vacant lands
along the Kupa, or on Croatia’s mountainous border with Carniola. The legal
framework was set in 1534, when a party of Vlachs was settled on vacant
crown estates on Zumberačka Mountain, between Carniola and Croatia; fam-
ilies received land allotments and exemption from local taxes for a period of
years. More families came in succeeding years, and in 1547 the Zumberačka
region was organized as a separate district with its own Hauptmann for
military and civil affairs. 213 But settlers caused headaches for local officials
by conducting raids not just into Ottoman territory but also into Carniola. 214
In 1542 and 1543 they were reportedly in contact with the Ottomans, with a
view to supporting an upcoming expedition from Bosnia. 215 Yet more raid-
ers—called martolossi or uskoks—continued to be recruited from among the
Vlachs. 216 The results were not always good. Martolossi paid by Carniola,
stationed east of Senj, were said to be of little use, because “once they get
their wages for the month, most of them go home.” 217
More coordination was clearly needed. Ivan Lenković, the captain of Senj
since 1540, organized a number of successful raids into Ottoman territory. In
July 1544, seventy of his garrison soldiers crossed the mountains into Dalma-
tia, where they burned the fortress of Vrana. Another group apparently did
the same at Udbina because the fortress there had to be rebuilt by the sancak-
beg. In September, two hundred men—150 under Lenković’s command and
another 50 from Ban Zrinski’s lands in Vinodol—attacked Nadin. They
could have burned this fortress, too, Lenković said, if they had heavier weap-
ons than their handguns. 218 He also sent men out by sea against targets as
distant as the Neretva delta, more than two hundred miles away. 219 Apparent-
ly in 1545 220 Lenković received a second command, as “captain of the us-
koks of Croatia, Slavonia, and Istria.” He worked to discipline his new
charges, 221 whose numbers are hard to make out. 222 In 1551 Lenković
claimed to have “up to 2,500” uskoks under his authority, including 800 in
the Zumberačka district. 223 In 1554, when he was again captain of Senj and
still commander of the uskoks, he spoke of having “as many as two thou-
sand” men, specifically including his garrison soldiers, 224 who were mostly
not refugees. 225 The Senj garrison was in theory on the crown payroll, but
since Ferdinand’s officials had difficulty keeping up payments to this distant
outpost, 226 the soldiers fended for themselves by joining in the raids. So did
others who were neither refugees nor garrison soldiers—subjects of the Zrin-
ski or Frankopan families from the Vinodol region, west of Senj along the
coast. 227 Lenković recognized the difficulty of making distinctions among
 Diplomacy and Kleinkrieg, 1542–1556 171

the men he commanded. In a letter to Ferdinand, he agreed to call all his

raiders uskoks, “according to Your Majesty’s usage.” 228
The uskoks conducted numerous raids every year, but Venetian and Otto-
man grievances had mainly to do with attacks at sea. Although Venice’s
Dalmatian islands were not spared from bloody attacks, 229 the raiders more
commonly went after ships at sea: Jewish and Muslim merchants—subjects
of the sultan—were brought back to Senj and held for ransom, while their
valuable cargo was disposed of in the marketplaces of Senj or Rijeka. 230 In
1554, a Venetian official on Krk, offshore from Senj, had “good informa-
tion” that sales-tax receipts in Senj averaged 100,000 ducats a year for 1546,
1547, and 1548. This claim, no doubt exaggerated, would mean an annual
trade of about 3 million ducats, nearly eight times as much as a contemporary
Venetian estimate for the total value of trade between Dalmatia’s cities and
rural Morlacchi. 231 What is certain is that the economy of Senj “was based
almost entirely on plunder.” 232
Lenković fended off complaints by presenting his raids as well-deserved
retaliation. To Pope Pius III, he recounted how he had told his men that
holding Jews to ransom and seizing their goods “would not offend Your
Holiness in the least, for you know how the Turks have depopulated Chris-
tians by land and sea.” To Ferdinand, he listed Ottoman attacks during the
previous year while assuring His Majesty that the Jewish merchants in ques-
tion had been freed “without any cost to them” and that the proprietors of the
grain that was stolen had been “sent away content.” 233 There was no doubt an
understanding between Vienna and Senj, confirmed when Lenković was
named commander of the Croatian sector of the frontier in 1551. 234 When
Ottoman units violated the border, Lenković (among others) was sent after
them. 235 As for stolen goods, Lenković made restitution just often enough for
Ferdinand to show Venice’s ambassador in Vienna that his prohibitions
against brigandage were not being ignored.
As to why the Ottomans did not react more vigorously to continuous
provocations from Lenković’s men, one may offer two suggestions. First,
those who suffered the most were Jewish and Balkan-Muslim merchants.
The notion that merchants of the early modern Muslim world lacked the
social status and the political clout of their Western European counterparts
has been discredited, at least for Mughal India. But the question remains
open for the Ottoman Empire, 236 where the best-known trade networks of
this century were those controlled by high government officials. 237 In any
case, trade between Italy and the Balkan provinces was of merely local
172 Chapter 3

importance, and those responsible for it would not have had much influence
at the Porte. Second, the only targets in the mountainous country of Croatia
proper that had strategic value were the two main fortress-towns. Bihać was
often beset during this period, 238 but not directly attacked. Senj was assaulted
on at least one occasion, and there may have been other plans for an at-
tack. 239 But one could not bring a fleet against Senj without challenging
Venice’s dominion of the Gulf. 240 By land, it was not possible for an artillery
train to traverse the steep and narrow approaches to Senj, nor for a sizeable
army to camp nearby for any length of time. 241 (Just to make sure, Lenković
completed in 1558 a stout fortress on the crest of a hill overlooking the city
walls.) 242 In other words, the elite troops commanded by the sancakbegs of
Herzegovina and Klis were better deployed elsewhere. The best opportunity
for adding valuable lands to the sultan’s fisc lay across the mountains, in
Slavonia, when men from the sancaks of Klis and Herzegovina joined Ulama
Beg’s campaigns in 1543–1544 243 and in 1552. 244

Remnant of Remnants

In the spring of 1552, as it became clear that fighting would resume in

Slavonia, Habsburg commanders concentrated their attacks on the sancak of
Požega, Ulama Beg’s province. When Zrinski burned a fortress in June, the
sancakbegs of Klis and Herzegovina brought their men to join Bosnian
troops at Banja Luka, just south of the Sava crossing at Gradiška. 245 Seeing
this concentration of forces on the Sava, Zrinski and the Austrians expected a
drive toward Sisak and Zagreb and were thus taken by surprise when the
enemy marched north, conquering Virovitica and then Čazma. 246 But there
was a deeper problem. The custom of the nobles of the country was to “rise
up” (insurgere) and gather their forces when word came of an Ottoman
incursion; they would be too late to prevent a breach of the frontier, but they
often did catch the enemy as they returned, slowed down by booty and
captives in their train. 247 This tactic, developed in response to akinci who
raided villages to take cattle and slaves, was useless against Ottoman regulars
who captured towns and fortresses. As Zrinski wrote his Carniolan colleague,
fortresses simply had to have larger garrisons, for “the enemy is here before
we can rise up.” 248
In fact, fortresses and garrisons were already under discussion. In the
summer of 1551, Ferdinand ordered an inspection of castles in Croatia prop-
er, on which Lenković reported in January 1552. Ban Zrinski’s castles on the
lower Una were well defended, but other important fortresses had few men
 Diplomacy and Kleinkrieg, 1542–1556 173

on permanent duty, in some cases none at all. 249 Ungnad received similar
orders for a survey in Slavonia. His report, delayed by his illness until Janu-
ary 1554, was accompanied by models of fortresses with indications of
needed repairs. 250 Charges of neglect were of course indignantly rejected by
fortress proprietors. For example, the Zagreb chapter denied that Sisak had
ever had as few as eight or nine men on duty; they always kept thirty men in
the castle and eighty colonist-musketeers in the countryside, ready to serve as
needed. 251 Ungnad’s critique did not spare Zrinski’s castles on the Una,
where he found no men on duty; indeed, the troops the lord ban allegedly
kept on the border were “neither to be seen nor available for questioning.” 252
Zrinski was then meeting with Ferdinand and no direct response to Ungnad’s
accusation is preserved, but it is clear that he resisted taking orders on where
to station his men. 253 Ungnad’s report became the basis for a royal proposi-
tion, presented by Ungnad himself to Slavonia’s Congregation of Nobles in
December 1554. Some fortresses, like Sisak, lacked only the finishing
touches. At other sites, where construction had begun at the king’s expense,
local nobles had not kept their promises to provide lumber and peasant la-
bor. 254
Control of peasant labor was a thorny issue, 255 but the immediate need
was to ramp up the number of soldiers at key fortresses, and this could only
be done if the Inner Austrian estates consented to a much higher level of
subsidies. The problem was magnified by the fact that there were no imperial
Türkenhilfen in these years; Germany in 1552–1553 was torn by civil war.
Grants from the three Inner Austrian duchies in 1546 had totaled 134,000
gulden, which supported frontier expenditures of 24,000 gulden a year by
Styria and 13,000 gulden a year by Carniola. Ferdinand himself attended a
key meeting of the Inner Austrian estates in Graz early in 1553, at which
deputies agreed to maintain substantially more troops on the frontier. By
1556, Styria, Carniola, and Carinthia had doubled the level of their contribu-
tions, from 134,000 to 280,000 gulden a year. 256 Styria, by far the wealthiest
of the three, 257 thus had 585,000 gulden in military expenses between 1552
and 1555. 258 At the same time, since taxes were collected slowly and soldiers
demanded payment on time, each province also contracted debts to make up
the shortfall. 259 The generosity of the estates reflected the fact that the Otto-
man frontier was now closer after losses of territory in Slavonia in 1552.
Also, Ferdinand’s partnership with Lutheran Saxony probably improved the
mood of Lutheran nobles, even if it did not change the awkward fact that
Lutheranism was still illegal. 260 Hans Ungnad resigned as Landeshauptmann
174 Chapter 3

of Styria in December 1555. In letters from Wittenberg, he explained to the

Austrian estates that his conscience no longer allowed him to live in a land
where true worship was forbidden by law. 261
With more funds at their disposal, commanders worked out, in consulta-
tion with the estates, which kinds of units were needed where, and how many
men. It was now taken as a given that troops had to be on duty for the whole
year. As Ungnad explained to Archduke Maximilian, Ottoman tactics made it
unwise to pull troops off the frontier in any season. 262 In 1553, Lenković
proposed a budget of 67,000 gulden for Croatia proper—five times more
than Carniola had spent on Croatia in 1548. This proposal also shows the
early stages of a tendency for Habsburg planners to rely more and more on
firearms. 263 For his own fortresses, including Senj, Lenković wanted not just
more garrison soldiers but also 340 “good musketeers.” Taking this step was
expensive because musketeers commanded higher wages, as did the German
Landsknechte who now turned up on budgets for Slavonia. 264 Slavonia’s
budget for 1553, apparently as approved by the estates of Styria, included
1,375 light cavalry, 1,413 men of the country on garrison duty (haramia),
and 350 Landsknechte. 265 In 1555 Archduke Maximilian had a summary
prepared of expenditures over the past year. In Slavonia, the estates of Styria
paid nearly 50,000 gulden for infantry wages, 39,000 for cavalry, and about
15,000 for officers’ pay and other expenses, or about 104,000 in all. In
Croatia proper, Carniola paid out a total of 65,000 gulden, about what
Lenković had proposed a few years before. 266 These two provinces were thus
spending 169,000 gulden a year, as opposed to 37,000 in 1546. According to
another previous-year summary, from March 1556, Lower Austria spent
88,500 for light horse and infantry in Hungary, 267 while the three Inner
Austrian duchies together spent 188,400 in Slavonia and Croatia. 268
In 1556, the territory to be defended shrank still further. While Habsburg
forces were engaged in southwestern Hungary in actions discussed below,
Bosnia’s new governor—Kara Mustafa Beg Sokolović 269 —took the occa-
sion to conquer Kostajnica, the most important Habsburg position on the
lower Una. As was now common, the garrisons at two nearby fortresses
promptly deserted. 270 In effect, Kara Mustafa pinched off a Habsburg salient
along the right bank of the Sava. The frontier now traced a roughly straight
line from the Drava southwest to the Adriatic, running east of Sisak on the
Sava and just east of Bihać on the upper Una. Modern Croatia, with a land
area somewhat smaller than Matthias Corvinus’s Croatia, encompasses
56,600 square kilometers. The Croatia of 1556—“remnants of remnants,” it
 Diplomacy and Kleinkrieg, 1542–1556 175

was called—covered only about 16,800 square kilometers. 271 But this rump
Croatia had greater political and military solidity. The division between north
and south was overcome; from 1558, there was only one Sabor, with nobles
from Slavonia as well as Croatia proper. 272 More important, the Inner Aus-
trian provinces responsible for Croatia now had, at least in Slavonia, an
Ottoman frontier that was short enough to defend and close enough to their
own borders to be of serious concern. The Ottomans had gotten this far in the
seventy years since Corvinus’s death; in Slavonia, they would not get much
farther.

Szigetvár

In the sixteenth century, Varaždin county in Slavonia was separated from

Zala county in southwestern Hungary by the Drava River. But the Slavonia
that Ferdinand inherited in 1527 was more a province of Hungary than part
of a separate kingdom called Croatia 273; for example, nobles domiciled on
one side of the Drava often had properties on the other side. While
Međimurje, between the Drava and the Mur, is now part of Croatia, the
Međimurje over which Nikola Zrinski presided as Lord of Čakovec was part
of Zala county in Hungary. 274 In terms of military administration, the Drava
separated the Slavonian and the Trans-Danubian sectors of the frontier; but
Styria had responsibilities in both areas and moved troops back and forth as
needed. In June 1553, the frontier east of Zagreb was short of men because of
troops sent across the Drava to provide cover for work on fortress repairs at
Babócsa. In 1554, Ungnad had orders from Ferdinand to hold troops ready to
respond to threats against the fortress of Szigetvár. 275
Hungary’s diet had recommended Szigetvár as the anchor fortress for the
Trans-Danubian sector in 1543. Szigetvár was built in the fifteenth century
on three islands connected by bridges: an unwalled town, a walled town, and
a fortress surrounding a moated citadel. 276 Szigetvár’s “pawn-lord,” who
held it from the crown, 277 had an evil reputation in Ottoman Hungary be-
cause of constant raids by his hajduks. The Porte twice asked that Szigetvár
be handed over as a token of Ferdinand’s goodwill. 278 When Szigetvár es-
cheated to the crown by the pawn-lord’s death in 1550, 279 Ferdinand named
as commanders Wolfgang Derffy (d. 1554) and then Markus Horwath. But
since hajduk raids continued under both royal captains, 280 Ottoman skirmish-
ers kept Szigetvár under a quasi-siege, making it difficult to get supplies
in. 281
176 Chapter 3

The fighting here involved more than the tit-for-tat strikes characteristic
of Kleinkrieg. Ferdinand had to prevent the Ottomans from making Buda a
base for strikes toward Vienna. The best way of doing so was to interdict the
Danube corridor, by which Buda was supplied from Belgrade. In 1553, Fer-
dinand chose as one of his ambassadors to the Porte Ferenc Zay, commander
of the gunboat fleet based at Komárom; in their first report, Zay and his
colleague observed that the Ottomans “do not at this time have much of a
fleet” on the river. 282 In 1554, the ambassadors obtained a copy of a letter in
which Buda’s Toygun Paşa requested the sultan’s permission to attack both
Szigetvár and nearby Babócsa: “Navigation along the Danube will not be
safe,” he said, “until we take those fortresses.” 283 Some months later, another
Habsburg diplomat heard complaints about hajduks from Szigetvár as he
passed through Mohács on the Danube. 284 In July 1556, ‘Ali Paşa Semiz,
returning for a second stint as governor-general of Buda, claimed that during
his three-year absence “bands of robbers” from Szigetvár and elsewhere had
“destroyed 927 ships on the Danube belonging to Muslims.” 285 Regardless of
the assurances he sent to the Porte, Ferdinand clearly had an interest in letting
Szigetvár’s hajduks do their work.
Szigetvár depended on Međimurje. 286 Southwestern Hungary, including
Međimurje, once the grain basket for a large area, had been depopulated by
Ottoman invasions in the 1520s and the 1540s. Yet no fortress could survive
without supplies from local peasants, and around Szigetvár itself Ottoman
skirmishers made colonization impossible. By contrast, Zrinski, using tax
privileges authorized by Vienna, had attracted large numbers of settlers to the
“island” of Međimurje, formed by the Styrian border in the west, the Mur on
the north, and the Drava on the south. Newcomers came not just from the
battle zones of Slavonia and Croatia proper, but also from Požega, the closest
Ottoman sancak. 287 By 1555, Zrinski claimed to have twelve thousand colo-
nists in Međimurje; their number had been even larger, he said, before a
recent plague. In 1556, Tamás Nádasdy, the commander for the Cis-Danu-
bian sector of the frontier, pointed to Zrinski as the one magnate who could
victual Habsburg forces operating in southwestern Hungary: “His estates
between the Drava and the Mur are still intact and populated.” 288 Međimurje
in turn was defended by Zrinski’s troops, including those he commanded as
ban of Croatia. His fortresses on the Drava and the Mur (taken over from
Keglević) 289 were useless without men to defend them. At one point, Zrinski
walked out of a meeting among regional commanders because a plan for the
troop dispositions made no provision for “the island of Međimurje.” 290
 Diplomacy and Kleinkrieg, 1542–1556 177

Having received from the Porte permission to besiege Szigetvár, Toygun

Paşa began the work of entrenchment in July or August 1555. 291 Then came
a missive from Ferdinand: Szigetvár was a royal castle and thus could not
lawfully be attacked during the truce that was then in force. 292 Toygun Paşa
gave orders to break off the siege, but he also sent two envoys to Szigetvár’s
captain demanding an end to raids into Ottoman territory. These men the
garrison treated with a savage act of contempt: one was beheaded, the other
sent back minus his nose and ears. A few months later, as Oghier Ghislain de
Busbecq 293 passed through Buda as Ferdinand’s new ambassador to the
Porte, he sent back a report which indicated that Toygun Paşa had lost the
respect of his subordinates. 294 At the Porte, ‘Ali Paşa Semiz told Ferdinand’s
diplomats that he had been named to replace Toygun, with instructions to
restore peace on the frontier. In fact, his orders were to finish well the job
that Toygun had badly begun. Having first captured Babócsa, he came before
Szigetvár in June 1556. Using timber and mud, his men filled in the water-
courses to gain access to the walls of the fortress. Ferdinand ordered mobil-
ization in three areas: under Nádasdy in the Trans-Danubian sector; under
Zrinski in Slavonia; and, in Styria, under his second son, Archduke Ferdi-
nand, who was to have overall command. The three commanders adopted a
plan 295: to draw ‘Ali Paşa off from Szigetvár, they invested Babócsa. Buda’s
governor-general diverted his men to Babócsa but could not prevent its re-
capture. When he returned to Szigetvár, the garrison had artillery in place to
bombard his camp. On 30 July, ‘Ali Paşa withdrew.

CONCLUSION

For thirty-five years, Ferdinand calibrated his decisions to those of his older
brother. After the failure of the Habsburg-Imperial army at Pest in 1542, he
wanted to continue the fight against the Ottomans, as supporters in Hungary
expected of him. But this possibility was foreclosed by Charles’s insistence
on entering into serious negotiations with the Porte. In fact, the 1547 Peace
of Edirne brought a change for the better. Those among Ferdinand’s subjects
who had experience of full-scale war could best appreciate the benefits of its
absence. For the treaty’s five-year term, and then during additional years in
which the Ottomans granted truces, there was no repetition of the havoc
wrought by the huge armies that Sultan Suleyman had led into Hungary six
times. 296 Even as ‘Ali Paşa brought his troops before Szigetvár in 1556,
178 Chapter 3

Ferdinand renounced his claim to Transylvania; this added humiliation was

tolerable, so long as it prolonged the truce. 297
When Charles V abdicated from all his titles as of January 1556, Ferdi-
nand became head of the family, with freedom to make his own decisions.
Though not crowned as Holy Roman Emperor until March 1558, he was the
acknowledged leader of a powerful confederate state which had, with the
1555 Peace of Augsburg, conjured away the demons of internal war. One
could assume that the Türkenhilfe granted by the imperial diet in 1556 298
would be followed by others, complementing the increased levels of funding
to which the Austrian estates consented. The success of attacks on Danube
shipping by the garrisons at Szigetvár and elsewhere showed that Ottoman
defenses were not impervious to pressure, and the successful defense of
Szigetvár in the summer of 1556 indicated a capacity for effective coordina-
tion among Habsburg forces.
Hitherto, Ferdinand had faced a choice between two bad alternatives. He
could launch against one or another well-defended Ottoman position a frontal
assault that was likely to fail, as others had. 299 Or he could seek peace by
offering still more concessions, hoping to slake, by his subservience, the
thirst for expansion 300 that the Ottomans normally satisfied by conquest.
Now there was a third option, a plausible strategy of forward defense. The
example of Szigetvár suggested that one could forestall attack by applying
systematic pressure along the frontier so as to keep the enemy off balance.
This strategy was in part predicated on the expectation that an aging and
infirm sultan would not likely embark on another full-scale invasion—an
assumption that Habsburg planners were evidently willing to make. 301 More
important, a forward defense depended on a perhaps unlikely political con-
juncture. The Habsburg Monarchy (that is, the Austrian duchies and the
kingdoms of Bohemia and Hungary) was now loosely associated, under Fer-
dinand’s authority, with the multiple territories that made up the Holy Roman
Empire. 302 Together, these many and various polities had the resources to
support a common plan. But would they do so?
Ferdinand probably preferred not to rule out any of his options. 303 Now,
however, the Porte demanded that he choose between the forward defense
that Szigetvár represented and further appeasement. In January 1557, word
came that Ferdinand could have a new treaty if he razed both Szigetvár and
Eger 304; the latter, north and east of Buda, was also noted for its hajduk raids.
Some months later, as two Habsburg ambassadors were preparing to depart,
 Diplomacy and Kleinkrieg, 1542–1556 179

Rüstem Paşa told them there was in fact only one condition for peace:
Szigetvár must be “leveled to the ground.” 305
Ferdinand was inclined to consult before making a decision. In this case,
consultation was imperative, first because the resources of the Ottoman Em-
pire exceeded those of any one of its European neighbors, and second be-
cause the Habsburg Monarchy was a composite polity made up of composite
polities. 306 Political elites in each subordinate territory had a proud tradition
of independent action. The conglomerate Habsburg state was thus held to-
gether as much by the process of consultation as by the person of the sove-
reign. Accordingly, Ferdinand presented his dilemma to the assemblies of his
leading subjects—the Hungarian Diet, then the Austrian and Bohemian es-
tates, and, last but not least, the imperial diet. Each body received copies of
pertinent diplomatic correspondence (including the Ottoman demand) and
copies of the responses from bodies that had already weighed in. The various
opinions had common themes—the strategic importance of Szigetvár and the
unreliability of Ottoman promises of peace—and they all came down on the
same side of the question. Thus after a year and a half of patient communica-
tion with his provinces, his advisers, and the imperial diet, Ferdinand had the
backing he needed for a reply to the sultan’s demand: his answer was no. 307

NOTES

1. Leslie Peirce, “The Family as Faction: Dynastic Politics in the Reign of Süleyman,” in
Gilles Veinstein, ed., Soliman le Magnifique et son temps (Paris: École du Louvre, 1992),
105–116.
2. Finkel, Osman’s Dream, 132–133, 143–144. Muhammet Zahit Atçil, “State and
Government in the Sixteenth Century Ottoman World: A Reconsideration of the Grand Vizier-
ate of Rüstem Paşa” (M.A. thesis, University of Chicago, 2009) (I am grateful to Dr. Atçil for
giving me a copy). Prince Selim, the second of Hürrem’s two sons, eventually did succeed, as
Selim II (1566).
3. E.g., Malvezzi to Karl Adam, Constantinople, 8 March 1548, and to Ferdinand, Con-
stantinople, 28 May 1550, Austro-Turcica, Letters 72, 222–225, and 173, 454–456.
4. At the end of 1545, Rüstem Paşa told Habsburg envoys that a third of the men were lost
on marches to Vienna: letters from Nicholas Sick (Austro-Turcica, no. 30, 83–86, here 83) and
from Geraard Veltwijck (Austro-Turcica, no. 31, 86–98, here 89–90).
5. By a treaty of 1538, the childless Szapolyai recognized Ferdinand as his heir, but just
prior to his death his wife gave birth to a son, János Zsigmund.
6. Petritsch, “Die Ungarnpolitik Ferdinands I,” 112–118; Fodor, “Ottoman Policy towards
Hungary,” here 146–161; for the powers of a paşa or beglerbeg, see Imber, The Ottoman
Empire, 177–193.
180 Chapter 3

7. Fekete, Buda and Pest under Ottoman Rule, 17–19; Géza Dávid, “Incomes and Posses-
sions of the Beglerbegis of Buda in the 16th Century,” in Veinstein, Soliman le Magnifique,
385–398.
8. Andreas Birken, Die Provinzen des osmanischen Reiches (Stuttgart: Reichert, 1976),
28–31.
9. Osmanische Beamtenschreiben, doc. 43, Toygun Paşa to Ferdinand, Buda, 10 Septem-
ber 1554, 94–95; Dávid, “Incomes and Possessions,” 394. I borrow the term governor-general
(for a paşa) from Imber, The Ottoman Empire.
10. Tranquillus Andronicus to Ferdinand, Constantinople, end of 1542, Austro-Turcica,
Letter 4, 21–30, here 23–25: Rüstem Paşa suggested that only a spy would have come via
Bosnia and not the “shorter route” through Buda; Andronicus’s Turkish-speaking servant was
tortured and beheaded.
11. Rhoads Murphey, “Süleyman’s Eastern Policy,” in Halil İnalcik and Cemal Kafardar,
eds., Süleyman the Second and His Time (Istanbul: Isis, 1993), 259–278.
12. Described as a tribute by everyone but Habsburg officials: Ernst Dieter Petritsch, “Trib-
ut oder Ehrengeschenk? Ein Beitrag zu den habsburgisch-osmanischen Beziehungen in der
zweiten hälfte des 16en Jahrhunderts,” in Elisabeth Springer and Leopold Kammerhofer, eds.,
Archiv und Forschung. Das Haus- Hof- und Staatsarchiv in seiner Bedeuntung für die Ges-
chichte Österreichs und Europas (Vienna: Verlag für Geschichte und Politik, 1993), 49–58.
13. Imber, The Ottoman Empire, 53–56; Teréz Oborni, “Die Herrschaft Ferdinands I in
Ungarn,” in Fuchs and Kohler, Kaiser Ferdinand I, here 162–164; Mihna Berindei, “Le
problème transylvain dans le politique de Süleyman Ier,” in Veinstein, Soliman le Magnifique
et son temps, 505–510. The adviser, Friar Juraj Utješinović (d. 1551), called himself Martinuz-
zi, using the name of his Venetian patrician mother.
14. Imber, The Ottoman Empire, 58–60; Allouche, Origins and Development of the Otto-
man-Safavid Conflict, 141–145.
15. For example, Balthasar Hubmaier, a celebrated Anabaptist preacher, was arrested in
Mikulov/Nikolsburg (Moravia) and died a martyr’s death in Vienna in 1528: Dillon, King and
Estates in the Bohemian Lands, 71.
16. Kohler, Ferdinand I, 185–192; James D. Tracy, “Heresy Law and Centralization under
Mary of Hungary: Conflict between the Council of Holland and the Central Government over
the Enforcement of Charles V’s Placards,” Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 73 (1982):
284–307; Ernst Benz, “Hans von Ungnad und die Reformation unter den Südslawen,” Zeits-
chrift für Kirchengeschichte 58 (1939): 387–435; Štefanec, Heretik njegova Veličanstva, a
biography of Juraj Zrinski.
17. In Charles’s letters, Protestants are called desviados.
18. Suzanne Hequet, The Regensburg Colloquy of 1541: In Pursuit of Church Unity
(Saarbrücken: Verlag Dr. Müller, 2009).
19. For his involvement, see Peter Matheson, Cardinal Contarini at Regensburg (Oxford:
Clarendon, 1972).
20. For Charles’s Algerian (1541) and French wars (1541–1544), see Tracy, Emperor
Charles V, chapter 8 and 9.
21. Nicholas Salm and Sigmund von Herberstein to Ferdinand, the sultan’s camp before
Buda, 16 September 1541, Austro-Turcica, 2, 5–17, here 15.
22. Ferdinand’s proposition to the Diet of Speyer, presented 17 February 1542, DRJR 12:1,
475–479.
23. Ungnad to Charles V, 9 October 1542, Lanz, Letter 501, II, 374–377.
24. Mažuran, Hrvati i Osmansko Carstvo, 104; Pálffy, The Kingdom of Hungary, 48.
 Diplomacy and Kleinkrieg, 1542–1556 181

25. Loserth, Innerösterreich und die militärischen Massnahmen gegen die Türken, 33–43;
Petritsch, “Die Ungarnpolitik Ferdinands I,” 119–127; Klaić, Povijest Hrvata, V, 205.
26. MOE II, 568–579 (November 1543).
27. The leaders of the league were Landgrave Philip of Hesse and Elector John Frederick of
Saxony. The Interim was so called because it was to be a stopgap measure, pending decisions
by the Council of Trent.
28. Horst Rabe, Reichsbund und Interim. Die Religionspolitik Karls V und der Reichstag
von Augsburg 1547/1548 (Cologne, Vienna: Böhlau, 1971).
29. Duke Moritz of Saxony was promised the more prestigious electoral title in return for
supporting Charles in his coming war against Moritz’s cousin, Elector John Frederick.
30. Ungnad to Nádasdy, in camp near Győr, 10 October 1552, Pray, Letter 137, II, 331–333.
For events in Transylvania, see Béla Köpeczi, László Makkai, András Móczy, and Zoltán Szas,
eds., History of Transylvania, tr. Bennett Kopvrig (Highland Lakes, NJ: Social Science Mono-
graphs, 2010), 619–630.
31. Brady, German Histories, 224–229; Tracy, Emperor Charles V, 229–248.
32. Andronicus to Ferdinand, Constantinople, end of 1542, Austro-Turcica, Letter 2, 21–30,
here 29.
33. Ferdinand to Charles, Prague, 12 August 1543, Archivios de Simancas, “Estado,” 639,
27: the Ottomans had not gotten their barcas grandes to Esztergom (about twenty-five miles
north of Buda along the Danube) because Visegrád was as yet under Habsburg control.
34. Busbecq, Antun Vrančić and Ferenc Zay to Ferdinand, Constantinople, 4 October 1556,
HHST I 12 Konvolut 4, 199–201.
35. Sixteen men served as paşa of Buda between 1541 and 1588, four of them for two
terms; the average tenure was two to three years: Dávid, “Incomes and Possessions of the
Beglerbegis,” 394.
36. For ‘Ali Paşa Semiz (the Fat), grand vezir from 1561 to 1565, see Encyclopaedia of
Islam, I, 398.
37. Osmanische Beamtenschreiben, doc. 11, s.d., 56–57; doc. 23, prior to 23 March [1553],
69, and doc. 22, 22 December 1552 (the quote), 67–68.
38. Ferdinand to Argento, Augsburg, 13 February 1548, and Malvezzi to Karl Adam, Con-
stantinople, 8 March 1548, Austro-Turcica, Letter 68, 213–215, and Letter 72, 222–225, here
223.
39. Toygun Paşa (1553–1556) was removed from office after failing to conquer Szigetvár;
see below.
40. Osmanische Beamtenschreiben.
41. Fekete, Buda and Pest under Turkish Rule, 38.
42. Osmanische Beamtenschriften, doc. 29, 15 November 1553, 77; Mustafa’s death is
reported in Vrančić and Zay to Ferdinand, Constantinople, 17 October 1553, HHST I 10
Konvolut 2, 57–62.
43. Markus Koebach, Die Eröberung von Fülek durch die Osmanen 1554. Eine historisch-
quellenkritische Studie zur osmanischen Expansion im östlichen Europa (Vienna: Böhlau,
1994), 83–89; cf. Toygun to Ferdinand, 10 September 1554, Osmanische Beamtenschreiben,
doc. 43, 301. The Lord of Fülek was Ferenc Bebek.
44. Above, note 10.
45. Rectors of Dubrovnik to envoys to Bosnia, 23 April 1545, “Lettere de Levante,” f.
18v–19: a youth had turned Muslim in a dispute with his brother, and the merchants were
arrested when the brother tried to bring him back.
182 Chapter 3

46. Josip Žontar, “Michael Černović, Geheimagent Ferdinands I und Maximilians II, und
seine Berichterstättung,” Mitteilungen des Österreichischen Staatsarchivs 24 (1971): 169–222,
here 198–205.
47. Fehim Dž. Spaho and Ahmed S. Aličić, eds., and Behija Zlatar, introd., Opširni popis
Kliškog Sandžaka iz 1550. godine (Sarajevo: Orientalni Institut, 2007), a translation of an
Ottoman census from 1550, with an introduction in English, pp. xvi–xxii.
48. Biščević, Bosanski namjesnici, no. 46; Dino Mujadžević, “Osmanska osvajana u Slavo-
niji 1552, u svjetlu osmanskih arhivskih izvora,” Povjesni prilozi 36 (2009): 89–108, here
92–94; Ivan Ručić to Lenković, Šibenik, 1 July 1542, Monumenta Habsburgica Croatiae, III,
Letter 109, 106–107. Andronicus to Ferdinand, Constantinople, end of 1542, Austro-Turcica,
Letter 4, 21–30, here 30. For Andronicus’s experience at the Porte, see Contemporaries of
Erasmus, I, 56–57.
49. The castles captured in the spring of 1543 were Stupčanica, Vočin, and Stijena:
Mažuran, Hrvati i Osmansko Carstvo, 104; Klaić, Povijest Hrvata, V, 202–207. Ungnad con-
tinued to serve as Landeshauptmann of Styria.
50. Mažuran, Hrvati i Osmansko Carstvo, 104–107 (the quote); Klaić, Povijest Hrvata, V,
207, 211.
51. Nikola Zrinski to Ivan Wernikar, Gvozdansko, 24 July 1544, Monumenta Habsburgica
Croatiae, II, Letter 183, 179, and to Wildenstayn, Pedal, 14 August 1544, Prilozi Styria, 197
(the quote attributed to Ulama Beg).
52. Petritsch, “Die Ungarnpolitik Ferdinands I,” 125–133; Austro-Turcica, editors’ note,
739 (truce in Hungary); and Zrinski to Georg Wildenstayn, Varaždin, 19 June 1544, Prilozi
Styria, 195.
53. For this paragraph, save as noted, see Petritsch, “Die Ungarnpolitik Ferdinands I,”
chapters 17–20.
54. Veltwijck to Ferdinand, Edirne, 20 February 1547, Austro-Turcica, Letter 41, 131–149,
here 134–135; cf. 136, his conversation in Regensburg with a Syrian monk who claimed to be
an ambassador from the shah. Barbara Palombini, Bündniswerben abendländischer Mächte um
Persien 1453–1600 (Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1989).
55. Veltwijck to Ferdinand, Beyekcekmece, 22 July 1547, Austro-Turcica, Letter 47,
160–163, here 161–162; Allouche, Origins and Development of the Ottoman-Safavid Conflict,
141; Malvezzi to Ferdinand, Constantinople, 22 December 1548, Austro-Turcica, Letter 141,
382; Mujadžević, “Osmanska osvajana u Slavoniji,” 94; Muvekkit, Povijest Bosne, 133.
56. Instructions for Veit Ugrinović, 1546, Austro-Turcica, Letter 33, 98–100; for Veltwijck,
13 July 1546, Letter 34, 105; for Malvezzi and Justus Argento, Letter 52, 172–177; and for
Argento, 13 February 1548, 213.
57. Veltwijck to Ferdinand, Constantinople, 9 October 1546, Austro-Turcica, Letter 37,
113–118, here 114, and 14 December 1546, Letter 38, 119–123, here 119–120.
58. Mažuran, Hrvati i Osmansko Carstvo, 108–109, citing Miklós Istvánffy (1538–1615),
Regni Hungariae Historia (Cologne: J. W. Friessen, 1685); Klaić, Povijest Hrvata, V,
217–218. Bartol Lerner’s report to the estates of Styria (Varaždin, 5 May 1544, Prilozi Styria,
17, 191–192) should apparently be redated to 1545. For other duels of this kind, see Nataša
Štefanec, “Institutional Control of Violence: Imperial Peace and Local Wars on the Slavonian
Border in the Second Half of the 16th Century,” in Strohmeyer and Spannenberger, Frieden
und Konfliktmanagement in interkulturellen Räumen. Das Osmanische Reich und die Habsbur-
germonarchie in der frühen Neuzeit (Wiesbaden: Steiner, 2013), 62–83, here 74–77.
59. Not mentioned in Voje, Slovenci pod pritiskom turškega nasilja, 36, but cf. Mujadžević,
“Osmanska osvajana u Slavoniji,” 91. Instructions for Sick, Worms, 21 May 1545, Austro-
Turcica, Letter 21, 59–69, here 65; opinion of Leonhard von Fels, s.l., end of May 1545, Letter
 Diplomacy and Kleinkrieg, 1542–1556 183

22, 69–70; and instructions for Veltwijck, Regensburg, 13 July 1546, Letter 34, 100–107, here
102–103.
60. Nicholas Sick to Ferdinand, Edirne, 10 November 1545, Austro-Turcica, Letter 27,
76–81, here 79–80; Malvezzi to Ferdinand, Constantinople, 30 November 1547, Letter 57,
190–191; and Veltwijck to Ferdinand, Augsburg, 7 December 1547, Letter 58, 192–196, here
195.
61. The sources cited by Biščević, Bosanski namjesnici, do not agree on who governed
Bosnia from 1546 to 1549. Thereafter, Hadim ‘Ali Beg (no. 50) served in 1550, then came Sofi
Mehmed Paşa (no. 52) in 1551 and Kara Mustafa Beg Sokolović in 1555–1556. Biščević has
Malkoč Beg (transferred from Herzegovina, no. 54) serving in 1553 if not earlier, and Kara
Osman Beg (no. 55) in 1554. But Habsburg sources say that “Mehmed Beg” was governor of
Bosnia in 1554: e.g., reports received by the war council, Ptuj, 24 August 1554, Monumenta
Habsburgica Croatiae, III, Letter 429, 482–483.
62. Mujadžević, “Osmanska osvajana u Slavoniji,” 95–97 (the town was Starigrad).
63. Mujadžević, “Osmanska osvajana u Slavoniji,” 102–107 (the quote, p. 105); Klaić,
Povijest Hrvata, V, 243. The younger Petar Erdödy was a nephew of the late bishop of Zagreb.
64. Mažuran, Hrvati i Osmansko Carstvo, 115–119; Mujadžević, “Osmanska osvajana u
Slavoniji,” 100–107; Klaić, Povijest Hrvata, V, 242–243. Ulama Beg’s son was called Džafer
Beg.
65. See the maps in Mažuran, Hrvati i Osmansko Carstvo, 110, 123.
66. Jörg Walter to the estates of Styria, Varaždin, 25 October 1552, Monumenta Habsburgi-
ca Croatiae, III, Letter 392, 345–353; Zrinsky to Ferdinand, Rakovec, 13 October 1552, Monu-
menta Habsburgica Croatiae, III, Letter 389, 441–442.
67. Erdödy to Georg Siglstorffer and Martin Gall, Zelin, 8 July 1553, Monumenta Habsbur-
gica Croatiae, III, Letter 402, 458.
68. Mujadžević, “Osmanska osvajana u Slavoniji,” 107: the only notable change was that
Čazma was retaken by the Habsburgs in 1606.
69. Arguably, Charles V secured hegemony in Italy by taking possession of the duchy of
Milan (1535).
70. Cozzi, “La vicenda storica,” 20–22.
71. Unlike his predecessor, Alvise Rhenier, Bernardo Navagero refused to forward Malvez-
zi’s letters to Vienna, even though Ferdinand was told by Venice’s ambassador that his instruc-
tions were no different than Rhenier’s: Malvizzi to Ferdinand, letters of 7 October and 17
December 1550, and 4 March 1551, Austro-Turcica, 518, 533–534, and 571; Ferdinand to
Malvezzi, Augsburg, 4 March 1551, Austro-Turcica, 1557–1558.
72. On Alvise Rhenier, see the editor’s note to his relazione of 7 January 1550, CRV II, doc.
XXXV, 186–187, and Malvezzi to Ferdinand, 7 October 1550, Austro-Turcica, Letter 194,
514–519, here 518.
73. On the capture of Marano, see Pelissier to Francis I, Venice, 18 January, 12, 15 Febru-
ary, 20, 26 March, and 9 May 1542, Charrière, I, 528–548; Cozzi, “La vicenda storica,” 36–38;
Žontar, Obveščevalna služba, 19.
74. Chapter 2, notes 107–109.
75. Tracy, “Il commercio italiano nel territorio ottomano,” 442–449.
76. Veltwijck to Ferdinand, Constantinople, 9 October 1548, Austro-Turcica, Letter 37,
113–118, here 115: at “the first harbor,” at a “second location” [Bulak], and at Alexandria. On
Bulak, now a suburb of Cairo, where Egyptian spice merchants bought the wares they sold in
Alexandria, see Nelly Hanna, An Urban History of Bulak in the Mamluk and Ottoman Eras
(Bulaq: Institut français d’Archéologie Orientale, 1983).
184 Chapter 3

77. Navagero’s relazione of February 1553, Relazioni, doc. 10, 33–110, here 37–39:
10,800,000 ducats in gross income, including 1,800,000 from Egypt and Arabia, from which
the Porte received, after deducting for local expenses, 900,000. On Navagero, see Carla Coco
and Flora Manzonetto, Baili Veneziani alla Sublima Porta (Venice: Stamperia di Venezia,
1985), 41–45.
78. Atçil, “State and Government in the 16th Century Ottoman World,” 38–44; Tracy, “The
Grand Vezir and the Small Republic: Dubrovnik and Rüstem Paşa.”
79. Maurice Aymard, Venise, Raguse et le commerce du blé pendant la seconde moitié du
XVIe siècle (Paris: S.E.V.P.E.N., 1966); on Rüstem Paşa and his daughter, 51–52.
80. Kapudan Paşa. The admiral at this time was Mehmed Paşa Sokolović, later a grand
vezir.
81. The corsair was Saban Reis. Mehmed Paşa Sokolović, now beglerbeg of Rumelia, to the
Signoria, Constantinople, 27 May 1549, “Documenti Turchi,” 644, 164; Suleyman to Doge
Francesco Dona, 3–12 October 1550, “Documenti Turchi,” 657, 166–167. Cf. Malvezzi to
Ferdinand, mentioning this and another such incident, Constantinople, 14 April and 20 May
1548, Austro-Turcica, Letters 81 (240–241) and 84 (251–254).
82. Malvezzi to Ferdinand, Constantinople, 21 October 1548, 31 January, 11 March, and 22
April 1550, Austro-Turcica, Letters 103 (298), 147 (396–397), 151 (405–406), and 163
(453–454).
83. In Venetian Dalmatia (and in modern Croatia), Zadar, Šibenik, Trogir, and Split; in
Venetian Albania (and in modern Montenegro), Kotor, Budva, Bar (Antivari), and Ulcinj
(Dulcigno). The coast between Split and Budva was ruled by Dubrovnik, save for Herzegovi-
na’s outpost at the mouth of the Neretva.
84. Syndic Antonio Diedo’s relazione, 1553, CRV III, doc. I, 1–29, explicitly exempts la
fabbrica from his summary of Dalmatia’s expenses. In addition to fortifications, “building”
involved projects like barracks for soldiers, so as not to billet them on civilians: Calabi, “Citta e
territorio,” 957–958.
85. Diedo’s relazione, CRV III, doc. I, here 14–15.
86. Report from rector Antonio Michiel, 13 July 1557, CRV III, doc. XII, 99–104.
87. From rector Alvise Mudato, 18 December 1530, CRV II, doc. V, 51–52; chapter 2, notes
127, 136. Herceg Novi lay on the outermost part of the bay, Kotor on the inmost part.
88. Giovanni Battista Giustiniano, “Descrizione di tutta la Dalmazia,” 1553, CRV II, doc.
XXXVII, 193–268, here 243–246; report of Syndic Antonio Diedo, 1553, CRV III, doc. I,
1–29, here 9–10.
89. Mayhew, Dalmatia between Venetian and Ottoman Rule, 109; Diedo’s relazione (note
84); from rector Paulo Donado, 20 November 1553, CRV III, doc. IV, 45–48; and rector
Leonardo Bollani, 6 April 1555, CRV III, doc. VIII, 64–69.
90. “Documenti Turchi,” nos. 541, 542, 601.
91. Diedo’s relazione, 2–3; Diedo faulted town rectors for taking presents for the Ottomans
(like silk vests) from their own wardrobes and overestimating their value when entering a debit
in the city’s accounts.
92. CRV III, doc. I, 1–29, here 28: income of 50,000 ducats, expenses of 51,130.
93. From Paulo Giustiniani, captain of Zadar, 13 February 1553, CRV III, doc. V, 48–55;
Raukar et al., Zadar pod Mletačkom upravom, 213.
94. E.g., the Černojevići and the Paštrovići. Sanudo, Diarii, III, 406, 457–458, 490, 491;
Sanudo Odnošaji, VIII, 233, 13 March 1526.
95. Elizabeth Roberts, Realm of the Black Mountain: A History of Montenegro (Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University Press, 2007).
 Diplomacy and Kleinkrieg, 1542–1556 185

96. From rector Francesco de Cha Taiapetra, 1527, ASV-DAC, Busta 61, f. 63v–65v; from
rector Domenicus Gritti, 29 December 1528, CRV II, doc. IV, 47–51; “Descrizione di tutta la
Dalmazia” (as in note 88), 245–246.
97. One of the syndics for 1553 gives, for the city of Šibenik, a population of about 9,000,
including 1,200 men capable of bearing arms; Zadar had a reported 6,500 people, but 1,400
capable of bearing arms: “Descrizione di tutta la Dalmazia,” 204–205, 190–193.
98. From rector Joannis Quarzonibus, 1 July 1557, CRV III, doc. XII, 91–93.
99. . Relazione of Diedo, CRV III, doc. I, here 16; “Descrizione di tutta la Dalmazia,” 206.
100. “Descrizione di tutta la Dalmazia,” 202–204; relazione of Diedo, CRV III, doc. I, here
15.
101. Gabela, a word for an excise tax.
102. “Descrizione di tutta la Dalmazia,” 204–205.
103. Between Zadar and the long islands of Ugljan and Pašman.
104. Report of rector Antonio da Mula, 1540 or 1541, CRV II, doc. XXVII, 170–175; Pede-
rin, Mletačka uprava, 15–16.
105. “Descrizione di tutta la Dalmazia,” 190–193.
106. Bailo Alvise Rhenier, Relazione, 7 January 1550, CRV II, doc. XXXV, 186; “Descrizi-
one di tutta la Dalmazia,” 198; and below, note 110.
107. Report of Antonio da Mula, CRV II, doc. XXVII, 172. Cf. chapter 1, note 88.
108. Relazione of Alvise Rhenier, CRV II, doc. XXXV, 186–187; “Documenti Turchi,” 646,
165. Pedani, Dalla frontiere al confine, 43, mentions a similar revision of the boundaries in
Venice’s favor in 1531–1533.
109. “Descrizione di tutta la Dalmazia,” 190–193.
110. Cf. Bracewell, The Uskoks of Senj, 31, quoting a Venetian official: “They are coarse and
dirty, and live together with their animals constantly.”
111. “Descrizione di tutta la Dlamazia,” 190–193, and Diedo’s report, CRV III, 1–29, here
17. Report of Captain Paulo Giustiniani, 13 February 1553, CRV III, doc. V, 48–55, here
50–51.
112. A supposition that may be supported by Diedo’s suggestion that Zadar’s contado could
still furnish oarsmen for as many as ten or twelve galleys.
113. Suleyman to Doge Francesco Dona, 30 June–9 July 1546, “Documenti Turchi,” 601,
155.
114. “Descrizione di tutta la Dalmazia,” 190–193.
115. “Descrizione di tutta la Dalmazia,” 215; Diedo’s report, CRV III, doc. I, 1–29, here
13–14; from Leonardo Bollani, rector of Kotor, 6 April 1555, CRV III, doc. VIII, 64–69, here
67.
116. Diedo’s report, CRV III, doc. I, 1–29, here 3.
117. Šarić, “Planini i Morlački Svijet u Dalmacij,” 55–94; Moačanin, Turska Hrvatska,
64–84.
118. T. J. Winnifrith, The Vlachs: The History of a Balkan People (New York: St. Martin’s,
1987), chapters 8, 9; Bracewell, The Uskok of Senj, 25.
119. Spaho and Aličić, Opširni Popis Kliškog Sandžaka iz 1550, English introduction,
xvii–xix.
120. Kaser, Freier Bauer und Soldat, 48–69.
121. Hans Ungnad to Ferdinand, s.l., [1540], Monumenta Habsburgica Croatiae, III, Letter
45, 45–46; from Antonio Michiel, rector of Zadar, 13 July 1557, CRV III, doc. XIII, 99–104,
here 102.
122. Da Mula’s relazione, for 1540–1542 or 1541–1543, CRV II, doc. XXVII, here 174.
186 Chapter 3

123. Lenković to Christoph Freiherr von Kreyg, Senj, 20 July 1544; to Jakob von Lamberg,
Senj, 7 September 1544, Monumenta Habsburgica Croatiae, III, Letter 182, 177–179, and
Letter 194, 188–189. Šarić, “Planini I Morlački Svijet u Dalmaciji,” 63. Stevka Šmitran, Gli
Uscocchi. Pirati, ribelli, guerrieri tra gli imperi Habsburgo I Ottomano e la Repubblica di
Venezia (Venice: Marsigli, 2008), 55 (one hundred attacks).
124. E.g., for the 1570s and 1580s, see Bracewell, The Uskoks of Senj, 60.
125. From Navagero, Constantinople, 11 October 1550, ASV-DAC, “Archivio Proprio degli
Ambasciatori,” 5, f. 8–11; for the marks used by merchant-shippers, see James Tracy, “Syria’s
Arab Traders as Seen by Andrea Berengo,” Oriens 37 (2009): 163–176.
126. Lenković to Anton von Thurn, Senj, 15 October 1544, Monumenta Habsburgica Croa-
tiae, III, Letter 198, 196–197; Ferdinand to Nikola Zrinski, Prague, 16 February 1549, Monu-
menta Habsburgica Croatiae, III, Letter 281, 323–324; secretary Girolamo Dandino to Ludovi-
co Beccatelli, papal nuncio in Venice, Rome, 13 December 1550, in Karlo Horvat, ed., Monu-
menta Uscocchorum Illustrantia. Ex archivis Romanis, praecipue a secreto Vaticano depromp-
ta (2 vols., Zagreb: Officina Typographica, 1910–1913), hereafter abbreviated as Monumenta
Uscocchorum, I, Letter 1, 1; Lenković to Ferdinand, Senj, 2 March 1551, Monumenta Habs-
burgica Croatiae, III, Letter 342, 394–396. Klaić, Povijest Hrvata, V, 220–221.
127. Bracewell, The Uskoks of Senj, 202.
128. Cf. Navagero’s dispatch of 2 March 1551, ASV-DAC, Archivio Proprio degli Ambas-
ciatori, 5, f. 53–56v: in response to an uskok raid, a local kadi has sent an arz to the Porte
asking that fuste be armed at Obrovac.
129. Šmitran, Gli Uscocchi, 21; “Documenti Turchi,” nos. 623, 625.
130. Declaration by fifteen merchants, 5 September 1552, “Documenti Turchi,” 701, 176.
The captain was Nicolò Balbi.
131. From Paolo Giustiniani, Zadar, 13 February 1553, CRV III, doc. V, 48–55.
132. Relazione of Paolo Guoro, Captain of the Gulf, 20 December 1556, CRV III, doc. XI,
88–91, here 91.
133. E.g., Ferdinand to Charles, České Budějovice, 28 June 1530, Familienkorrespondenz,
III, Letter 400, 587–588. Cf. Kohler, Ferdinand I, quoting a Venetian ambassador’s report from
1548: Ferdinand deals with Charles more like a son or a vassal than like a brother.
134. E.g., Charles to Ferdinand, Toledo, 8 November 1529, Familienkorrespondenz, vol. III,
Letter 240, 328–329.
135. E.g., Charles to Ferdinand, Granada, 27 July 1526, Familienkorrespondenz, vol. I, Letter
407, 411–415.
136. E.g., Charles to Ferdinand, Madrid, 9 October 1528, Familienkorrespondenz, vol. II,
Letter 204, 310–311.
137. E.g., comment at the end of marginal notes by Francisco de los Cobos, March 1531,
Corpus Documental, Letter XCVI, I, 262. Cf. Hayward Keniston, Francisco de los Cobos:
Secretary to the Emperor Charles V (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1960).
138. Dillon, King and Estates in the Bohemian Lands, 111–132. Bohemia’s estates had taken
up arms in hopes of preventing Ferdinand from joining Charles’s campaign against the Schmal-
kaldic League.
139. Kohler, Ferdinand I, 286–289.
140. Chapter 2, note 14; İnalcik, Social and Economic History of the Ottoman Empire,
88–93.
141. Chapter 2, notes 21–28; on the Ottoman diplomatic style, see Van den Boogert and
Fleet, The Ottoman Capitulations: Text and Context.
142. For “hard power” and “soft power,” see Walter Russell Mead, Power, Terror, Peace,
and War: American Grand Strategy in a World at Risk (New York: Knopf, 2004).
 Diplomacy and Kleinkrieg, 1542–1556 187

143. Apparently, this idea first turned up in Habsburg diplomatic correspondence when Al-
vise Gritti explained why Suleyman could not revoke his grant of Transylvania to Szapolyai:
“Liberalis Caesaris non est que primum dono dabat statim adimere”: Vespasiano of Zadar to
Ferdinand, Prague, 5 March 1534, Gévay, VII, doc. XXVII, 104–123, here 106–110. For the
Ottoman law of conquest, see chapter 1, note 36.
144. Salm and Herberstein to Ferdinand, the sultan’s camp at Buda, 16 September 1541,
Austro-Turcica, Letter 2, 5–17, here 6; instructions for Vrančić and Zay, Vienna, 13 June 1553,
HHST I 10 Konvolut 1, 49–65, here f. 53v–54; instructions for Malvezzi, Vienna, 20 May
1554, HHST I 10 Konvolut 3, 173–186, here 178v–179; instructions for Busbecq, Vrančić, and
Zay, Vienna, 14 November 1555, HHST I 12 Konvolut 1, f. 153–161, here f. 155v–157.
145. Instructions for Malvezzi, Vienna, 20 May 1554, HHST I 10 Konvolut 3, 170–186, here
f. 177v–178; Busbecq, Vrančić, and Zay to Ferdinand, Constantinople, May 1555, HHST I 11
Konvolut 5, 96–96, here f. 95v–96; the same to the same, Constantinople, 19 March 1556,
MHHS V, Letter LXI, 180–186, here 183.
146. Austro-Turcica, Letter 239 (Malvezzi’s last dispatch before his arrest, dated 21 July
1551) and Letter 244 (Ferdinand to Ebersdorf, 13 November 1552, seeking to restore contact
with the still-imprisoned Malvezzi).
147. Kohler, Ferdinand I, 89–95.
148. Less so in Bohemia, where Ferdinand’s officials struggled to prune back the appropria-
tion of royal prerogatives by the late medieval estates: Kohler, Ferdinand I, 158–164.
149. E.g., chapter 2, notes 172, 173.
150. Ferdinand to Busbecq, Vrančić, and Zay, Vienna, 27 March 1556, HHST I 12 Konvolut
5, f. 50–53.
151. For this paragraph, save as noted, see Rosemarie Aulinger, Alfred Kohler, and Silvia
Schweinzer-Burian, “Ferdinand I und die Reichstage unter Kaiser Karl (1521–1555),” in Fuchs
and Kohler, Kaiser Ferdinand I, 87–122.
152. Peter Rauscher, “Kaiser und Reich. Die Reichstürkenhilfen von Ferdinand I bis zum
Beginn des ‘Langen Türkenkrieges’ (1589–1593),” in Friederich Edelmayer, Maximilian Lan-
zinner, and Peter Rauscher, Finanzen und Herrschaft. Materiellen Grundlagen fürstlicher Poli-
tik in den habsbürgischen Ländern und im Heiligen Römischen Reich des 16en Jahrhunderts
(Vienna; Munich: Oldenbourg, 2003), 45–83, here 78–79. After 1550 only the roster tax (Mat-
rikelsteuer) was used.
153. Above, notes 6, 23.
154. For Charles’s use of the diet’s grant for his campaign in France, see Tracy, Emperor
Charles V.
155. Winfried Schulze, Reich und Türkengefahr im späten 16en Jahrhundert (Munich: C. H.
Beck, 1978), 88; for the rest of the century, Türkenhilfen were usually allocated to defense of
the frontier.
156. Maschke, Das Kreuz und der Halbmond, 283–284, noting that Lutherans favored a
Notkrieg against the Ottomans, but not a Crusade. Rauscher, “Kaiser und Reich,” 50.
157. Brady, German Histories, 99, 204.
158. http://saebi.isgv.de/biographie/August,_Kurfürst_von_Sachsen_(1526–1586).
159. For the importance of the Habsburg-Saxon entente in keeping the peace in Germany
between the 1555 Peace of Augsburg and the outbreak of the Thirty Years’ War in 1618, see
Peter H. Wilson, The Thirty Years War: Europe’s Tragedy (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press,
2009), 201–202.
160. That is, income from the archducal domain, much of which was held in pawn by private
persons: Winkelbauer, Österreichische Geschichte, I, 453–454, 466, 488–489.
188 Chapter 3

161. Ferdinand’s response to the Diet of Posonia, 9 October 1543, MOE II, 529–534; count-
ing the nasadisten who manned the fleet, there were “more than sixteen thousand men” in all.
162. Tirol and the Vorlande were assessed for contributions, along with the five duchies on or
near the frontier; for a grant of 400,000 gulden in 1544, the five duchies were assessed for
210,000, Tirol and the Vorlande for 190,000: Loserth, Innerösterreich und die militärischen
Massnahmen, 44. But Tirol limited the portion of its grants that went to the Hungarian frontier:
Winfried Schulze, Landesdefension und Staatsbildung. Studien zum Kriegswesen des
Innerösterreichischen Territorialstaates (1564–1619) (Vienna: Böhlau, 1973), 41.
163. Loserth, Innerösterreich und die militärischen Massnahmen, 36. On the Augsburg Con-
fession, see George Wolfgang Forel and James F. McCue, Confessing One Faith: A Joint
Commentary on the Augsburg Confession (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1982).
164. Kohler, Ferdinand I, 87; Loserth, Innerösterreich und die militärischen Massnahmen,
37.
165. Kohler, Ferdinand I, 175; Loserth, Innerösterreich und die militärischen Massnahmen,
37–39; Franz Mensi, Geschichte der direkten Steuern in Steiermark bis zum Regierungsantritte
Maria Theresiens = Forschungen zur Verfassungs- und Verwaltungsgeschichte der Steiermark,
vols. 7, 9, 10 (Graz: Styria, 1910, 1911, 1921), I, 92–93: 775,000 for the Bohemian lands,
400,000 for the Austrian lands.
166. Though there was a joint committee-diet of the Austrian and Bohemian lands in Prague
(November 1543–January 1544): Winkelbauer, Österreichische Geschichte, I, 495.
167. Kohler, Ferdinand I, 175; above, note 138.
168. Above, note 162.
169. Simoniti, Vojaška organizacija na Slovenskem, 243.
170. Winkelbauer, Österreichische Geschichte, I, 40.
171. Kriegsrat (or “War Commissioners and Council”) to Katzianer, Vienna, 6 June, 4 Sep-
tember, 3 October 1530, and 3 January 1531, Monumenta Habsburgica Croatiae, I, Letters 353
(342–343), 431 (405–407), 458 (431–432), and Monumenta Habsburgica Croatiae, II, 2 (2–3).
172. Leonhard von Fels.
173. Pálffy, “Origins and Development of the Border Defence System,” 29, 36, 40, 46.
174. From northeast to southwest, Košice, Nitra, Győr, Szigetvár, Varaždin, and Senj.
175. Ferdinand’s response to resolutions of a Cis-Danubian diet, Prague, 16 September 1547,
MOE III, 89–92; below, note 234.
176. Géza Pálffy, A Császáváros Védelmében a Győri Főkapitányság Tőrténete (Győr,
1999). I do not read Hungarian but have notes on this important book by my onetime research
assistant, Dr. Sa’ra Kaiser.
177. Pálffy, “Origins and Development of the Border Defence System,” 26.
178. Pálffy, “Origins and Development of the Border Defence System,” 34–36.
179. Pálffy, “Origins and Development of the Border Defence System,” 26.
180. Schulze, Landesdefension und Staatsbildung, 52.
181. For Varaždin, see Ferdinand to Lukas Szeckel, Regensburg, 5 July 1541, Monumenta
Habsburgica Croatiae, III, Letter 82, 79, and to the Hungarian Chamber of Accounts, Posonia,
9 October 1543, Monumenta Habsburgica Croatiae, III, Letter 165, 157–158. For Susedgrad
and Stubica, see Łaski to Ferdinand, Sempthe, 28 September 1541, Monumenta Habsburgica
Croatiae, III, Letter 90, 86, and Ferdinand, letter patent of 18 December 1542, Monumenta
Habsburgica Croatiae, III, Letter 126, 120–122.
182. Mažuran, Hrvati i Osmansko Carstvo, 101.
183. In Catholic Europe, cathedral canons formed a collegiate body known as the chapter;
members came almost invariably from the nobility.
 Diplomacy and Kleinkrieg, 1542–1556 189

184. On Ustilonj, see Ferdinand to Ungnad, Wiener Neustadt, 18 October 1540, HSS II,
Letter 197, 299; Peter Keglević to the Chapter of Zagreb, Thopozka, 21 March 1544, Monu-
menta Habsburgica Croatiae, III, Letter 179, 174; and Georgius Keglević to the Chapter of
Zagreb, 16 March 1547, Prilozi Styria, 17, 201–202.
185. On Steničnjak, see Andreas Tharnoczy to Ferdinand, Posonia, 24 November 1542;
Tamás Nádasdy to Ferdinand, Posonia, 25 November 1542; Zrinski to Ferdinand, Lukavec, 30
April 1543; and Ferdinand to Juraj Frankopan, Count Slunj, Vienna, 21 August 1548: Monu-
menta Habsburgica Croatiae, III, Letters 122, 124, 139, and 259.
186. Ivan Alapy and Stjepan Gjula to the lieutenant and councilors of Styria, Križevci, 7
March 1542 and 26 March 1542, Prilozi Styria, 17, 167–168, 168–171.
187. See DSK I, Zaporeda St. 169, Fasc. 101b, 1st folder, doc. 34, a list of five hundred
cavalry and six hundred infantry paid by Styria: most are stationed along the Styrian border.
188. Ungnad to Ferdinand, s.l., [1540], Monumenta Habsburgica Croatiae, III, Letter 46,
45–46; three officials of the estates to the Chapter of Zagreb, Ljubljana, 17 August 1544,
Monumenta Habsburgica Croatiae, III, Letter 191, 186–187: Carniola cannot help with funds
for building a fortress at Sisak but will send two gunboats (“Nassarn Schiff”) from the royal
armory.
189. Prilozi Styria, 17, 167, Ferdinand to Ungnad, 4 February 1541, and two decisions by the
estates in April; Ungnad to Georg Herberstein, Vienna, 18 July 1542, Prilozi Styria, 17, 174.
190. E.g., Alapy and Gyula to the council of Styria, 7 March 1542, Prilozi Styria, 17,
167–168.
191. E.g., in expelling Petar Keglević from Čakovec: Zrinski, letter patent, Čakovec, 2 Sep-
tember 1546, Monumenta Habsburgica Croatiae, III, Letter 223, 254.
192. Ferdinand to the Congregation of Nobles in Slavonia, Posonia, 13 December 1548, and
to Zrinski, Prague, 15 May 1549, HSS II, Letter 340 (340–342). On the protracted dispute
between Zrinski and nobles of the Turopolje district concerning the fortress-town of Lukavec,
see Klaić, Povijest Hrvata, V, 223–225.
193. Ferdinand to the Hungarian Chamber of Accounts, 9 September 1550, Monumenta
Habsburgica Croatiae, III, Letter 327, 376–377.
194. Ungnad to Ferdinand, Celje, 8 January 1554, HSS II, Letter 263, 391–392.
195. Pavao Ratkaj to Ungnad, Jurketnycz, 3 August 1554, and two letters from Zenthgergh-
war, 13 August 1554, Monumenta Habsburgica Croatiae, III, Letters 420 (475), 425 (479), 426
(479–480).
196. Below, note 252.
197. Zrinski was promised 4,000 Hungarian florins a year from taxes in Slavonia (Ferdinand,
letter patent of 27 December 1542, HSS II, Letter 207, 308–309) but apparently got a good deal
less: “Contribucio regni Sclavoniae, anno 1546,” Monumenta Habsburgica Croatiae, III, Letter
233, 263–269: minus exemptions, a yield of 1,872 florins.
198. Cf. Gaspar Herberstein to the Inner Austrian war council, Varaždin, 29 June 1542,
Prilozi Styria, 18, 171–172: Szeckel fears his men will now enroll under Zrinski’s banner, but
this issue did not arise.
199. Alapy and Gjula to the lieutenant of Styria, Križevci, 26 March 1542, Prilozi Styria, 17,
168–171.
200. Ungnad to Nádasdy, Vienna, 15 April 1543, EPRH II, Letter 56, 131–132, “subita
irruptione.”
201. For the illegality, in Hungarian law, of noble inheritance through the female line, see
chapter 2, note 302.
202. Szeckel to Jurešić, Varaždin, 6 June 1543; Keglević to Jurešić, Koprivnica, 10 June
1543; and F. Batthyány to Ferdinand, s.l., 15 June 1543, predicting an attack on Pécs should
190 Chapter 3

Valpovo fall: Monumenta Habsburgica Croatiae, III, Letters 142 (139), 143 (140–141), 153
(148); letters to the estates of Styria from Mihajl Jurešić, Köszeg, 1 July 1543, and F.
Batthyány, Küssing, 3 July 1543, Prilozi Styria, 17, 181–182, 182–183.
203. To the estates of Styria, from Zrinski, Lukavec, late July 1543, and from Ungnad, Virje,
28 June 1543, Pirlozi Styria, 17, 183, 180–181; above, note 24.
204. Its importance was stressed by the Hungarian Diet, Posonia, 4 October 1543, MOE II,
525–529.
205. Zrinski to the Hauptmann of Carniola, Gvozdansko, 3 July 1544, and to Ivan Wernikar,
Gvozdansko, 24 July 1544, Monumenta Habsburgica Croatiae, III, Letters 180 (176) and 183
(179); Mažuran, Hrvati i Osmansko Carstvo, 106.
206. Agreement with Zrinski, 18 August 1544; Carniola to the Chapter of Zagreb, Ljubljana,
17 August 1544; Ferdinand, letter patent, Worms, 26 March 1545: Monumenta Habsburgica
Croatiae, III, Letters 191 (186–187), 187 (182–183), 206 (237).
207. Attestation before the chapter by Vice-Ban Gaspar Gušić, Zagreb, 1 May 1548; attesta-
tion by the Chapter of Čazma, 24 June 1548; and Petar Erdödy to the chapter, Jastrebarsko, 23
October 1549: Monumenta Habsburgica Croatiae, III, Letters 252 (291–292), 253 (292–293),
and 306 (352).
208. Ferdinand to Chapter of Zagreb, Vienna, 24 August 1548, HSS II, Letter 234, 338–339,
and to the Hungarian Chamber of Accounts, Vienna, 18 July 1551, Monumenta Habsburgica
Croatiae, III, Letter 349, 302–303; Contemporaries of Erasmus, III, 29–31. Oláh went on to
serve as bishop of Eger and archbishop of Esztergom.
209. For doubts about management of the fortress, see Ferdinand to the chapter, Vienna, 5
January 1550 and 15 July 1552, and the chapter to Ferdinand’s commanders, Zagreb, 1552,
HSS II, Letters 249 (365), 258 (380–381), and 393 (446–448).
210. Above, note 191. His late son-in-law was Gaspar Ernuth. Međimurje was part of Zala
county in Hungary, not Varaždin county in Slavonia.
211. Štefanec, Heretik njegova Veličanstva, 25–29. According to Klaić, Povijest Hrvata, V,
215–216, Zrinski was owed 20,000 florins in “old debts” and another 20,000 in “new debts.”
212. DSK I, Zaporeda St. 169, Fasc. 101b, 1st folder, doc. 34 [1548], counting 5,400 gulden
for the light horse for six months, 5,400 for the martolossi for twelve months, and 1,700 for a
war councilor (Kriegsrat) and secretary, for a border of “24 German miles”; and doc. 37, a
copy of Ferdinand’s proposition to the Austrian estates (23 July 1548) calling on Carniola to
pay 5,400 for light horse. The Wikipedia entry under “German Obsolete Measures” gives 7.42
km as the common value for a German mile.
213. Kaser, Freier Bauer und Soldat, 49–56; the Zumberačka district was mostly in Croatia
but came to be administered as part of Carniola.
214. Ungnad to Ferdinand, s.l., s.d. [1540], Monumenta Habsburgica Croatiae, III, Letter 45,
45–46.
215. From Bartol Raunach, captain of the Zumberačka uskoks, 12 November 1542, and
Zrinski to the estates of Styria, Lukavec, July 1543, Prilozi Styria, 17, 174–175, 183; Ivan
Babonošić to his son, Slunj, 1 August 1543, Monumenta Habsburgica Croatiae, III, Letter 160,
154–155.
216. War council to Scharlinger, 4 March 1542, Prilozi Styria, 17, 171, an order to recruit
martolossi among the uskoks; Juraj Frankopan to Anton von Thurn, Cetina, 9 August 1543,
Monumenta Habsburgica Croatiae, III, Letter 222, 252–253.
217. Anonymous memo of 2 August 1540, Monumenta Habsburgica Croatiae, III, Letter 3,
2.
 Diplomacy and Kleinkrieg, 1542–1556 191

218. Lenković to Christoff Freiherr von Kreyg, Senj, 20 July 1544; to Johann Ravnikar, Senj,
8 August 1544; and to Jacob von Lamberg, Senj, 7 September 1544: Monumenta Habsburgica
Croatiae, III, Letters 182 (177–179), 189 (185), 194 (188–189).
219. Lenković to Anton von Thurn, Senj, 5 October 1544, Monumenta Habsburgica Croa-
tiae, III, Letter 198, 196–197.
220. Ferdinand to Zrinski, Vienna, 4 September 1548, Monumenta Habsburgica Croatiae,
III, Letter 264, 300–301, referring to Lenković by this title; Lenković to Nicholas von Salm,
Zumberačka Mountain, 4 July 1546, Monumenta Habsburgica Croatiae, III, Letter 222,
252–253. Klaić, Povijest Hrvata, V, 213: as of 1545, Martin Gall had replaced Lenković as
captain of Senj.
221. E.g., Lenković to Ferdinand, Senj[?], February 1551, Monumenta Habsburgica Croa-
tiae, III, Supplement, Letter 458, 518–523.
222. Cf. Kaser, Freier Bauer und Soldat, 54.
223. Lenković to Ferdinand, Senj, 15 March 1551, Monumenta Habsburgica Croatiae, III,
Letter 343, 396–398.
224. Lenković to Pope Pius III, Senj, 22 January 1554, Monumenta Habsburgica Croatiae,
III, Letter 409, 462–465.
225. Bracewell, The Uskoks of Senj, 51–59.
226. Ferdinand to Jörg Seryl, collector of the Aufschlag in Ljubljana, Prague, 13 January
1541, Monumenta Habsburgica Croatiae, III, Letter 54, 55–56; Lenković to Ferdinand,
Senj[?], February 1551, Monumenta Habsburgica Croatiae, III, Supplement, Letter 458,
518–523.
227. Lenković to Jacob von Lamberg, Senj, 7 September 1544, Monumenta Habsburgica
Croatiae, III, Letter 194, 188–189; Busbecq, Vrančić, and Zay to Ferdinand, Constantinople,
26 May 1557, HHST I 13 Konvolut 1, f. 98–101.
228. Lenković to Pope Julius III, Senj, 22 January 1554, Monumenta Habsburgica Croatiae,
III, Letter 409, 462–465, and to Ferdinand, Senj, 2 March 1551, Letter 342, 394–396.
229. Ferdinand to Zrinski and Stjepan Frankopan, Prague, 16 February 1549, Monumenta
Habsburgica Croatiae, III, Letter 282, 323–324.
230. Declaration by the emin for Šibenik, 11 April 1547, “Documenti Turchi,” 623, 159;
Malvezzi to Ferdinand, Constantinople, 22 December 1549, Austro-Turcica, Letter 141, 382;
from Navagero, Constantinople, 11 October 1550, ASV-DAC, Archivio Proprio degli Ambas-
ciatori, Busta 5, f. 11–16v; Girolamo Dandino to the papal nuncio in Venice, Rome, 13 Decem-
ber 1550, Monumenta Uscocchorum, Letter 1, 1; Lenković to Ferdinand, Senj, 2 March 1551,
Monumenta Habsburgica Croatiae, III, Letter 342, 394–396; declaration by fifteen Ottoman
merchants, Venice, 5 September 1552, “Documenti Turchi,” 701, 176; and Lenković to Pius
III, Senj, 22 January 1554, Monumenta Habsburgica Croatiae, III, Letter 409, 462–465.
231. From Mapheo Gerardo, an official on Krk (Veglia), 27 August 1554, CRV III, doc. VII,
58–64. The traditional sales tax in the kingdom of Hungary was the so-called thirtieth, at 3.33
percent. Cf. above, note 116.
232. Bracewell, The Uskoks of Senj, 98–117 (the quote, 117).
233. Lenković to Pius III, Senj, 22 January 1554, and to Ferdinand, Senj, 21 March 1551,
Monumenta Habsburgica Croatiae, III, Letters 490 (462–465) and 342 (392–396).
234. Bracewell, The Uskoks of Senj, 44.
235. Ferdinand to Zrinski, Vienna, 27 September 1551, Monumenta Habsburgica Croatiae,
III, Letter 354, 407–408.
236. Subrahmanyam and Bayly, “Portfolio Capitalists and the Political Economy of Early
Modern India”; Surayia Faroqhi, “Crisis and Change, 1590–1699,” in Halil İnalcik, Economic
192 Chapter 3

and Social History of the Ottoman Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), II,
411–636, here 476–477.
237. E.g., Alvise Gritti (chapter 2), Rüstem Paşa (above, notes 78, 125), and Joseph Nasi
(chapter 4).
238. Anton von Thurn to the estates of Styria, Ljubljana, 30 October 1543, Prilozi Styria, 17,
185–186: a plot to betray Bihać from within.
239. Lenković to Pius III, Senj, 22 January 1553, Monumenta Habsburgica Croatiae, III,
409, 462–465, here 462. Cf. Klaić, Povijest Hrvata, V, 221. For an attack on Otočac in 1542,
see Ivan Ručić to Lenković, Senj, 1 July 1542, Monumenta Habsburgica Croatiae, III, Letter
109, 107.
240. Barbarossa made an attempt in 1539, during the Veneto-Turkish war of 1537–1540.
241. From Mapheo Gerardo, as cited in note 231, here 60–62.
242. See the “fanciful” view of Senj and the fortress called Nehaj (“Fear Not”) from a 1617
sketch, as reproduced in Bracewell, The Uskoks of Senj, 105.
243. Veli Beg of Klis (cf. “Documenti Turchi,” 542, 142) and Malkoč Beg of Herzegovina.
244. Malkoč Beg of Klis and Sinan Beg of Herzegovina.
245. Mujadžević, “Osmanska osvajanja u Slavoniji,” 102–103.
246. Above, note 63.
247. Grgin, “The Ottoman Influence on Croatia in the Second Half of the Fifteenth Century,”
90.
248. Zrinski to Jakob von Lamberg, Varaždin, 5 October 1552, Monumenta Habsburgica
Croatiae, III, Letter 386, 437–438.
249. Lenković to Ferdinand, Senj, 4 January 1552, Monumenta Habsburgica Croatiae, III,
Letter 360, 412–416.
250. Ungnad to Ferdinand, Celje, 5 February 1554, HS II, Letter 264, 393–394.
251. Ferdinand to the chapter, Vienna, 15 July 1552, HSS II, Letter 258, 380–381; chapter to
Ferdinand, Zagreb, 1552, Monumenta Habsburgica Croatiae, III, Letter 393, 446–448.
252. Ungnad to Ferdinand, Cilj, 8 January 1554, HSS II, Letter 263, 391–392; cf. Ungnad to
Archduke Maximilian, Cilj, 27 April 1555, HSS II, 425–443, here 428, and Petar Erdödy to
Ungnad, Ivanić, February 1554, Monumenta Habsburgica Croatiae, III, Letter 411, 466–467.
253. Zrinski to Nádasdy, Čakovec [Chakthornya], 15 May 1556, ZML, Letter CCXXIII,
345–348.
254. Propositions made to the assembly by Ungnad, Zagreb, 1 December 1554, HSS II,
415–418.
255. For the peasant revolt of 1573, see chapter 4.
256. Klaić, Povijest Hrvata, V, 245; Simoniti, Vojaška organizacija na Slovenskem, 243;
DSK I, Zaporeda St. 169, Fasc. 101b, 1st folder, doc. 31 (summary for Styria, July 1548), and
docs. 36 and 34 (Carniola’s expenses for 1547, and a projection for 1548). Above, note 169.
257. In Simoniti’s figures, note 256, Styria’s quotas were 46 percent in 1537, 50 percent in
1546, and 61 percent in 1556.
258. Schulze, Landesdefension und Staatsbildung, 51.
259. At the time of his death in 1564, Ferdinand had 2,988,000 gulden in debts assigned on
various incomes; the estates of the five duchies close to the fighting had 1,840,000 in debts:
Kohler, Ferdinand I, 182.
260. Valvasor, III, 338: in January 1555, a general diet of the five Austrian duchies insisted
on discussing religion before voting on subsidies; they faulted His Majesty for rejecting their
petitions for freedom of worship over the last fourteen years.
261. Ungnad to the five Austrian duchies, Wittenberg, 6 January and 24 January 1556, DSK
I, Zaporeda St. 170, 1st folder.
 Diplomacy and Kleinkrieg, 1542–1556 193

262. Ungnad to Maximilian, Celje, 27 April 1555, HSS II, 425–443, here 428.
263. Cf. Sisak’s colonist-musketeers (pixidarios), above, note 251; Ágoston, Guns for the
Sultan, 24–26.
264. Lenković’s budget, 1 March 1553, Prilozi Styria, 17, 204–209. Counting for officers’
pay, the budgeted wage was four gulden a month for garrison soldiers and about six and a half
gulden for musketeers.
265. Prilozi Styria, 17, 212–213.
266. A summary dated Vienna, 1555, Prilozi Styria, 17, 215–217. Styria also spent 37,000 for
fortifications.
267. For the Cis-Danubian sector? Lower Austria also had joint responsibility (with Styria)
for the Trans-Danubian sector.
268. DSK I, Zaporeda St. 210, Fasc. 126a, doc. 17.
269. Biščević, Bosanski namjesnici, 56. He was the younger brother of Mehmed Beg
Sokolović, who was then beglerbeg of Rumelia and would soon become grand vezir.
270. Ferdinand to his ambassadors at the Porte, Vienna, 15 August 1556, MHHS, V, Letter
LXV, 203–212, here 204; Zrinski to Nádasdy, Rakovec, 25 August 1556, Letter CCLXVII,
405–406: Zrinski no longer speaks of Kostajnica as his castle, apparently because he had by
now completed his exchange of properties with Petar Erdödy (see chapter 4).
271. Jože Pirjević, Serbi, Croati, Sloveni. Storia di tre nazione (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1995),
74; Wikipedia, “Croatia.” Modern Croatia includes the parts of Dalmatia ruled in Corvinus’s
era by Venice, but does not include land along the Una that has been part of Bosnia since the
fall of Bihać in 1592.
272. Géza Pálffy, “Jedan od temeljnih izvota hrvatske povijest. Pozivnica Zajedničkog
Hrvatsko-slavonskog sabora iz 1558 god.” Zbornik od sjeka za poviesna znanosti HAZU 23
(2005): 47–61.
273. See Introduction.
274. Paul Robert Magocsi, Historical Atlas of East Central Europe (Seattle: University of
Washington Press, 1993), map 10, for 1480 (p. 32), shows Međimurje in Slavonia; map 36, for
1910 (p. 119), shows it in Zala county in Hungary. But cf. Zrinski to Nádasdy, Nova Curia, 14
March 1555, ZML I, Letter CLXXXV, 288–290: asked how his colonists “in Zala county” can
be of assistance to Nádasdy, Zrinski replies that plague has reduced the number of his colonists
“between the Drava and the Mur” to about twelve thousand.
275. Bathalsar Cozianer to the Chapter of Zagreb, Varaždin, 12 June 1553, Prilozi Styria, 17,
213; Ungnad to Ferdinand, Zagreb, 15 July 1554, HSS II, Letter 266, 401–408.
276. Resolution of the diet, 4 October 1543, MOE II, 525–529, here 526; see the Ottoman
map of Szigetvár reproduced by Winkelbauer, Österreichische Geschichte, I, 136.
277. Or so Ferdinand maintained: Busbecq to Ferdinand, Buda, 26 November 1555, HHST I
12 Konvolut 2, f. 173–176: Balint Terek had been only a beneficiarius at Szigetvár because
Ferdinand himself retained proprietas. On Terek, see Fodor, “Ottoman Policy towards Hun-
gary,” 146.
278. Nicholas Sick to Ferdinand, Edirne, 10 November 1545, Austro-Turcica, Letter 27,
276–281, here 280–281; instructions for Malvezzi, Augsburg, 24 January 1548, Austro-Turci-
ca, Letter 63, 205–210.
279. Pálffy, “Origins and Development of the Border Defence System,” 30.
280. Vrančić and Zay to Ferdinand, Sicambria, 25 July 1553, and Kewy, HHST I 10 Konvo-
lut 1, 111–113; Ferdinand to Malvezzi, Vienna, 21 May 1554, HHST I 10 Konvolut 3, f.
190–198, here 195v–196; Toygun Paşa to Ferdinand, Buda, 20 August 1554, Osmanische
Beamtenschreiben, doc. 41, 91–92.
194 Chapter 3

281. Nádasdy to Ferdinand, Kanizsa, 5 February 1551, EPRH II, 237–242. Cf. ‘Ali Paşa
Semiz to Ferdinand, Buda, 22 December 1552, Osmanische Beamtenschreiben, doc. 22, 66–67:
Szigetvár is one of several key fortresses the sultan has ordered him to conquer.
282. Vrančić and Zay to Ferdinand, Komárom, 16 July 1553, MHHS, doc. 11, 16–18.
283. Vrančić and Zay to Ferdinand, Constantinople, 3 December 1554, HHST I 11 Konvolut
4, f. 195–196. Cf. Busbecq’s summary of the ambassadors’ mission to the sultan in Amasia,
Vienna, 14 August 1555, HHST I 12 Konvolut 1, f. 35–41, here 41.
284. Busbecq to Ferdinand, Vienna, 14 August 1555, HHST I 12 Konvolut 1, 35–41.
285. ‘Ali Paşa to Ferdinand, Buda, 2 July 1556, Osmanische Beamtenschreiben, doc. 46,
101–102. All such complaints are to be taken with a grain of salt, but on both sides it made
sense to put forward those grievances that had a ring of plausibility.
286. For this paragraph, save as noted, see Tracy, “The Road to Sizgetvár,” 12–14.
287. Štefanec, Heretik njegova Veličanstva, 39, 51.
288. Nádasdy to Max Sardar, 26 June 1556, Zrinski, Letter CCLXII, 399–400.
289. Above, note 211.
290. Zrinski to Nádasdy, Čakovec, 15 May 1556, Zrinski, Letter CCXXIII, 345–348.
291. For this paragraph, save as noted, see Tracy, “The Road to Szigetvár,”14–15.
292. For the question of whether Balint Terek (d. 1550) had been the proprietor or merely the
pawn-lord of Szigetvár, see above, note 277.
293. A noted Latinist and subsequently the author of the Litterae Turcicae, which was for
more than a century one of the most-read European accounts of the Ottoman world. See Rudolf
Willem Maria Zweder van Martels, Augerius Busbecquius. Leven en Werk van het Keizerlijke
Gezant aan het Hof van Suleyman de Grote (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Groningen,
1989).
294. Busbecq to Ferdinand, Buda, 26 November 1556, HHST I 12 Konvolut 2, f. 173–176.
295. Zrinski to Sforza Pallavicini, Kaproncza, 5 October 1555, ZML CCV, 320–322, suggest-
ing a similar plan.
296. 1521, 1526, 1529, 1532, 1541, 1543.
297. Ferdinand to Busbecq, Vrančić, and Zay, Vienna, 15 June 1556, Vrančić, MHHS, V,
Letter LXIV, 197–202.
298. Rauscher, “Kaiser und Reich. Die Reichtstürkenhilfen,” 60.
299. Ungnad to the Austrian estates, Wittenberg, 6 January 1556, DSK I, Zaporeda St. 170,
1st folder, here f. 3: “Not one position has ever been taken from the Turks” (So ist dem
Thürcken nie khain flecken genumen).
300. For debates about Ottoman expansionism, see chapter 1, note 33, and chapter 2, note 29.
301. The opinion of “some of His Majesty’s councilors and noblemen of Lower Austria,”
December 1557, HHST I 13 Konvolut 2, f. 150–157, here f. 151v. For Suleyman’s full-scale
invasion in 1566, see chapter 4.
302. The Bohemian lands and the Austrian duchies were included in the Holy Roman Em-
pire; Hungary and Croatia were not.
303. See HHST I 12 Konvolut 5, f. 152–155, a memo from the ambassadors, brought May or
June 1556, urging that Ferdinand make a yes or no decision on whether he will abandon his
claim to Transylvania.
304. Michael Černović [Ferdinand’s spy] to Ferdinand, Constantinople, [January 1557],
HHST I 13 Konvolut 1, f. 14–15, reporting a conversation with one of the vojvods of Buda’s
‘Ali Paşa Semiz.
305. Busbecq, Vrančić, and Zay to Ferdinand, Constantinople, 8 July and 4 August 1557,
HHST I 13 Konvolut 2, f. 3–4, 19–23; cf. the undated relatio of Vrančić and Zay [1557],
MHHS V, Letter LXXXVI, 300–344, here 336: when the Porte dragoman suggested that a gift
 Diplomacy and Kleinkrieg, 1542–1556 195

of 20,000 florins might suffice in lieu of Szigetvár, ‘Ali Paşa Semiz, now the Second Vezir,
objected: “No, it must be Szigetvár, this is the will of our prince.”
306. A point made by Pálffy, The Kingdom of Hungary.
307. Chapter 4, notes 196, 197.
 Chapter Four

War by Consultation vs. War by

Command, 1556–1576

Charles V left a unique stamp on international affairs. While European ene-

mies 1 never accepted his self-proclaimed role as Christendom’s champion in
the struggle against the infidels, no prince after him even made the claim. As
king of Spain, he directed a struggle for naval supremacy in the Mediterra-
nean. 2 As Holy Roman Emperor, he kept a firm finger on the scales of
Ferdinand’s policy in Hungary. For example, it was he who insisted that
Ferdinand enter into negotiations in the 1540s, leading to the 1547 Treaty of
Edirne. 3 Charles’s abdication in 1556 4 thus marked the end of an era. His son
Philip II inherited Spain, with its Italian and Low Countries possessions,
while his brother became Holy Roman Emperor as Ferdinand I. Anti-Otto-
man wars in the Mediterranean and in east-central Europe were henceforth
decoupled. Between Madrid and Vienna there was polite consultation 5 but,
save in Italy, 6 no coordination of policy.
In the Ottoman world, too, things were different after 1555 because the
Porte was no longer at war with Iran. In May 1555, at the sultan’s camp in
Amasya in north-central Anatolia, Shah Tahmasp’s diplomats accepted a
treaty of peace. 7 The shah’s intentions remained a matter for concern, 8 but
Iran soon came under pressure from a foe to its east, the Uzbeks. The upshot
was that Ottoman control of the lands conquered by Suleyman was not in
danger for half a century. 9 Ferdinand’s ambassadors were present in Amas-
ya, and they found the vezirs in no mood to offer concessions. 10 Ferdinand’s
renunciation of his claim to Transylvania 11 was in effect a consequence of
the Treaty of Amasya. Despite his surrender on this point, Habsburg diplo-
197
198 Chapter 4

mats still feared an offensive against Hungary. 12 After all, if the shah and he
alone had “kept this enemy from the necks of Christians,” 13 would not peace
in the East allow the Turks to resume their advance in the West?
Yet there was no new offensive. For one thing, as Archduke Ferdinand’s
victory at Szigetvár in 1556 14 portended, the Habsburg Monarchy of Ferdi-
nand I’s final years 15 was no longer such an easy target. Moreover, Suleyman
had lost interest in war, and the vezirs no doubt hesitated to embark on new
adventures under a sultan of “weak health and advancing age.” 16 But the real
reason for caution was that the succession remained unsettled. Of Suley-
man’s remaining sons, Bayezid, the elder, was well regarded, while Selim
was given up to his pleasures. Yet no one knew on whom the sultan’s favor
would fall. 17 In 1558, around the time their mother Hürrem died, Bayezid
and Selim mobilized for war from their respective Anatolian provinces. Su-
leyman made his choice by sending key commanders to the aid of Selim,
who won the battle. Bayezid lived on in exile in Iran until 1562, when
Ottoman silver persuaded Tahmasp to permit his execution. 18
Meanwhile, Busbecq, Ferdinand’s ambassador at the Porte, was negotiat-
ing for peace with ‘Ali Paşa Semiz, who became grand vezir in 1561. By
early 1562, the two men agreed on terms that had already been broached in
1559 before Rüstem Paşa broke off negotiations. 19 When Busbecq got word
of Bayezid’s death, he stopped arguing for minor changes. 20 Thus in August
1562, Grand Dragoman Ibrahim Beg, with a huge train, set out for the West
to obtain Ferdinand’s signature. Habsburg officials wanted to stop him at
Linz to spare expenses, but at Busbecq’s urging he went on to Frankfurt,
where Ferdinand was presiding over Archduke Maximilian’s election as
King of the Romans. Busbecq wanted “this braggart” to see for himself the
wealth of Germany’s many cities. 21
Circumstances seemed propitious for peace. Suleyman was now mainly
interested in religion. 22 Grand Vezir ‘Ali Paşa Semiz (“the fat”), who had to
be lifted into the saddle by two strong men, was not a likely general. 23 For
his part, Maximilian II (r. 1564–1576) 24 seemed less willing than his father
to challenge Ottoman power. 25 But peace was disrupted when the forces of
Transylvania’s János Zsigmund Szapolyai (r. 1556–1571) conquered Satu
Mare (Szatmár) in Upper Hungary in September 1564. Unable to ignore this
provocation, Maximilian sent troops to retake Satu Mare, 26 and since they
moved on to conquer towns controlled by Transylvania, 27 the Porte had a
casus belli. Action in Hungary had to wait, however, because the Porte was
now preparing for a naval war.
 War by Consultation vs. War by Command, 1556–1576 199

Mihrimah, Rüstem Paşa’s widow, had been chiding her father for neglect-
ing a sultan’s duty to wage war against the infidels. 28 In 1564, the Knights of
Malta seemed to prove her point by capturing merchant ships with several
high officials on board. 29 Malta was already in the sights of the Admiral,
Piyale Paşa, for whom the island fortress was a barrier to profitable raids in
the western Mediterranean. 30 In May 1565, Piyale landed an army on Malta
under the command of Lala Mustafa Paşa. Against them, nine hundred
knights and six thousand mercenaries defended three forts on Malta’s Grand
Harbor. Turkish guns reduced one fort to rubble, but the knights held the
other two against repeated assaults. As a Spanish relief force arrived in
September, Piyale was already putting to sea. 31
Failure in Malta made success in Hungary imperative. Although there is
some uncertainty about the aims of the 1566 invasion, 32 the modern editor of
an Ottoman chronicle of the campaign concludes that Szigetvár was the
primary objective. While the decision to attack Hungary was made before he
became grand vezir, it was Mehmed Paşa Sokolović (r. 1565–1578) who
made Szigetvár the target of the main army. 33
Surprisingly, the aging sultan chose to lead his troops. The siege began on
August 5. On September 8, unable to hold out longer, Nikola Zrinski, captain
of Szigetvár since 1561, led his men on a final desperate sortie. 34 Meanwhile,
the large army that Maximilian II assembled near Győr, just downstream
from Vienna, broke up without any noteworthy accomplishment. 35 Sultan
Suleyman died at Szigetvár on September 5 or 6, but Mehmed Paşa managed
to conceal the bad news for six weeks, until Prince Selim could be brought
from Anatolia as far as Belgrade, where he was enthroned as sultan and
presided over obsequies for his father. 36 Meanwhile, the able Lazarus
Schwendi 37 made further gains for the Habsburgs in Upper Hungary. But
Maximilian II had no stomach for more war. 38 By February 1568, his diplo-
mats obtained an eight-year peace; because it allowed each side to rebuild its
fortresses, this treaty has been seen as a step toward stability. 39
Yet Selim II (r. 1566–1574) was a new prince, and new princes, Muslim
or Christian, proved themselves by going to war. For his war, Selim chose
Venetian Cyprus. The Signoria maintained good relations with the Porte, but
Cyprus was a nest for smugglers and, on occasion, a refuge for Maltese
corsairs. 40 Selim was reportedly enraged that a ship that had captured the
treasurer of Egypt was allowed to call at Cyprus. Mehmed Paşa opposed a
war with the empire’s main trading partner, but two other vezirs, Piyale Paşa
and Lala Mustafa Paşa, were eager to refurbish their reputations after failure
200 Chapter 4

at Malta. Joseph Nasi, a Portuguese-Jewish banker who had provided valu-

able aid to Selim in 1559, hoped for a reward in Cyprus. Troops landed in
July 1571, and Lala Mustafa soon conquered most of Cyprus. Only Fama-
gusta held out. 41
The attack on Cyprus effected a brief reconciliation between Spain and
Venice, long divided by mutual suspicion. 42 The Holy League of May 1571
required much cajoling by papal diplomats and a promise by Venice to help
Spain against the Barbary corsairs, as Spain was to help in Cyprus. 43 Under
Don Juan of Austria, 44 the Christian fleet sailed from Sicily on 16 Septem-
ber, unaware that Famagusta had surrendered. On their voyage east, tension
between Spanish and Venetian crews was about to erupt in gunfire when a bit
of news arrived that refocused them on the Turks: Famagusta’s captain had
been flayed alive by his captors. Near Lepanto on October 7, two great lines
of war galleys advanced toward each another. Sailing in the van, Venice’s
galleasses gave the allies an initial advantage as they rotated to fire heavy
guns from all four sides. Bold action by Uluç ‘Ali almost made a difference,
but the Christians won a great victory; most of the three hundred Ottoman
ships were sunk or scattered. 45
Over the long term, Lepanto “confirmed the viability of Western military
strategy and tactics” so that “military initiative was now in European
hands.” 46 In the short run, however, the Ottoman Empire gave an impressive
demonstration of its powers of recuperation. A whole new fleet was con-
structed over the winter, even if the galleys, built in haste from unseasoned
timber, made a poor impression on European observers. 47 In March 1573, the
Signoria swallowed its losses and accepted a treaty of peace. In 1573 and
1574, Ottoman fleets conquered Tunis and then its island fortress, 48 hitherto
a proud outpost of Spanish power in North Africa. By now, Spain was
preoccupied by the Dutch Revolt, and the Ottomans were noticing new op-
portunities in Iran. Accordingly, Philip II and the Porte concluded a truce in
1578 49; this agreement marked the end of the grand era of naval warfare in
the Mediterranean.
Meanwhile, along the Hungarian-Croatian frontier, the treaty of 1568 had
not suppressed Kleinkrieg. 50 The Ottomans were for a time distracted by the
Cyprus War, but once Venice made peace with the Porte, Maximilian II’s
ambassadors found Mehmed Paşa Sokolović a hard bargainer. 51 The acces-
sion of a new sultan—Murad III, r. 1574–1595—changed little. Murad had
never gone to war as heir apparent, 52 and as sultan he preferred his family
apartments to the council chamber. 53 Innocent of state affairs, he asked why
 War by Consultation vs. War by Command, 1556–1576 201

infidel ambassadors were allowed to live in his capital at the expense of the
treasury. 54 By default, decisions about relations with the Habsburg Monar-
chy were left to the divan. The regularization of court procedures during this
period set some limits to a grand vezir’s authority, but there seems little
doubt that Mehmed Paşa guided the affairs of the empire from 1566 until his
assassination in 1579. 55 As policy needs dictated, he restrained border san-
cakbegs or gave them free rein.

OTTOMAN BOSNIA

Mehmed Paşa Sokolović

The Sokolović 56 were a Serbian family with several branches. One of their
number, taken in the devşirme, rose to the rank of grand vezir before his
death in 1544. His brother, Mustafa Paşa Sokolović, served as sancakbeg of
Bosnia and later as governor-general of Buda. Ferhat Beg Sokolović, govern-
or of Klis and then of Bosnia, represented a second branch of the clan. 57
Mehmed Paşa himself, from yet another sub-family, was born around 1505
in a Bosnian village near a city on the Drina, where, as grand vezir, he would
endow a celebrated bridge. 58 His father was a Muslim, but when taken in the
devşirme, Bayo Sokolović was a novice in a monastery, which he subse-
quently included in charitable donations. As grand vezir, he welcomed both
Orthodox and Muslim kinsmen to his palace. 59 In 1557 he arranged to rees-
tablish the Serbian patriarchal see at Peć (modern Kosovo), vacant since
1463; the first four incumbents were from his family.
Mehmed Paşa understood that the empire did not have to go to war to
achieve its strategic objectives. 60 To the north, he kept watch on Transylva-
nia so as to exert influence in Poland-Lithuania, where the ill health of the
king portended a new election soon. 61 Far to the west, he backed a palace
rebellion against the sultan of Fez, thus (temporarily) adding Morocco to the
list of Ottoman client states. 62 To the east and south, in Yemen, and in the
marshes north of Basra, his appointees put down rebellions that threatened
Ottoman communications with the Indian Ocean. 63 When a sultan in distant
Sumatra requested help against the Portuguese, Mehmed Paşa had munitions
sent out from the Red Sea. 64 On the steppe frontier, facing Russian forts on
the Volga, he seized upon a plan for a canal from the Don to the Volga. In
1569, thousands of troops protected thousands of workers, though Russian
attacks doomed the project to failure. 65
202 Chapter 4

Opportunities on the Hungarian frontier had to be evaluated in this wider

context. For example, if the Porte’s current objective was to block the elec-
tion of a Habsburg king in Poland-Lithuania, 66 one had to encourage the idea
that the Ottomans could live at peace with their Christian neighbors. Whether
it was time for peace with the Habsburgs or time for war, Mehmed Paşa had
a network of kinsmen in key positions ready to do his bidding along the
frontier. 67 In Bosnia, the Sokolović clan provided six of the seven sancak-
begs serving from 1554 to 1580. 68 Not every member of the family distin-
guished himself. 69 But several who had close ties to the grand vezir served
long tenures. Mustafa Paşa, mentioned above, had an eight-year term as paşa
of Buda (1566–1574). His brother, another Mehmed Paşa, was sancakbeg of
Bosnia for eight of the ten years from 1564 to 1574. 70 Ferhat Beg, also
mentioned above, ruled Klis from 1566 to 1574 and Bosnia from 1574 to
1588, as sancakbeg until 1580 and then as paşa. 71

A Mature Ottoman Province

By 1563, Bosnia had been Ottoman for a century, long enough to begin
shedding its character as a frontier province organized for war. In fact, four
new sancaks now separated Bosnia from the Habsburg lands to the north and
south: Požega and Čazma in the northwest and Klis and Lika in the south-
west. 72 In 1550, when Ulama Beg resumed his campaigns in Slavonia, he did
so as sancakbeg not of Bosnia but of Požega. 73 Conversely, it seems that
Bosnia’s governors no longer had to be men of proven military prowess. 74
If Bosnia had a majority-Muslim population by the 1530s, Islamicization
proceeded much more slowly in the new sancaks. 75 The “superior urban
civilization” that the Ottomans brought to the Balkans was also more evident
in Bosnia. Sarajevo, dotted with mosques and religious schools endowed by
officials, was the largest city in the Balkans, with around eleven thousand
households by 1600. Closer to the frontier, Banja Luka, the capital from ca.
1550, had only four thousand people. But it too had its prosperous men,
centered on the sancakbeg’s court. Ferhat Beg Sokolović saw to it that his
estates in what had been Venetian Dalmatia returned a good profit, and he
used his wealth for endowments that gave Banja Luka the physiognomy of a
Muslim capital. 76 Like other Islamic cities, Sarajevo and Banja Luka had
neither elected magistrates nor statutes of their own. The dizdar (fortress
commander) served as town governor, with responsibilities for keeping pub-
lic order. 77
 War by Consultation vs. War by Command, 1556–1576 203

Sancakbegs had authority over the ranks of military, judicial, and finan-
cial officials. But they might serve only briefly, and even while in office they
might be away on campaign. Lesser and more permanent officials thus took
up the reins of governance, at least informally. 78 The dizdar of the capital
city often played such a role. In Požega, the man who became dizdar in 1544
served long enough to welcome Sultan Suleyman to his spacious house in
1566. The captain of Gradiška, serving from 1540 to 1560, repopulated thir-
ty-five villages in the surrounding area. 79 Financial officials too could remain
in place for years. Memishah Beg was defterdar or treasurer of Bosnia for
twenty years. He resided at Gabela on the lower Neretva, where profits from
the lucrative salt trade were divided between Dubrovnik’s merchants and the
Ottoman fisc. 80 These men, with other officials and wealthy merchants, made
up the urban elite, the esrafi. 81 Like the landed aristocracy of pre-Ottoman
Bosnia, they too had a taste for fine cloth and other foreign luxuries.
As in former times, Dubrovnik’s merchant houses sent woolens and silks
from Italy into Bosnia in exchange for various raw materials; around mid-
century, what they mainly wanted was grain, obtained through private ar-
rangements with landowners. 82 In terms of notarized commercial credits,
Sarajevo ranked third among Dubrovnik’s Ottoman trading stations, far be-
hind Belgrade but not far behind Sofia. 83 At times, Ragusan traders dealt
with countrymen who converted to Islam and now lived in Bosnia. 84 There
were also indigenous Bosnian Muslim merchants who traveled to and from
Italy. In Venice, one group of traders recorded the loans from an orphan fund
in Sarajevo that had financed their ventures. An Islamic form of commercial
credit was thus now available, albeit not without risk, to enterprising Bos-
nians. 85 Trade—or rather customs revenue—was also a matter of state inter-
est. Ottoman border provinces did not support the cost of their garrisons.
From around 1560 the paşaluk of Buda 86 had orders from the Porte to devel-
op local incomes to help pay the troops. Bosnia’s military finances have not
been studied, but it too was likely expected to boost local revenue. In 1563, a
Spanish Jewish merchant 87 trading from the Balkans to Italy was given let-
ters of recommendation to the Doge of Venice by the governors of Bosnia
and Herzegovina. 88
Meanwhile, Bosnia continued to serve as a springboard for attack. A
Habsburg military report of 1577 finds that Bosnia had 2,630 paid cavalry
and 2,620 paid infantry at twenty-one named fortresses on the Croatian and
Slovenian frontier, not counting “great numbers” of martolossi raiders and
other unpaid soldiers. 89 The report did not include fortified sites in the interi-
204 Chapter 4

or of Bosnia, like Sarajevo or Banja Luka, where the sancakbeg had a large
retinue under his direct command. 90 All in all, Bosnia’s fighting men will
have matched or exceeded earlier estimates of nine thousand men, 91 meaning
that Habsburg forces in Croatia and Slavonia were outnumbered. 92 This dif-
ference mattered, because Bosnia and Croatia still shared a common border
along the bend of the Una.

Probing the Una Frontier

Malkoč Beg, 93 a veteran of Ulama’s campaigns, was the leading regional

commander of the 1550s as governor of Bosnia (1553–1554) and then of Klis
until 1562. He had three possible lines of attack into Croatia: against the
Habsburg remnant of Slavonia, between the Drava and the Sava; south of the
Sava, across the Una toward the Kupa, the next river that flowed north to the
Sava; or against the southernmost line of Habsburg fortresses, anchored by
Bihać in the east and Senj in the west. In fact, few attempts were made
against Senj 94 or Bihać 95 during this period, and the Slavonian front now
proved difficult to penetrate. 96 By default, Malkoč Beg focused on the Una.
Here, the principal obstacles were Nikola Zrinski’s fortresses on the river
and, just to the west, his well-defended silver mines at Gvozdansko. In June
1556, Malkoč Beg captured Kostajnica, Zrinski’s stronghold on the right or
east bank of the Una. Ferdinand now extended Ivan Lenković’s authority by
putting him in charge of the Slavonian as well as the Croatian sector of the
frontier, 97 as if to cover in this way a weak space between two well-defended
areas. Sensing an opportunity, Malkoč and his confreres repeatedly led
troops across the Una. If the defenders usually held out, often with help from
Ivan Lenković or Zrinski, the attackers succeeded in another way, by ravag-
ing and depopulating large tracts of land between the Una and the Kupa.
Attacks became more frequent in 1559 after Malkoč Beg burned Zrinski’s
mines at Gvozdansko. In 1560, Zrinski pursued and defeated an invading
force. 98 But Malkoč Beg then forced the surrender of Zrinski’s fortress at
Novigrad on the Una, west of Kostajnica, and thus opened another path of
advance toward the Kupa. Against the advice of his elders, Malkoč’s son
followed up with an attack in Slavonia, where he was killed in ambush.
Malkoč Beg led a plunder expedition to avenge him, but fighting subsided
over the next two years. 99 In 1562, when a new treaty of peace was con-
cluded, Malkoč Beg was transferred away from the front line to Herzegovi-
na. 100
 War by Consultation vs. War by Command, 1556–1576 205

Two years later, Mustafa Paşa Sokolović, appointed for a second time as
sancakbeg of Bosnia (1564–1566), resumed Malkoč Beg’s attacks along the
Una. In June 1565, he camped with two thousand men before the fortress of
Krupa on the right bank of the Una, some twenty miles northeast of Bihać.
The captain of Senj brought up a relief force, but when he withdrew to Bihać,
Mustafa Paşa was able to force the surrender of Krupa. Since Krupa had
guarded supply lines from interior Croatia, Bihać and the whole southern line
were exposed to a new level of danger. But instead of moving on to Bihać as
expected, Mustafa Paşa marched farther north and crossed the Sava into
Slavonia, possibly because the Ottoman invasion planned for 1566 required
clearing a path for the sultan’s progress to Hungary. Ban Petar Erdödy knew
that Mustafa Paşa was coming and, near Ivanić, repulsed the attackers. 101 In
1566, Mustafa Paşa joined in the sultan’s march to Hungary, as did the
sancakbeg of Požega, who was killed at Szigetvár. During the siege, 102 Ban
Petar Erdödy and his colleagues 103 took advantage of lower troop levels in
Bosnia by bringing a siege army to Novigrad on the Una. Novigrad resisted,
but when the new sancakbeg of Požega and his colleague from Klis brought
some ten thousand men against the besiegers, they suffered a crushing
loss. 104 These defeats may have led Grand Vezir Mehmed Paşa Sokolović to
conclude that Ottoman forces needed a pause in the fighting. 105

Toward the Kupa

Still, if the Porte intended for the peace of 1568 to be observed, it was not
evident on the Croatian frontier. From the start of his tenure in Bosnia
(1568–1574), sancakbeg Mehmed Paşa Sokolović 106 acted as if no treaty
were in place. 107 He concentrated his attacks across the Una, where the
juncture of the Kupa and the Sava was guarded by the fortress of Sisak, the
main forward post for the defense of Zagreb. In August 1568 there was a
major battle at Hrastovica, an old castle that defended a key point ten miles
south of Sisak. In April 1570, the Croatian Sabor complained that “all of
Bosnia” was attacking Hrastovica. There is no record of sancakbeg Mehmed
Paşa’s thinking, but he probably assessed the strategic geography of the
region much as Habsburg commanders did. In a contemporary memo pre-
pared for the estates of Carniola, the author pointed out that if Hrastovica
fell, the Ottomans could cross the Kupa, below Sisak, into the as yet un-
plundered district of Turopolje and deprive Croatia of yet another populated
area. 108
206 Chapter 4

Meanwhile, it can hardly be said that the Croatians and their Austrian
allies were observing the treaty. In 1569, the uskoks of Senj made a major
incursion into the sancak of Klis, as far east as the border of Herzegovina. A
priest of Zagreb, known as Deli Pop, led his own band of raiders until he was
defeated and captured in 1570 by the sancakbeg of Pakrac. During the War
of the Holy League (1571–1573), southern Croatia descended into a general
state of war. From Klis, Sancakbeg Ferhat Beg Sokolović led Ottoman oper-
ations in Venetian Dalmatia, 109 while from Bosnia Sancakbeg Mehmed Paşa
kept up pressure on Croatia. The uskoks, normally seen by the Signoria as
Venice’s mortal foes, were now welcomed in Dalmatia as seasoned fighters
against the Turks. Once the Venetians signed a treaty with the Porte in 1573,
Ferhat Beg joined his colleague of Bosnia in excursions into Croatia. They
burned a fortress south of Bihać in March 1573, and in August, Ban Juraj
Drašković (r. 1567–1578) turned back an attack near the juncture of the Kupa
and the Sava. At the Porte, Maximilian II’s ambassador, Karel Rijm, was at a
loss to know whether continuing attacks into Croatia had the approval of the
grand vezir. In January 1573, when Rijm mentioned a report of raids by the
governor of Bosnia, Mehmed Paşa wanted to know whether the report came
from Vienna or somewhere else. Rijm answered evasively, not wanting to let
on that he was aware that exaggerated accounts of the border fighting on both
sides were being circulated by Ottoman officials hoping to discredit the
peace with Austria. Mehmed Paşa then struck his breast in token of his
sincerity: “Far be it from me,” he said, to give such commands to the govern-
or of Bosnia. In spite of himself, Rijm was inclined to believe him. 110
Vienna evidently chose to treat the governor of Bosnia, not the grand
vezir, as the source of its problem in Croatia. Rijm and his successor, David
Ungnad, interceded at the Porte to have sancakbeg Mehmed Paşa replaced.
But as Ungnad’s chaplain ruefully admitted, the man they got in his place
was even worse 111: it was Ferhat Beg Sokolović of Klis, another cousin, and
a partner in sancakbeg Mehmed Paşa’s recent attacks in Croatia. In January
1575, Ferhat Beg won a major victory near the headwaters of the Glina, a
tributary of the Kupa. Herbart von Auersperg, the captain of Senj, was killed,
and his head was sent to the Porte as a trophy. Some two thousand Habsburg
soldiers were captured, including Herbart’s eldest son. 112 Bihać withstood a
siege by Ferhat Beg in September 1575, but many other fortresses were
captured by the Ottomans that year. In 1576, Ferhat Beg is said to have led or
sponsored more than fifty incursions into Croatia. His greatest success came
about twenty miles north of Bihać, where he captured the small but strategi-
 War by Consultation vs. War by Command, 1556–1576 207

cally important fortresses of Bužim and Cazin. 113 By now, Vienna had no
illusions about Mehmed Paşa wanting peace on the Croatian frontier; Ung-
nad was told the grand vezir would not even listen to any complaints about
the governor of Bosnia. 114 In fact, Mehmed Paşa had reason to be pleased
with his cousin’s work. At Bužim and Cazin, the Ottomans had strongholds
west of the Una to support further attacks toward the Kupa.

VENETIAN DALMATIA

A Dangerous Partnership

After the war of 1537–1540, Venice built up its military capacity. From
1542, a hundred light galleys were to be kept battle-ready at all times. On
Terraferma, every seventh man was enrolled in the militia, as a galley oars-
man or an arquebusier. Towns undertook ambitious fortifications alla mod-
erna, with the Signoria paying one-third of the cost. A minor nobleman,
Sforza Pallavicini, was the first commander of the land forces appointed
solely on the basis of his military record (1546–1573). 115 The last wars
against the Habsburgs in Italy (1526–1529) and against the Turks 116 left
bitter memories and no desire for new military adventures. Hence the objec-
tive of the buildup was to defend Venice’s possessions, not to seek new
conquests. With Spain, Venice’s relations were frosty but correct. 117 Even
when it seemed, in the 1550s, that France might shake Spain’s hegemony in
Italy, 118 the Signoria made no move. With the Ottomans better placed than
Spain to harm Venice’s interests, keeping the peace was vital.
Meanwhile, trade with the Ottoman lands flourished, especially at Aleppo
and Alexandria, even if the new generation of young patricians rarely went
abroad for apprenticeships in commerce. 119 Ottoman intentions were
weighed shrewdly in the reports presented by baili returning from the Porte.
These accounts had their biases, including a certain eagerness to detect signs
of an impending Ottoman decline. 120 In general, however, the relazioni are
detailed and well argued, leaving a good impression of the intellectual caliber
of their authors. 121 Their assessments of Ottoman policy aims and military
resources are often cited with respect by modern Ottomanists.
If Venice’s need for good relations with the Porte was obvious, the ques-
tion that troubled the baili was what interest the Ottoman Empire had in
maintaining good relations with Venice. One believed the Porte got better
information on Europe from Venice than from the French or the Ragusans. 122
208 Chapter 4

Another noted that Charles V could not threaten Ottoman maritime domi-
nance in the eastern Mediterranean unless Venice chose to ally with him. 123
Marino Cavalli (1560) saw Venice as indispensable to the Porte for distribut-
ing to the West the spices and silks that passed through Ottoman customs. 124
With slight variations, Cavalli’s point about customs revenue was the most
common reason given as to why the Porte needed Venice. A predecessor of
Cavalli reported that commercial taxes at the centers for trade from Asia—
Baghdad, Aleppo, and Cairo—yielded a million ducats a year, roughly one-
eighth of the sultan’s total revenue. 125
But such figures were provided by Ottoman officials, and some Venetians
doubted their veracity. Although the “common opinion” concerning 8 mil-
lion ducats in total income still circulated in the 1570s, Marcantonio Barbaro
(1573) and Antonio Tiepolo (1576) did not credit it. 126 In 1562, a Venetian
secretary gave a much lower estimate of state income, at about 3,870,000
ducats. 127 If customs from the Asian trade 128 did provide as much as an
eighth of the sultan’s income, ties with Venice would indeed have been
important in the Porte’s calculation of state interests, even if one takes Doni-
ni’s lower figures 129 for overall revenue. But revenue considerations were
not necessarily enough to forestall a war. After the Cyprus War, Tiepolo had
a more somber explanation of why the Ottomans would now keep the peace:
they knew they could seize what remained of Venice’s overseas possessions
any time they wished. 130

Ottoman Encroachment in Rural Dalmatia

As of 1559, Dalmatia consisted of thirteen cities, twelve islands, and thirty

villages with a thousand inhabitants or more. In all, there were 99,560 souls,
including 21,240 adult males. 131 Venice’s primary interest here, as always,
was to safeguard the ports that protected the Zadar channel, through which
merchantmen sailed to and from the East. The Signoria made generous sums
available to its military architects, including, as of 1561, a total of 144,000
ducats for fortifications in Zadar, where Gian Girolamo Sanmicheli also built
a new system of cisterns. 132 To pay for these and other expenses, Venice took
care to maintain its Dalmatian salt works, especially on the long island of
Pag, west and north of Zadar; the net annual gain from the salt trade, estimat-
ed at 50,000 ducats, was usually enough to cover annual fortification ex-
penses in Dalmatia. 133 Finally, Venice needed a semblance of peace along
Dalmatia’s borders as a visible fruit of its efforts to keep the goodwill of the
 War by Consultation vs. War by Command, 1556–1576 209

Porte. In fact, for the 1550s and 1560s, there are no reports of military
operations in Dalmatia by Ottoman sancakbegs or their vojvods.
But this governance from afar gave less attention to the countryside,
where Ottoman officials nibbled away at Venetian prerogatives. “Turkish
Morlacchi” were still replacing Venetian cultivators. In Šibenik’s contado,
where sancakbeg Malkoč Beg of Klis had frustrated the Porte’s decision to
return thirty villages to Venetian control, Turkish Morlacchi under his pro-
tection still occupied the land. 134 Where territory was returned to Venetian
control, as at Trogir in 1559 and at Šibenik in the 1560s, “Morlacchi, subjects
of the sultan,” either refused to leave or signed on as tenants of the new
proprietors. 135 In Trogir’s contado, Malkoč Beg “sequestered” the taxes of
Venetian villages. 136 In Zadar’s countryside, a Klis official sent men to plow
the fields of a Venetian village. When the bailo in Constantinople procured
an appropriate command from the sultan, sancakbeg Ferhat Beg refused to
honor it, alleging that the text was ambiguous. 137 Four years later, his succes-
sor refused to honor a similar command because it made no reference to an
Ottoman register listing the village in question as owing taxes to the sul-
tan. 138
Near Split, along the bay to the west and north, the coastal strip controlled
by Venice was only a few miles wide. The now-Ottoman fortress of Klis,
five miles away, loomed over Split. The small port of Solin, at the narrow
end of the bay, was still Venetian. But Rüstem Paşa had endowed a pious
foundation at Solin and also bequeathed land there to his widow, Mihrimah.
Her proposal to rent her property to citizens of Split led to a long legal
quarrel over whether infidel landlords should be allowed to have jurisdiction
over tenants who were at least potentially Muslim. 139 Ottoman surveyors did
their work without necessarily consulting the Venetians. For example, they
“drew a line” from Solin to the Adriatic east of Split in such a way as to place
two Venetian castles in Ottoman territory. 140 Meanwhile, the emin (customs
collector) of Klis worked to gain control of the local salt trade. East of Split,
men from a town formerly subject to Venice worked the salt pits for the
emin, who was also building a warehouse. Split’s rector feared that if the
emin went on to build a “redoubt,” where traders could meet safely, Split
would altogether lose its share of the salt trade. 141
To counter encroachments of this kind, Venetian officials promoted reset-
tlement of the contado by Venetian subjects. In the 1560s, when Zadar’s
countryside was “beginning to be repopulated,” the cavalry commander in
Dalmatia posted men to more than a dozen villages to reassure the settlers
210 Chapter 4

and also to give Zadar timely news of any attack. If there were no large-scale
attacks in this period, small-scale raids by Ottoman martolossi continued
taking people and cattle as booty. But in a region where such raids were
traditionally kept under control by counter-raids, the settlers “were not al-
lowed to avenge themselves” because Venetian officials feared provoking
the Ottomans. Hence the settlers moved away. The solution was to have a
fortified site in the contado, with enough men to fend off raids. The castle of
Zemunik, which had served this purpose prior to the war of 1538–1541, was
thought especially suitable, 142 and by 1570 it seems that Zemunik was again
a functioning fortress. 143

The Cyprus War in Dalmatia, 1570–1572

News that the Ottoman arsenal was constructing war galleys at a furious pace
led the Signoria to issue orders for mobilization. New warships were built,
and new soldiers were recruited for the main overseas possessions—that is,
Cyprus, Crete, Corcyra, and Dalmatia. When Zuane da Lezze took command
of land forces in Dalmatia in April or May 1570, he found four thousand
infantry stationed in or passing through Zadar. 144 Outside the city, however,
Zadar’s contado was defended by ill-paid men who had never faced Ottoman
regulars. Thus when Ferhat Beg invaded from Klis in the summer, he met
little resistance. By capturing the town of Novigrad, he gained direct access
to the Velebit channel. 145 He also burned the city of Nin northwest of Zadar.
At Zemunik, the garrison deserted and had to be replaced. When the com-
mander fell ill, he was replaced by the captain of a Venetian war galley, who
then surrendered Zemunik to the Ottomans. 146
According to da Lezze, Zadar itself was not seriously threatened; it was
“one of the greatest fortresses in Christendom” and capable of withstanding a
long siege. 147 Some contemporary accounts have Ferhat Beg besieging Zadar
in 1570, but at an improbably early date and with an improbably large num-
ber of men. 148 During the summer of 1571, when Venetian galleys on station
in Dalmatia had joined Don Juan’s armada, Uluç ‘Ali took advantage of their
absence for a campaign of plunder. Men from his ships captured Bar and
Ulcinj and burned villages on the island Pag. 149 He too is said to have laid
siege to Zadar, but when the city is known to have been bombarded, in
September 1571, Uluç ‘Ali had already sailed away to join the Ottoman
armada.
After Lepanto, Venetian armies besieged Herceg Novi/Castelnuovo and
Klis but failed to capture either one. They did retake Novigrad in May
 War by Consultation vs. War by Command, 1556–1576 211

The Contado of Zadar in the Sixteenth Century

1572. 150 By now, the Ottomans were attacking in Corcyra and Crete, and
Venice turned its thoughts to negotiations. The treaty of March 1573 recog-
nized Ottoman conquests and promised an indemnity of 300,000 ducats; in
return, the Ottomans were to give back fifty villages in the contado of Zadar
and others around Šibenik. Ferhat Beg of Klis, ordered to draw a new border
with Venetian colleagues, pleaded that he must first rebuild certain fortress-
es. Then in 1575 he unilaterally set a boundary that preserved for the sultan
almost all the territory his troops had occupied. The bailo protested, but
when he came to Dalmatia in 1576 to join in drawing a new boundary, he
ended by accepting an agreement that made few changes to Ferhat Beg’s
border. 151 Thus more than half of what had remained of Zadar’s countryside
was lost. 152 The contado had 8,000 Venetian citizens before the war but only
1,600 in 1578. 153 This was a heavy blow. Yet Venice had chosen to accept
the loss of Cyprus rather than continue the war, and rural Dalmatia was far
less important.

Zemunik in the Peace Negotiations of 1572–1574

Mehmed Paşa Sokolović indicated what peace would look like as early as
September 1571, telling the bailo that a Venice without Cyprus could no
longer claim to stand on an equal footing with the sultan. Hence, if they
212 Chapter 4

wanted peace, the Venetians must either become Muslims or pay tribute. 154
Meanwhile, France’s King Charles IX, anxious to pry Venice loose from its
alliance with Spain, sent François de Noailles to the Porte. In Venice, en
route to Istanbul, Noailles learned that the Venetians had demanded his re-
call: the Signoria wanted peace with the sultan, but without being dependent
on French mediation. 155 On orders from Paris, Noailles proceeded to Istan-
bul, where he was watched closely by Maximilian II’s ambassador. 156
Noailles saw that Venice would not abandon the war while the armada of the
Holy League remained at sea. 157 The poor condition of the new Ottoman
fleet convinced him that this empire, the enemy of all Christians, would
suffer another disaster; he thus left the Porte without authorization and went
to Dubrovnik. 158 But Don Juan’s fleet accomplished nothing, and Venice
decided to send an ambassador to seek peace. Andrea Badoer arrived in
August 1572. 159
The mediator of the talks that followed was not Noailles but Solomon
Ashkenazi, known as Rabbi Solomon, who was the personal physician of
Bailo Marcantonio Barbaro and a member of the grand vezir’s entourage. By
February 1573, Rabbi Solomon and the Ottoman grand dragoman had a text
that Badoer endorsed, under the terms described above: except for Cyprus,
“villages and places and borders would be held as before the war.” Out of
respect for France, signing of the treaty was delayed until Noailles got back
in March. 160
In the Ottoman diplomatic style, it was unseemly for a capitulation
granted by the sultan 161 to descend into niggling detail. Boundary discussions
thus followed the treaty instead of preceding it, and the single most conten-
tious issue was Zemunik. In order to get around the Ottoman policy of not
giving up fortresses captured during a war, Badoer and his colleagues con-
tended that Zemunik was not fortified. This ploy was upended when one of
Ferhat Beg’s men went there and found a castle with four towers. Also,
Ferhat was reportedly preparing a brief asserting that a mosque had been
built in Zemunik, making another reason why it could never be returned. 162
The Venetians tried to forestall him with a brief of their own, based on the
language of the capitulation. The text said that each terra should remain as it
was before the war, but “all nations” understood that a terra was “a place
with jurisdiction” over surrounding villages. Thus Zemunik, despite its for-
tifications, was not a terra but a mere village, subordinate to the terra of
Zadar. 163 The Ottomans, however, were not impressed by arguments from
the distinctively European idea of a law of nations. 164 But the Venetians also
 War by Consultation vs. War by Command, 1556–1576 213

argued, in a second brief, that the sultan had sworn by his immutable word to
uphold the capitulation. This was an argument that might gain traction at the
Porte if used with care. 165 Yet Badoer miscalculated by not handing over the
first installment of the 300,000 ducat indemnity at a “kiss-the-sultan’s-hand”
ceremony on November 3 (his idea was not to deliver the money until given
a border settlement “in keeping with the capitulation”). The grand dragoman
conveyed Mehmed Paşa’s angry reaction: “Do you take the sultan for a
merchant to whom you need not give unless he gives to you?” 166
The final blow came when the Venetians learned that Ferhat Beg had sent
“ten sacks of silver akçe” 167 to Zemunik to buy land and build a mosque. 168
If Zemunik had not had a mosque before, it did now. Mehmed Paşa now
seized Badoer by his vest and spoke frankly: although his instructions re-
quired him to abide by Venice’s understanding of the capitulation, his stand-
ing was such that if he chose to end the ongoing contention, the Signoria
would approve his decision. 169 Badoer accepted a face-saving clause remit-
ting the decision on Zemunik to the sultan. Mehmed Paşa told Noailles the
castle would be torn down, but Zemunik remained as an Ottoman fortress. 170
Its loss deprived Venice of the last forward position from which to defend
Zadar on the landward side. As Bosnia’s sancakbeg Mehmed Paşa said in a
brief arguing for the retention of Zemunik, the Ottomans could now put
pressure on Zadar from Zemunik any time they chose. 171
Once peace was concluded, the sancakbeg of Herzegovina advanced a
plan for promoting commerce between Venice and the Ottoman Balkans. In
collaboration with Daniel Rodriguez, a Spanish-Jewish merchant, he sug-
gested to the doge that Split’s harbor be refitted to support a more active
trade with the hinterland. The proposal piqued interest in Venice because it
offered a better future for Split, which had suffered heavily in the war.
Moreover, for a Dalmatia reduced in area and population and less capable of
defending itself, closer economic ties with Ottoman provinces would have
made sense. But the rector of Split and certain other prominent men abhorred
the idea of having Jews as business partners. 172 The time for putting the
relationship between Dalmatia and its Ottoman neighbors on a new footing
had not yet come.

The Uskoks and the Cyprus War

In 1559, Fabio da Canal reported on his two-year tenure as commander of

four fuste charged to defend the seas against the uskoks at an annual cost of
50,000 ducats. To prevent them from surrounding trading vessels with their
214 Chapter 4

barks, da Canal kept his warships between merchant convoys and the coast.
When the emin of the Neretva region armed two brigantines to protect Otto-
man ships sailing west, da Canal convinced the emin that he, as captain
against the uskoks, would be “shamed” if it were to appear that he needed
help in safeguarding the Gulf. To curtail overland raids, da Canal went to
Senj on behalf of the Signoria and also “the emperor”—that is, Sultan Suley-
man. Finding the Senjani defiant, he blockaded the harbor for four months,
cutting off supplies of grain and wine. 173 Da Canal was not modest in re-
counting his accomplishments, but even if one makes allowance for some
exaggeration, his optimistic tone seems warranted. The uskoks could not in
fact challenge Venice’s dominion over the Gulf, and their small craft seldom
captured merchantmen at sea. 174 They did better by attacking ships anchored
in Ottoman ports and ferrying stolen goods back to the small harbors whence
they came. 175
The problem, as da Canal acknowledged, was that the uskoks had support
from Venetian subjects. In Zadar, da Canal found a house with a balcony
suspiciously close to the town wall, where eighteen men from Senj and
Rijeka “lived idly, under pretense of trade”; he ordered all foreigners to leave
the city and had balconies close to the wall torn down. 176 Some plunder from
the raids was disposed of in markets on the Venetian island of Krk, ten miles
from Senj, where the Senjani were steadily acquiring houses and vine-
yards. 177 The raiders steered clear of the main sea lanes, sailing along the
Velebit channel and through the Novigrad Strait into the Novigrad Sea, from
which they could strike towns and villages in Lika, which was from 1578 a
separate sancak. Da Canal called at villages near Novigrad, instructing them
to make smoke signals when uskoks came, but he did not expect his orders to
be obeyed. 178 In 1567, another official noted that watchmen stationed oppo-
site the town of Novigrad often joined in the attacks instead of reporting
them; they needed to be replaced by reliable men—that is, Italians. As to
stationing cavalry in Novigrad, he doubted that this would be more than a
partial solution; in a heavily forested area, raiders easily eluded cavalry not
supported by infantry. 179
During the Cyprus War, as in 1537–1540, men who could evade Ottoman
defenses were an asset. On Krk, subject to raids from Ottoman Obrovac, the
proveditor hired uskoks for defense and to “damage the enemies of Venice.”
But he eventually let them go: “They were not well-minded to the service of
Your Lordship.” On the mainland, Zuane da Lezze “gave free rein to ban-
dits” because he did not have enough good men. Even when Italian recruits
 War by Consultation vs. War by Command, 1556–1576 215

arrived, he found that “uskoks and Morlacchi” served better, because they
put up with rough conditions that others could not abide. Da Lezze wanted to
hire men from across the Habsburg frontier but could not do so because
Maximilian II had forbidden Croatian captains to let their men participate in
Venice’s war. 180 But the uskoks did not wait on Vienna’s permission. Early
in 1573, some of them joined the men of Trogir to raid an Ottoman village,
taking two hundred captives and two thousand cattle. 181
Peace did not end the raids, 182 nor the support that uskoks enjoyed in
Dalmatia. One official saw it as sympathy between “two bands of robbers.”
Another spoke of “kinship and friendship” between peoples artificially di-
vided by a border. 183 Modern scholars see both groups as sharing a “frontier
code” that accepted violence in defense of one’s honor. Did they also share a
common ethnic or national identity? The debate on this point is too compli-
cated and too important to be summarized here in a sentence or two. 184 In
any case, there clearly was local sympathy for the uskoks, and it seems to
have increased after the war. One reason for a pro-uskok drift of opinion is
suggested by what the rector of Zadar heard under his window in 1574, a
song whose words he pretended not to grasp: Venice was a sandbar; the
Ottomans were a stream washing it away. 185

HABSBURG CROATIA

Habsburg Ottoman Policy, 1556–1576

Ferdinand I, as King of the Romans, became de facto sovereign of the

empire after Charles V’s abdication in 1556. But the novelty of an abdication
required that new procedures be devised by the electoral princes, three of
whom were Protestant. 186 Hence Ferdinand persuaded Charles not to publish
his decision in Germany until the electors had made arrangements. In Frank-
furt, in March 1558, the electors “proclaimed” Ferdinand emperor after he
swore to uphold the Peace of Augsburg. 187 His careful respect for the em-
pire’s consultative traditions was probably one reason why subsequent diets
voted large grants for Hungary. 188 Meanwhile, the Austrian provinces had
roughly doubled their annual subsidies, and they would maintain this higher
level into the reign of Maximilian II. 189 Finally, the Hofkriegsrat was begin-
ning to coordinate command decisions. 190 All in all, Emperor Ferdinand I
(1558–1564) was now in a better position to face the Ottomans.
216 Chapter 4

There remained an obvious disparity in power requiring deference to the

sultan. A prince’s dignity had to be maintained, 191 but not if it provoked
Suleyman to send 150,000 men against Vienna. In keeping with the 1547
treaty, Ferdinand remitted annual sums that everyone understood as trib-
ute. 192 He promised that his border captains would keep the peace, and he
occasionally meted out severe punishment to miscreants. 193 At times, his
ambassadors at the Porte struck a tone that may be called obsequious. 194 Yet
no prince with blood in his veins could fail to look for opportunities, even
against a dangerously potent rival. Behind the sultan’s back, Ferdinand nego-
tiated treaties for the eventual annexation of Transylvania, in 1538 and again
in 1551. He also sent armies against Ottoman Buda in 1541 and 1542. All
these ventures failed. Yet Ferdinand continued to pursue his claims to Hun-
gary with “unbelievable tenacity.” 195
In April 1556, the vezirs were ready to negotiate a new treaty, but on one
condition: the fortress of Szigetvár must first be razed. Ferdinand no doubt
knew better than to capitulate to a demand of this kind, but before making a
decision, he took more than a year to seek advice from each of his hereditary
lands as well as the imperial diet. 196 In the hereditary lands, as in the empire,
nobles and estates collaborated more willingly in policies in which they had a
voice. In this case, all agreed that Szigetvár must not be abandoned, for it
defended Austria as Belgrade had once defended Hungary. Thus men from
Szigetvár were allowed to extend their raids targeting Ottoman forts and
Danube shipping above Belgrade. Their aim was to weaken Ottoman posi-
tions facing Styria and to cut the supply lines that might enable Buda to
support advances toward Vienna. 197
Ferdinand was following a dual track. At the Porte, Busbecq was to tell
the vezirs that Szigetvár’s garrison had been ordered to cease their raids. At
Szigetvár, Archduke Maximilian, then supervising fortifications, was given a
list of targets for the raiders. Keeping the enemy off guard seemed to bring
results. In 1562, ‘Ali Paşa offered something that Habsburg negotiators had
sought in vain for fifteen years—that is, a credible promise of fixed boundar-
ies in Hungary. Yet Ferdinand had this clause deleted from the final agree-
ment. 198 One may infer that he and his advisers judged that a good forward
defense offered better security than boundary markers. This choice did, how-
ever, entail an assumption—namely, that an aging and infirm sultan would
not likely go to war for the sake of a single fortress. 199 Meanwhile, with a
new treaty in place, Habsburg commanders took stock of their defenses. A
1563 survey of the border identified forty-one fortresses in Croatia and twen-
 War by Consultation vs. War by Command, 1556–1576 217

ty-one in Slavonia where improvement was urgently needed. 200 How money
for these projects might be raised was another matter. 201 This problem, like
the gamble at Szigetvár, was bequeathed to Ferdinand’s sons.
Maximilian II (b. 1527) showed as a young man clear sympathies for
Lutheranism. Conflict within the family became public in 1557 as Ferdinand
tried to expel suspect preachers from his son’s household. Maximilian even-
tually bowed to reality, swearing in May 1562 never to abandon the Catholic
religion. 202 Only now did Ferdinand make arrangements for the succes-
sion. 203 Maximilian was crowned king of Bohemia, King of the Romans, and
finally king of Hungary. 204 He was also to receive the duchies of Upper and
Lower Austria. Tyrol’s independent streak was recognized by assigning it to
Archduke Ferdinand (1529–1596), Ferdinand’s second son. Archduke Karl
(1540–1590), the third son, became ruler of Inner Austria—that is, Styria,
Carinthia, and Carniola.
As the prospective ruler of a polyglot state, Maximilian learned seven
languages. 205 While serving in various posts, he came to dislike his father’s
easy tolerance of noble privilege and traditional procedures; his own interest
in reform would be evident in a Hofkammer ordinance of 1568 and in tenta-
tive interventions against a Slavonian estate owner who abused his peasants
egregiously. 206 Yet, as king and emperor, Maximilian kept scrupulously to
the precedents of Ferdinand’s reign. Thus, only unimpeachable Catholics
were appointed to the higher civil offices. The key members of his privy
council, such as Hans Trautson, had all served under Ferdinand. Georg Gien-
ger was even persuaded to come out of retirement. Like his father, Maximil-
ian listened carefully to these men and tended to follow their advice. 207
The younger Maximilian had also faulted Ferdinand for excess caution in
dealing with the Porte. Here, too, he swung round to a different view. 208 In
1558 and 1559, while serving as overall commander in Hungary, Archduke
Maximilian was evidently uncomfortable with the strategy of forward de-
fense. When the paşa of Buda threatened to attack unless he stopped work on
a fortress near Szigetvár, Maximilian complied, lest he give the Ottomans an
excuse for violating the truce. 209 Ferdinand had him resume work and re-
minded him that new fortifications at Szigetvár too must be completed, what-
ever the Ottomans said. As for raids from Szigetvár, the fact that Maximilian
asked his father for a list of “suitable” targets for raids suggests that he did
not want to make such decisions himself. 210 As king and emperor, he evinced
the same cautious temper. In 1564, when the Transylvanians conquered Satu
Mare/Szatmár, 211 Maximilian wondered about notifying his ambassador at
218 Chapter 4

the Porte of this breach of the 1562 treaty. Archduke Ferdinand told him he
had to complain to the sultan and demand that Szatmár be returned. 212 In the
end, he decided the issue as his father would have done: he endorsed the
counter-attack that recovered Szatmár, even though it increased the likeli-
hood of war. 213 In 1566, the large army he assembled failed to accomplish
anything; after the loss of Szigetvár, this genial man brooded in silence for
days. From the sour taste of defeat, he evidently concluded that the Ottomans
must on no account be provoked. 214
The stark reality of a lost war was made clear to Vienna in tough negotia-
tions that followed the treaty of 1568. The Ottomans insisted on regulating
the border according to a defter or tax register drawn up by the treasurer of
the paşaluk of Buda. This document, claiming for the sultan lands and castles
that were de facto occupied by Habsburg subjects, gave Ottoman command-
ers license to attack. Moreover, along this border the two parties were not to
be equal. On the Habsburg side, Ottoman commanders would continue to
collect taxes from villages that had “voluntarily” agreed to pay; on the Otto-
man side, Habsburg lords would lose all claim to incomes they had collected
before the war. These were a conqueror’s terms. Maximilian’s ambassa-
dors—capable and respected men—were not able to achieve more than mi-
nor concessions. After six years of talks, they obtained a new treaty provid-
ing that disputes concerning the interpretation of the Buda defter would be

Hungary Divided in Three Parts, ca. 1570

 War by Consultation vs. War by Command, 1556–1576 219

referred to a joint commission. In fact, neither side expected such a commis-

sion to meet, much less to resolve to contentious issues. Rather, diplomacy
on these lines was tantamount to a sanction for Kleinkrieg. As one Habsburg
diplomat remarked, Maximilian and his border lords must protect their lands
not by negotiation but “in fact and deed.” 215
Yet if Kleinkrieg was unavoidable, Maximilian sought to limit border
infractions from his side. As they appear in Habsburg correspondence, Otto-
man complaints refer mainly to the hajduk raids that were recognized as
difficult to control. 216 The only Habsburg fortress said to have launched
major assaults was Kanizsa, some fifty miles east and north of Szigetvár; in
turn, Kanizsa was the target of a full-scale Ottoman attack in 1571. 217 In
forwarding his grievances, Maximilian took the path of least resistance. In-
cursions from Buda were protested at the Porte, not in Buda, whose paşa
“took it very ill” if presented with complaints. Attacks from Bosnia were
treated as initiatives of the sancakbeg, possibly because Maximilian chose to
credit Grand Vezir Mehmed Paşa’s protestations of good faith. 218 In negotia-
tions for a new treaty, he wanted, but did not get, a clause banning all new
fortifications. 219 Still, his caution in dealing with the Ottomans had limits.
When the Porte in 1575 demanded the razing of a new fortress near Satu
Mare, Maximilian, after consulting with his advisers, refused to be intimidat-
ed. 220
Archduke Karl was the first Habsburg prince to be educated by the Jes-
uits. 221 By 1564, when he took up residence in Graz, nobles and burghers in
his three duchies were predominantly Lutheran; in 1572, the zealous Catholic
prince was compelled to promise the nobles and towns freedom of worship.
He bided his time, however, and by the end of his reign he was able to begin
expelling Lutheran pastors from the towns; their successors, sometimes Jes-
uits, won new converts to the old religion. 222 Even before he began interfer-
ing with their religious choices, Karl’s subjects found that having a ruler of
their own was a mixed blessing. Since they were not directly governed by the
emperor, the Inner Austrian estates could no longer send “embassies” to the
imperial diet to plead their case. This was a source of constant complaint, the
more so because Hungary got the lion’s share of the diet’s allocations, with
smaller sums for Slavonia and Croatia. 223
Perhaps because of his intolerance, Karl has not been popular with histo-
rians; there is no biography. 224 This neglect is unfortunate. Karl corre-
sponded with Maximilian continually about the parlous condition of the bor-
der, 225 and the Turcica section of the Austrian State Archives is replete with
220 Chapter 4

his letters. For the first time, a ruling prince kept an eye on all the various
bodies that were meant to work in unison along the frontier. Karl added
military staff to his Hofrat and commissioned reports on defending the Una-
Kupa region. 226 If Maximilian favored superannuated advisers, Karl was
impatient of a commander who had been kept on too long: Ivan Lenković did
not have war councilors from the three Austrian duchies at his side, 227 as the
law required, and it was time to honor his requests for dismissal. 228 In 1566
Maximilian II entrusted the Slavonian-Croatian frontier to Karl, and then the
Hungarian frontier as well. Yet the fact that Maximilian retained final author-
ity for himself 229 was symptomatic of the difficulties that an energetic prince
faced in operating within the structure of a composite monarchy.
In theory, Archduke Karl’s powers extended to the garrison at Senj, but
since their pay was as much as three years in arrears, 230 the soldiers did as
they pleased. Karl agreed with a Venetian emissary in condemning the “evil
deeds” of these men, but what to do with them was another matter. His
advisers recommended moving the uskoks “back into the forest,” well away
from the frontier, but Karl himself swore never to give them shelter in his
Austrian lands. 231 Elsewhere in Croatia, the Sabor answered only to Maxi-
milian, as king of Hungary. But the deputies did recognize, by January 1571
if not earlier, that Karl had been given authority over the frontier. They also
agreed to his request that specified nobles be responsible for provisioning
specific frontier garrisons. 232 There was in fact grounds for agreement be-
tween the archduke and the deputies; the Sabor was an assembly of lesser
nobles, often hostile to magnates, and Karl supported their objections to the
exemptions that magnates and prelates claimed from the dica or hearth tax in
Slavonia. 233 When Hungary’s Chamber of Accounts reported that collectors
were diverting dica revenue to Nikola Zrinski—even though he was no long-
er the ban—Karl backed their efforts to discipline the wayward officials. 234
In other respects, however, the Sabor objected to Karl’s concerns for the
dica. In their accounts, collectors were not listing peasant taxpayers by vil-
lage, as the law required, and in so doing they opened the door to fraud;
accordingly, the Chamber of Accounts sent investigators to Slavonia with
Karl’s approval. 235 But the real issue in this dispute was the government’s
demand for a new assessment of taxable property in Slavonia, an idea stoutly
resisted by magnates and lesser nobles alike. Maximilian II had to intervene;
the Sabor and the two co-bans were eventually persuaded to go along, but
only after years of negotiation. 236
 War by Consultation vs. War by Command, 1556–1576 221

Defending Croatia: 1556–1566

As of 1556, the three Inner Austrian provinces had on their payroll, in Slavo-
nia and Croatia proper, about 1,100 infantry and 1,500 light cavalry. 237 The
commander of Styria’s men in Slavonia usually served as captain of
Varaždin, as did the commander of Carniola’s men at Senj. 238 Ivan Lenković,
from the Carniolan branch of a Croatian family, was from 1547 commander
of perhaps a thousand uskoks, most of them supported by grants of land in
the Zumberačka region, 239 on the border between Croatia and Carniola. From
1557, he was also the overall commander of both the Slavonian and the
Croatian sectors of the border, a position that was independent of the Aus-
trian estates in theory if not in practice. Petar Erdödy, ban of Croatia from
1557 until his death in 1567, 240 had another thousand or so troops, in theory
funded from the dica. Finally, Nikola Zrinski, from his power base in
Međimurje, could bring his own men across the Drava to link up with Erdödy
or Lenković. But pay for the ban’s men and for the garrisons supported by
Styria and Croatia was almost everywhere seriously in arrears. 241 To cover
the shortfall, Vienna still depended on magnates, like Zrinski and Erdödy,
who borrowed against their own credit. 242 Also, “Germans” and “Hungar-
ians” still mistrusted one another. 243
Notwithstanding these difficulties, Lenković, Zrinski, and Erdödy kept up
good communications among themselves 244 and with Austrian colleagues.
When they combined forces, Habsburg commanders were often as not suc-
cessful, especially in Slavonia, where Erdödy had lands of his own to de-
fend 245 and where the key fortresses—Varaždin, Zagreb, and Sisak—had
Austrian garrisons. 246 Between February 1558 and December 1559, Ottoman
invaders suffered three successive defeats in Slavonia. A further indication of
a military “equilibrium” here was that Malkoč Beg razed the fortress of
Čazma, since it could no longer be defended; the capital of the sancak was
moved thirty miles southeast to Pakrac. 247 Also in 1559, Zrinski claimed to
have reconquered “certain hereditary lands” held by his ancestors in the
sancak of Požega. 248
Early in 1562, Erdödy and Zrinski launched a concerted assault. While
the ban marched south and east from Križevci to capture a fortress in the
sancak of Požega, Zrinski from his new base in Szigetvár 249 crossed the
Drava and struck at Moslavina, where the sancakbeg of Požega was busy
with fortifications; caught by surprise, he withdrew toward Osijek, leaving
his artillery behind. 250 At the Porte, ‘Ali Paşa told Busbecq that if he had
hitherto “closed an eye” to Habsburg border violations, mainly in Transylva-
222 Chapter 4

nia, he took Zrinski’s unprovoked attack on an Ottoman sancakbeg as a

“declaration of war” on the sultan himself. 251 Yet Moslavina did not prevent
the conclusion of a new treaty in 1562. Slavonia’s defenses were not tested
again until 1565, when Bosnia’s Mustafa Paşa Sokolović marched north to
strike at Križevci, only to be intercepted and thrown back at Ivanić by
Erdödy. 252
To the south, the Senj–Bihać line was Carniola’s responsibility, and com-
manders were not appointed without consulting the estates. 253 Senj was not
threatened, at least not after Lenković completed in 1558 the fortress of
Nehaj (“Fear Not”) on a hill above the city. 254 Border violations in this
region came primarily from the Habsburg side because Vienna allowed its
fighting men in this distant region to support themselves by plunder. In any
case, soldiers formally on the payroll were outnumbered by venturini who
served for a share of the booty. To reach the Ottoman sancaks of Lika and
Klis, raiders from Senj and Vinodol sailed up the Velebit channel and
crossed Dalmatia, 255 thus causing problems with Venice. But if leaders had
to be singled out, Ferdinand wanted punishment only for episodes of which
the Venetians specifically complained. 256
Bihać defended a salient jutting into Ottoman Bosnia, and here, too, the
men were evidently expected to fend for themselves; in 1557, the Porte had
reports of a captain of Bihać who attacked and burned the city of Udbina,
about forty miles to the south. 257 Nonetheless, Bihać was seldom in dan-
ger, 258 at least not until 1565. In the spring of that year, Bosnia’s new
governor, Mustafa Paşa Sokolović, exposed Bihać’s eastern flank by con-
quering the Croatian fortress of Krupa on the upper Una. 259 The loss of
Krupa, cutting off important supply routes to Bihać, led the Hofkriegsrat to
consider razing Bihać. Following Archduke Karl’s intervention, it was de-
cided to retain the fortress. 260 Though its security gradually deteriorated,
Bihać would remain in Habsburg hands until 1592.
The Ottomans now concentrated their attacks north of Bihać into Habs-
burg territory lying between the Sava and the Una. 261 One reason for the
vulnerability of the Una frontier was that important fortresses on the Una
below Bihać—like Kostajnica and Novigrad—belonged to a magnate family
that could no longer defend them. Nikola Zrinski’s relocation—to Čakovec
and then to Szigetvár 262—served Austrian interests as well as his own, be-
cause from these positions he helped to protect Styria, farther up the Drava
and the Mur. But his center of power was now far distant from family
holdings on the Ottoman frontier. Thus Krupa was entrusted to the captain of
 War by Consultation vs. War by Command, 1556–1576 223

Bihać, and Ferdinand in 1558 agreed to “take under his protection” the
eponymous fortress of Zrin (west of the Una). 263 A text from 1560 mentions
“subsidies” provided to Zrinski, but it seems the actual flow of money was
from Zrinski to Ferdinand. One reason he took on the captaincy of Szigetvár
was to repay himself from its revenues for a loan of 10,000 thaler. 264 When
the Sabor sought help for Zrin, Ferdinand’s commissioners replied that the
crown could provide promised victuals but nothing more. 265 Zrinski’s ab-
sence likely contributed to the fall of Kostajnica in 1556, Novigrad in 1560,
and Krupa in 1565. 266
A further problem was that many noble castle owners between the Una
and the Kupa had estates that were small to begin with and were now depop-
ulated by Ottoman raids. 267 The only magnate resident in this area was Count
Franjo Frankopan Slunjski (1537–1572), 268 but despite his family’s prestige,
he lacked the means to garrison and provision his eponymous castle of Slunj.
As king of Hungary and Croatia, Ferdinand had the authority to decree a
strategic triage so as to concentrate resources on the more defensible sites.
Following a June 1558 “consultation” with the Hofkriegsrat, he issued a
mandatum listing fortresses that were henceforth to be properly supplied and
others that were to be demolished under the ban’s direction. 269 In keeping
with the first part of Ferdinand’s command, Croatia’s Sabor passed resolu-
tions to ensure adequate labor-service (robot) and grain for the more impor-
tant sites. 270 But Ferdinand undermined his demolition order by exempting
the castle of Zrin. In July 1558, nobles making up the Sabor flatly refused to
raze the castles “in which we have placed our hopes.” 271 Ferdinand acknowl-
edged defeat by postponing the implementation of his command. It seems
that three castles were torn down, as well as a monastery near Hrastovica, but
as of 1562 the deputies still resisted the destruction of additional castles. 272
The Ottomans will have known that Vienna’s plans had been frustrated. In
attacking toward the Kupa, they would find soft targets.

Defending Croatia: 1566–1573

From the Ottoman victory at Szigetvár (September 1566) to the end of the
Cyprus War (March 1573), neither government sought confrontation along
the frontier. Mehmed Paşa thought a respite was in order after major cam-
paigns in 1565 and 1566, and large commitments of troops were soon enough
required at far distant points, in Yemen and on the Volga in 1569 273 and in
the Mediterranean from 1570 through 1572. Maximilian II for his part
wanted no further confrontation with the Ottomans. Unlike Ferdinand, he
224 Chapter 4

hoped to achieve a fixed border between Habsburg and Ottoman lands. 274
Instead, as noted above, his ambassadors struggled to ward off the Ottomans’
insistence on a border of their devising, which claimed Habsburg villages
and castles. 275 In the wake of defeat at Lepanto, Mehmed Paşa changed his
tone—he insisted that while Suleyman had loved Venice and hated Austria,
Selim II hated Venice and loved Austria 276—but only briefly. In the end,
Habsburg diplomats had to agree that border commissioners (if and when
they met) would take an Ottoman defter as the basis for their discussions. 277
There was now a new generation of Habsburg commanders. Styria’s Lu-
kas Szeckel was overall commander of the Slavonian-Croatian frontier. 278
Following Ban Petar Erdödy’s death in 1567, there was no lay magnate of the
right age who could use his private wealth to support the ban’s office. Maxi-
milian and the Sabor agreed on Croatia’s wealthiest prelate, Juraj Drašković,
who was both bishop of Zagreb and abbot of the Cistercian abbey of Topus-
ko. Drašković served from 1567 to 1578. Count Franjo Frankopan Slunjski
served as co-ban until his death in December 1572. The two bans turned back
Ottoman attacks at or near Hrastovica in August 1568 and July 1571. Early in
1572, Veit Halleck attacked from Varaždin into Bosnia and Požega with as
many as five thousand men (or so Mehmed Paşa claimed); meanwhile, Juraj
Zrinski, Count Nikola’s eldest son, raided near Virovitica from his base in
Međimurje. In retaliation, the Ottomans burned the cloister at Ivanić (east of
Zagreb) in April 1572. 279
There had now been nearly two generations of Kleinkrieg, punctuated at
times by massive Ottoman invasions but never by real peace. The fact that
enemy incursions had kept up for so long was a scandal, and someone had to
be blamed. There are indications that rural folk in the Habsburg provinces
held aristocrats responsible for not living up to the duties of their estate. 280
The nobles themselves, speaking through the provincial estates, put the
blame elsewhere. At meetings of Styria’s parliament, deputies made
speeches about how the Holy Roman Empire was failing in its obligations to
Styria and sent delegations to Vienna to ask yet again for permission for an
embassy to the diet. In Croatia, the Sabor complained that Maximilian’s
failure to defend his subjects properly would force them to live in tree
houses; they wanted him to make a personal appearance in Croatia, as Hun-
gary’s kings of old had done. 281 They also objected to the fact that Archduke
Karl and the Styrians were allocating sizeable sums for the fortification of
Koprivnica, which guarded the Mur (and thus Styria), and none at all for
Hrastovica, which was “the very key of the Christian faith,” for it protected
 War by Consultation vs. War by Command, 1556–1576 225

the “populous island” of Turopolje between the Kupa and the Sava. Maximil-
ian knew all about the populous island; tax irregularities in a region that had
“as many settlers as in all the rest of Slavonia” roused his indignation. But
charges that the two co-bans blocked investigation of the alleged fraud
brought the indignation of the Sabor: how could His Majesty’s officials
impugn Ban Drašković, who had not lost the “meanest fortress” to the ene-
my, or Ban Slunjski, who spent day and night on the frontier? 282 When the
energetic Slunjski died unexpectedly in December 1572, no replacement
could be found for a year and a half; Drašković, though now seen as old and
unfit, continued as co-ban until 1578. 283
Nonetheless, there was a shared understanding of what had to be done.
Since Ottoman attacks and martolossi raids were now pointed toward the
“populous island” of Turopolje, 284 the appropriate counter-strategy was obvi-
ous. Bihać, which prevented the Ottomans from crossing the Una where it
was shallow, 285 had to be held at all cost. So did the principal fortresses
guarding the Kupa, especially Sisak, where the Kupa enters the Sava, and
Hrastovica, east and south of the Kupa. 286 The castles of impecunious no-
bles—left standing, at the Sabor’s insistence—should not be neglected either,
for even a few men could hold off raiders. 287 For example, at Brezth, which
guarded a ford across the Kupa, the Sabor assessed eleven noblemen for
money to keep eight soldiers on duty for a year. 288 Ban Drašković built two
small enclosures (oppida) to serve as barracks for cavalry patrolling the
countryside. 289 All these plans were sound from a military standpoint, but
there was a catch. Every new project demanded provisions and especially
labor from a peasantry that was already heavily burdened.

Robot and Revolt, 1573

During the course of the fifteenth century, the ancient custom of calling all
able-bodied men to arms in a time of emergency was gradually abandoned by
Austria’s rulers since peasants were of little use against mercenary soldiers.
Maximilian I and his provinces worked out a new system whereby every five
peasant households provided a man to be trained as an infantryman. 290 As it
became more common for infantry units to have contingents of arquebusiers
and then musketeers, 291 peasant soldiers were taught the use of firearms. 292
Along the Croatian border, peasants had firearms with them as they worked
their fields. 293 Meanwhile, noble estates were taxed to support professional
cavalry. 294 Nobles themselves were not assessed, at least not for ordinary
taxes. 295 Rather, the so-called Gült levied on noble estates was paid by their
226 Chapter 4

tenants. Thus as the Austrian provinces increased the level of their subsi-
dies, 296 the peasants paid the bill.
The growing fiscal burden on the countryside was in some degree coun-
ter-balanced by a rise in agricultural prices, in keeping with sixteenth-century
population growth. While most peasants in Croatia were serfs, their legal
status did not keep them from taking surplus production to market at weekly
fairs. But noble estate owners also responded to market conditions. For ex-
ample, they converted ground rents and other dues from cash obligations to
payments in kind, to the disadvantage of their tenants. Nobles also had privi-
leges with which no peasant could compete, including the right of “first
purchase” for products of their estates and exemption from taxes on goods
shipped across the border. 297 Finally, there was the growing list of wartime
requisitions levied on the peasantry by the nobles who made up Croatia’s
Sabor. For wheat, millet, and oats, rural households had standing obligations
to deliver set quantities to nearby towns. The better-organized Austrian prov-
inces had paid quartermasters for collecting and distributing provisions, but
Croatia did not. Hence grain piled up in urban storehouses sometimes rotted
for want of timely delivery to the designated destinations. 298 Meanwhile,
well-connected noblemen charged high prices for provisions they sent to the
frontier. Conscientious officials highlighted the problem of profiteering, 299
but a government desperate to keep its outposts supplied chose not to take
notice.
A peasant’s most precious resource was his own labor, and this too was
more and more demanded of him. Military planners recognized that men
dragooned off to an unfamiliar site did not make the best workers. For the
defenses he was constructing around Satu Mare, Lazarus Schwendi de-
manded and got permission to hire men to dig for pay (fossatores). 300 But
Vienna’s paymasters gave Hungary a higher priority, and there is no refer-
ence to fossatores in published resolutions of the Croatian Sabor. Also, six-
teenth-century Austrian officials had reshaped traditional notions of labor-
service (robot), blurring the distinction between the liability for public works
that was incumbent on all subjects and the duty of serfs to allocate some of
their workdays to their lord’s land. The result was a general and in principle
unlimited obligation to contribute labor as directed by local authorities. 301 In
Croatia, the Sabor levied assessments on noble estates for each project, and
not for labor only; peasants also had to supply carts and, for new construc-
tion, long oaken logs. 302 If they resisted, the Sabor threatened a firm re-
 War by Consultation vs. War by Command, 1556–1576 227

sponse: rebels would face the death penalty, as in the time of King Wladislas
II. 303
The rebellion of January 1573 broke out in a corner of Slavonia known
for viticulture and cattle-raising. The estates of Susedgrad and Stubica, west
of Zagreb, were from 1564 involved in a protracted ownership dispute be-
tween two magnate families: Andrija Hennyngh’s sale of half of the estates
to Franjo Tahy was contested by his widow and son-in-law. The serfs sided
with the Hennynghs, even taking up arms, and for good reason. Tahy’s abuse
of his tenants, including multiple rapes of peasant women, was richly docu-
mented by a royal inquest. Maximilian II seized possession of Tahy’s half of
the estates in 1567 and again in 1571, but only temporarily. In 1571, with
Tahy back in control, the serfs killed his tax collector and sent a delegation to
Vienna with new grievances; they also defeated the Zumberačka uskoks
hired by Tahy. Although the Sabor denounced them for rebellion against His
Majesty, the serfs believed they had acted within the law and were allowed to
keep their weapons. The idea for a general insurrection a year and a half later
seems to have originated from Susedgrad and Stubica. According to plan,
some twelve thousand to sixteen thousand peasants were mobilized in three
armies, two in western Slavonia and one in Carniola. For about a week, they
controlled an area of more than two thousand square miles. From subsequent
interrogations, it seems they aimed at abolishing the obligations incumbent
on serfs, removing all barriers to free trade in foodstuffs, and defending the
border against the Turks. One scholar suggests that they aspired to the honor-
able status of free military colonists, like the Zumberačka uskoks. But in
February, Vice-Ban Gaspar Alapy defeated two armies in Slavonia, and Car-
niolan nobles did likewise on their side of the border. A reign of terror
ensued; this region suffered more than in any Ottoman invasion. Thousands
of men were killed, sometimes with their wives and children. 304
More than ever, the nobles were now masters of the house in Croatia.
Gaspar Alapy, the conqueror of the peasants, became co-ban, and the Sabor’s
labor-service resolutions began specifying how much earth each worker was
to move in a day. 305 As with taxes, “remainders” of robot obligations had to
be made good. In May 1574, for example, the Sabor assigned the “remain-
der” of labor-services from 1572 to work at Brezth castle on the Kupa. 306
Once a detailed plan for defense works all along the frontier was adopted in
1577–1578, even more labor-service would be required. There is no simple
connection between the rebellion of 1573 and the eventual consolidation of
Croatia’s military frontier. But the brutal suppression of the revolt surely
228 Chapter 4

made it easier for the Sabor to decree allotments of robot, and harder for serfs
to refuse compliance. There was, however, an escape valve from about 1580:
peasants familiar with the use of firearms could acquire the honorable status
of military colonists by contracting for service on the frontier. 307

Beratschlagung

Ferhat Beg’s successes in 1575 and 1576, notwithstanding the Sabor’s defen-
sive preparations, 308 brought consternation on the Habsburg side. At the
Porte, Ambassador Ungnad took pains to recover the severed head of his
friend and peer Herbart von Auersperg. 309 The loss of Bužim and Cazin, 310
giving the Ottomans fortified positions west of the Una, was far more seri-
ous. Bužim was to have been garrisoned and provisioned at the joint expense
of its owner and the frontier command. But its lord neglected his duty, and
wages due from government paymasters fell behind; when it was captured,
this important fortress was held by three men. 311 Human failings were always
to be expected, but Bužim was not an isolated example, and the frequency of
such episodes pointed up the general inadequacy of Habsburg defenses.
As suggested at the end of chapter 3, the provinces and kingdoms that
made up the Habsburg Monarchy were tied together by a process of consulta-
tion. The German term Beratschlagung meant both the taking of counsel and
the counsel given. For example, when the members of a provincial parlia-
ment received a request from His Majesty, they “consulted” among them-
selves before responding. 312 If Ferdinand did not like the response he re-
ceived from his provincial estates, he asked the delegates to “consult” fur-
ther. 313 Discussion among the appointed councilors who served the monarch
in his various lands was also a Beratschlagung. “Consultation” of this kind
preceded the proposal for a strategic triage of castles in Croatia 314 and the
decision to continue peace negotiations at the Porte, notwithstanding the
attack on Satu Mare. 315 In other cases princely advisers and estates deputies
met together, as when “certain of His Majesty’s councilors and magnates,
from his kingdoms and from the Austrian provinces,” convened in Vienna
and “advised” him not to raze Szigetvár. 316 Insofar as princely advisers or
estates deputies had to be apprised of current relations with the Porte in order
to form an opinion, they received copies of recent dispatches from Istan-
bul. 317
In the Habsburg state, as in other composite monarchies of sixteenth-
century Europe, 318 discussion among the ruler’s councilors and discussion in
his estates represented different principles of government. While the king-
 War by Consultation vs. War by Command, 1556–1576 229

emperor’s advisers were expected to consider the interests of the monarchy

as a whole, discussion in local parliaments served to highlight provincial
interests that were often overlooked in the capital. Thus the two principles
often collided. For example, the need to reduce the number of fortresses was
obvious to the crown’s military advisers, but not to members of Croatia’s
Sabor, loath to condemn their peers to the loss of family castles. Historians
sometimes describe such conflicts in terms of a dichotomy between a back-
ward-looking provincial “particularism” and the advance of centralization,
understood as a form of modernization. 319 By this measure, Archduke Karl
would qualify as a modernizer; he had little patience for the “consultations”
by which one province could stall implementation of what a majority of the
others had decided. 320 Yet the defense of provincial interests was not neces-
sarily retrograde, and a more centralized government was not necessarily a
better government. By trying to impose on their Low Countries provinces
policies that they judged best, Ferdinand’s Spanish cousins provoked a rebel-
lion that lasted for eighty years. 321 In the Austrian case, too, Vienna did not
always know best. Styria and Carniola had reason to complain about resource
allocations that helped solidify Habsburg defenses on the Danube, but not the
Drava or the Sava. 322 If the frontier was to be defended more effectively, any
comprehensive plan had to incorporate the local knowledge of provincial
stakeholders as well as the expertise of crown advisers. In other words, there
was a need for more Beratschlagung, not less.
Early in 1566, Lazarus Schwendi drafted, at Maximilian II’s request, a
general plan of defense against the anticipated Ottoman invasion of Hungary.
Archduke Karl, now in charge of the frontier, wanted to convene what he
called a “high consultation” on the basis of Schwendi’s proposals. This was
not feasible owing to the distances that key advisers would have had to
travel; Schwendi, for example, would not leave Satu Mare. 323 Karl had to
settle for a meeting of the Hofkriegsrat apparently devoted to the questions
of provisions; the quartermaster-general estimated it would take 100,000
gulden a year to keep all the frontier fortresses supplied. 324 In 1571, Maxi-
milian reminded his Inner Austrian subjects that they had not kept up the
laudable practice of sending knowledgeable men to Vienna every spring to
have their annual war budgets gone through line by line. In fact, bringing
estates deputies and military experts together was exactly what was needed;
there was a Beratschlagung of this kind in 1573. 325
Around this time, Schwendi’s more detailed proposals for defending
Lower Austria (Vienna) and Inner Austria launched a new round of consulta-
230 Chapter 4

tions. 326 At Graz, in April 1574, Schwendi warned the estates of Styria,
Carniola, and Carinthia to stop looking to the Holy Roman Empire for de-
liverance: “Because His Highness the Archduke receives little help from
other Christian rulers, it is highly necessary that he defend himself.” Self-
defense meant a society mobilized for war: nobles must participate in regular
military exercises, ordinary subjects must be taught the use of firearms, cities
must establish shooting guilds to encourage marksmanship, and border ten-
ancies must be allotted only to peasants trained for war. From the time of
Niccolò Machiavelli’s The Art of War (1527), these were ideas that military
theorists discussed, but nowhere had they been put into practice systematical-
ly. 327 The Inner-Austrian discussions touched off by Schwendi culminated in
August 1575 when Archduke Karl convened a meeting of the three provinces
at Bruck-an-der-Mur (Styria). After long debate, they agreed to most of
Schwendi’s proposals. From this point on, estates deputies and military ex-
perts began holding nearly continuous meetings to work out the details.
If estates deputies were to be brought in on government planning, they
had to be apprised of the current state of Ottoman-Habsburg relations. At
Maximilian II’s behest, David Ungnad sent two circular letters to the Aus-
trian estates from his post at the “German house” (nemci han) in Istanbul; the
second letter, dated 1 October 1576, ran to fifty-four pages. 328 Ungnad
wanted his peers to understand that there was no prospect of restraining
Ottoman power through alliance with Poland-Lithuania 329 or any other
Christian state. Nor could diplomacy pacify the border. Bužim and Cazin,
where Muslims now prayed, would never be returned. Raids came almost on
a daily basis, even with a treaty in place. 330 Ungnad meant to reinforce
Lazarus Schwendi’s argument: the Habsburg lands had to rely on them-
selves. Maximilian II died on 12 October 1576, but the process of consulta-
tion launched under his auspices would continue into the reign of his son and
successor, Rudolf II.

CONCLUSION

The Habsburg Monarchy and the Ottoman Empire had by now shared a
hostile border for half a century. As they sought to maximize human and
material resources, the two mega-states began to resemble each other in
certain ways. For example, the regularization of consultative procedures
among Ferdinand’s and Maximilian II’s advisers seems to have had some
Ottoman parallels. During the latter half of the sixteenth century, the grand
 War by Consultation vs. War by Command, 1556–1576 231

vezir’s authority was restricted by requiring that his petitions to the sultan,
hitherto presented in person, must be submitted in writing. 331 The Ottoman
Empire had no hereditary aristocracy and thus no magnate clans whose vast
holdings and entrenched privileges limited the ambit of the sovereign’s writ.
Yet family dynasties like the Sokolović, well represented among high offi-
cials of the European provinces, found ways of transmitting political influ-
ence to the next generation and thus created “alternative loci of power.” 332
As for the armed forces, the conventional contrast between a developed West
and a technologically backward Ottoman Empire has been largely discredit-
ed. Ottoman as well as Habsburg infantrymen repeatedly adapted to ad-
vances in gunpowder warfare. The flintlock muskets that Austrian soldiers
carried, manufactured from about 1575 in Styria, were no better in quality
than those of the sultan’s Janissaries. 333 Both sides drafted civilians into
service, for digging trenches, cutting timber, and building fortresses. The
Porte now levied a general wartime tax, the avariz, often in the form of labor-
service. 334
Yet despite the family resemblances between two warring states, there
remained a fundamental contrast between the two forms of government. The
sultan and his divan did not make requests of their provinces; they issued
orders. Ottoman historians find that the empire’s command structure worked
from the top down in practice as well as in theory, notwithstanding regional
or provincial idiosyncrasies. 335 An Ottoman province was represented at the
capital only insofar as a paşa or a sancakbeg had at the Porte a secretary who
represented his interests and facilitated communications back and forth. 336 A
governor or governor-general might have to take into account the views of
his military subordinates, 337 and the informal elite or esrafi of a given town
may possibly have been convened now and then to give an opinion. 338 But
there was not and could not have been Beratschlagung in the sultan’s lands,
because no Ottoman province was “represented,” in the common European
sense, by a duly constituted assembly that had a lawful claim to speak for the
collective interest of local stakeholders.
In the parts of Europe where they were to be found, 339 provincial parlia-
ments differed considerably. Most were dominated by the landed nobility, as
in the Habsburg Monarchy, but in some cases, as in densely populated Hol-
land, 340 rich burghers called the tune. Holland was unusual, too, for an in-
tense debate about the locus of sovereignty. The Hollanders (if no one else)
believed that they were not bound by a majority vote of the seven provinces
that made up the Dutch Republic; in other words, sovereignty resided in the
232 Chapter 4

provinces, not in the central or general government. 341 This was an extreme
view, unheard of in the eastern Habsburg lands. Nonetheless, the Habsburg
sovereigns of Austria and Bohemia needed the consent of their provinces to
levy taxes, and so did the Holy Roman Emperor, the king of Spain, 342 the
king of France, 343 and the regent of the Spanish Netherlands. This system of
government, everywhere evolving, was tested as perhaps nowhere else on the
long frontier of the Hungarian-Croatian kingdom. Could a monarchy obliged
to respect local prerogatives compete with an empire whose political arrange-
ments offered no lawful obstruction to commands from the top? This was the
question posed by the Habsburg-Ottoman conflict.

NOTES

1. Notably the French and the Venetians. Tracy, Emperor Charles V, 311–314.
2. See the final chapters of John H. Pryor, Geography, Technology and War: Studies in the
Maritime History of the Mediterranean, 649–1571 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1987).
3. Petritsch, “Die Ungarnpolitik Ferdinands I.”
4. Announced in Brussels in October 1555. The ceremony of abdication took place in
January 1556.
5. E.g., Philip II to Chantonnay, Madrid, 6 September 1564, in Viktor Bibl, ed., Die
Korrespondenz Maximilians II (2 vols., Vienna: A. Holzhausen, 1916), hereafter abbreviated as
Korrespondenz Maximilians II, I, Letter 17, 15–25, here 21–23. Maximilian II (r. 1564–1576)
fears that Spain’s battle against the Barbary corsairs may disrupt his good relations with the
Porte; for Maximilian’s coolness toward the Spanish branch of his family, see Paula Sutter
Fichtner, Emperor Maximilian II (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001), e.g., 52–53,
and chapter 8.
6. E.g., on Cosimo de’ Medici’s new title as Grand Duke of Tuscany, see Nicolò Capponi,
Victory of the West: The Great Christian-Muslim Clash at the Battle of Lepanto (Cambridge,
MA: Da Capo Press, 2006), 112–114.
7. Allouche, Origins and Development of the Ottoman-Safavid Conflict, 143–145.
8. Busbecq, Vrančić, and Zay to Ferdinand, Constantinople, 27 March 1556, HHST I 12
Konvolut 4, f. 58–60.
9. Rudi Mathee, “Anti-Ottoman Concerns and Caucasian Interests: Diplomatic Relations
between Iran and Russia, 1587–1639,” in Michael Mazzaoui, Safavid Iran and Her Neighbors
(Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2003), 101–128.
10. Busbecq, Vrančić, and Zay to Ferdinand, Constantinople, 21 May 1555, HHST I 11
Konvolut 5, f. 81–86, here 83–85; cf. “Busbecq’s Advice,” [1555], HHST I 12 Konvolut 1,
46–50.
11. Ferdinand to Busbecq, Vrančić, and Zay, Vienna, 27 March 1556, HHST I 12 Konvolut
4, f. 50–53.
12. Busbecq, Vrančić, and Zay to Ferdinand, 17 April 1556, HHST I 12 Konvolut 4, f.
72–73.
13. Council of Hungary to Ferdinand, [s.l., 1555], HHST I 12 Konvolut 1, f. 93–110, here f.
95v–96.
 War by Consultation vs. War by Command, 1556–1576 233

14. Chapter 3, note 295.

15. He died in 1564.
16. Vrančić and Zay to Ferdinand, 25 July 1555, HHST I 12 Konvolut 1, f. 12–23; and 26
May 1557, HHST I 13 Konvolut 2, f. 98–101, here f. 98v. Suleyman was then fifty-seven years
old.
17. Radovan Samarđžić, Mehmed Sokolovitch. Le destin d’un grand vizir (Lausanne: L’Age
d’Homme, 1994), 82.
18. Alan Fisher, “Süleymân and His Sons,” in Veinstein, Soliman le Magnifique et son
temps, 117–126.
19. Zweder van Martels, Aurelius Busbecquius, 225–265.
20. Busbecq’s relatio of his legation, Vienna, 2 December 1562, HHST I 16 Konvolut 2, f.
31–42, here f. 35.
21. Busbecq to Ferdinand, Vienna, 17 October 1562, HHST I 16 Konvolut 2, 147–148v.
22. Finkel, Osman’s Dream, 150.
23. Samarđžić, Mehmed Sokolovitch, 121, 226.
24. Fichtner, Emperor Maximilian II. He was crowned king of Bohemia in 1562 and king of
Hungary in 1563.
25. E.g., below, notes 198 (Ferdinand’s letter of November 1558 to Maximilian) and 212.
26. Maximilian II to Archduke Ferdinand, Vienna, 22 October 1564, Korrespondenz Maxi-
milians II, I, Letter 41, 53–55.
27. Maximilian II to Duke Albert V of Bavaria, Vienna, 24 February 1565, and to Archduke
Ferdinand, Vienna, 23 March 1565, Korrespondenz Maximilians II, I, Letter 100, 107–111, and
Letter 112, 120. The towns were Tokay, in modern Hungary, and Khust and Mukachevo, now
in Ukraine.
28. Finkel, Osman’s Dream, 151; Samarđžić, Mehmed Sokolovitch, 113, 128.
29. The knights were based in Rhodes until the Ottoman conquest of 1522, and then from
1530 in Malta.
30. Imber, The Ottoman Empire, 60.
31. Crowley, Empires of the Sea.
32. E.g., Samarđžić, Mehmed Sokolovitch, 125, believes that Vienna was the objective.
33. Nicolas Vatin, ed., tr., Ferîdūn Bey. Les Plaisants secrets de la campagne de Szigetvár.
Édition, traduction et commentaire des folios 1 à 147 de Nüzhetü-l-esrâri-lahbâr der sefer-I
Szigetvár (Berlin: LIT Verlag, 2010), “Introduction,” 8–86, here 20–23. This conclusion is
supported by Habsburg diplomatic correspondence, e.g., Busbecq to Ferdinand, Constantino-
ple, 14 April 1562, HHST I 15 Konvolut 2, f. 85–87. A second Ottoman army captured Gyula,
advancing the borders of the paşaluk of Timosoara far to the north.
34. For the heroic legend of Zrinski’s final charge, see the epic poem by his grandson:
Miklós Zrinyi, The Siege of Sziget, tr. László Kőrőssy, with an introduction by George Gőmőry
(Washington, D.C.: Catholic University Press, 2011).
35. Georg Wagner, “Maximilian II, der Wiener Hof, und die Belagerung von Sziget,” in
Lajos Rúzsás, ed., Szigetvári Emlékkőnyv (Budapest: Akédemiae Kiadó, 1966), 237–268.
36. Samarđžić, Mehmed Sokolovitch, 181–197.
37. Thomas Nicklas, Um Macht und Einheit des Reiches. Konzeption und Wirklichkeit der
Politik bei Lazarus Schwendi (1522–1583) (Husum: Matthiesen, 1994).
38. Samarđžić, Mehmed Sokolovitch, 245.
39. Albert de Wyss to Maximilian II, Constantinople, 11 May 1568, HHST I 24 Konvolut 2,
f. 42–47; Hammer-Purgstall, Geschichte des osmanischen Reiches, II, 364–369; Samarđžić,
Mehmed Sokolovitch, 252.
234 Chapter 4

40. E.g., Petremol to Boistaillé, Constantinople, 29 October 1563, Bibliothèque Nationale,

Paris, Salle des Manuscrits, “Manuscrits français,” hereafter abbreviated as Manuscrits
français, 16142, f. 182–183v.
41. Capponi, Victory of the West, chapter 5; Finkel, Osman’s Dream, 156–160; and Andrée
Aelion Brooks, The Woman Who Defied Kings: The Life and Times of Doña Graciela Nasi (St.
Paul, MN: Paragon House, 2002), 474–476.
42. For the 1538 battle of Prevesa, see chapter 2, note 127.
43. Capponi, Victory of the West, chapter 6, “A League of Mistrust.”
44. An illegitimate son of Charles V.
45. Capponi, Victory of the West, chapters 7, 8, and 9.
46. Capponi, Victory of the West, 320–321.
47. Below, note 158, and Marcantonio Barbaro’s relazione, 1573, Relazioni, IX, 299–346,
here 306–307. In fact, the Ottomans typically built their galleys from green timber: relazione of
Bernardo Navagero, February 1553, Relazioni, III, 33–110, here 52. Guilmartin, Gunpowder
and Galleys, 235–264, notes that the loss of skilled maritime personnel at Lepanto was more
serious for the Ottomans than the loss of ships.
48. Finkel, Osman’s Dream, 161–162. The fortress of Goletta and Tunis had been con-
quered by Charles V in 1535.
49. Parker, The Grand Strategy of Philip II, 92, 145.
50. Below, “Defending Croatia.”
51. Karel Rijm to Maximilian II, Constantinople, 31 March 1573, HHST I 29 Konvolut 2, f.
95–112v, here 116–118v; Rijm and David Ungnad to Maximilian II, Constantinople, 27 Febru-
ary 1574, HHST I 30 Konvolut 1, f. 60–61v.
52. By far the oldest of Selim II’s sons, he had his brothers executed when he became sultan.
53. Finkel, Osman’s Dream, 164–165.
54. Ungnad to Maximilian II, Constantinople, 15 January 1575, HHST I 31 Konvolut 1, f.
41–41v.
55. Pál Fodor, “Sultan, Imperial Council, Grand Vizier: Changes in the Ottoman Ruling
Elite and the Formation of the Grand Vizieral Telhīs,” in his In Quest of the Golden Apple,
207–226.
56. For this paragraph, see Biščević, Bosanski namjesnici, no. 55, and Samarđžić, Mehmed
Sokolovitch, 9–17.
57. The grand vezir was Deli Husrev Beg. Ferhat Beg continued in office, at a higher rank,
when Bosnia was raised to the status of a paşaluk in 1580.
58. The Drina bridge at Višegrad was made famous by Ivo Andrić’s novel, The Bridge on
the Drina. Džemal Čelić and Mehmed Mujezinović, Stari mostovi u Bosni i Hercegovini
(Zagreb: Ognjen Prica, 1969), 141–158.
59. Samarđžić, Mehmed Sokolovitch, citing Stefan Gerlach, Stefan Gerlach des Älteren
Tagebuch der . . . zu Constantinopel abgefertigten und durch den wohlgeborenen Herrn David
Ungnad. . . . Gesandschaft (Frankfurt am Main: Johann David Zunner, 1674), hereafter abbre-
viated as Gerlach, Gesandtschaft. Gerlach was the Lutheran chaplain who served David Ung-
nad during his embassy at the Porte, 1573–1578.
60. For the rest of this paragraph, save as noted, see Samarđžić, Mehmed Sokolovitch,
271–282.
61. Norman Davies, God’s Playground: A History of Poland (2 vols., New York: Columbia
University Press, 1982), I, 379.
62. Finkel, Osman’s Dream, 169.
63. Imber, The Ottoman Empire, 61–62.
64. Casale, The Ottoman Age of Exploration (plea for help from the sultan of Atjeh).
 War by Consultation vs. War by Command, 1556–1576 235

65. A. N. Kurat, “The Turkish Expedition to Astrakhan in 1569 and the Problem of the Don-
Volga Canal,” Slavic and East European Review 40 (1961): 7–23.
66. Archduke Ernst (Maximilian II’s second son) was a candidate in 1573, when France’s
Henry of Anjou was elected. In 1575, the upper house of the Polish Sjem elected Maximilian,
but Transylvania’s István Báthory, backed by the lower house and by the Ottomans, claimed
the throne.
67. For contemporary Ottoman patronage in a Hungarian context, see Pál Fodor, “Who
Should Obtain the Castle of Pankota (1565)? Interest Groups and Self-Promotion in the Mid-
16th Century Ottoman Political Establishment,” in his In Quest of the Golden Apple, 227–241.
68. Biščević, Bosanski namjesnici, nos. 55 to 67.
69. There is anecdotal evidence that the grand vezir did not think highly of his son-in-law,
Sinan Beg Boljanić, who, lacking political and military ambition, asked for a transfer from
Bosnia to Herzegovina, where he served three terms as governor between 1564 and 1580:
Biščević, Bosanski namjesnici, no. 59.
70. Biščević, Bosanski namjesnici, nos. 62 and 65, corrected by Prof. Hamdo Camo, http://
www.camo.ch/spisak_bosanskih_vladara_001.htm. Cf. Samarđžić, Mehmed Sokolovitch, 122,
124, and 307. To avoid confusion, this Mehmed will be referred to subsequently as sancakbeg
Mehmed Paşa.
71. Biščević, Bosanski namjesnici, nos. 66 and 67; above, note 57.
72. For Požega (organized as a province in 1538) and Čazma (a province from 1557), see
Ive Mažuran, “Požega i Požeska kotlina za turska vladavine,” in Ive Mažuran et al., eds.,
Požega 1277–1977 (Zagreb: Grafički Zavid Hrvatske, 1977), 161–198; for Klis (organized as a
province in 1537), see Moačanin, Turska Hrvatska, 64–72.
73. For Bosnia’s rulers during these years, see chapter 3, note 61.
74. E.g., Hasan Beg Sokolović, a son of Mehmed Paşa, was governor from 1561 to 1562; he
was known as a lover of splendor and luxury: Biščević, Bosanski namjesnici, no. 58; for Sinan
Beg Bojanić, see above, note 69.
75. Zdenko Zlatar, Dubrovnik’s Merchants and Capital in the Ottoman Empire, 1520–1620
(Istanbul: Isis, 2011), 51, citing a study by O. L. Barkan; for Požega, see Moačanin, Turska
Hrvatska, 111.
76. Moačanin, Turska Hrvatska, 137 (the quote); Mayhew, Dalmatia between Ottoman and
Venetian Rule, 107; Biščević, Bosanski namjesnici, nos. 34, 66.
77. Moačanin, Turska Hrvatska, 139.
78. Hegyi and Zamányi, Muslime und Christen. Das Osmanische Reich in Europa,
116–120.
79. Moačanin, Turska Hrvatska, 137, and Town and Country on the Middle Danube,
1526–1690 (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 22, 147–149 (Hadži Mehmed Aga in Požega, Mahmud Beg
in Gradiška).
80. Samarđžić, Mehmed Sokolovitch, 142; he was a cousin of Grand Vezir Semiz ‘Ali Paşa.
On the Neretva salt trade, see Jean-Claude Hocquet, Le sel et la fortune de Venise (2 vols.,
Lille: Publications de l’Université de Lille, 1979), I, 318–322.
81. Moačanin, Turska Hrvatska, 137.
82. Tracy, “The Grand Vezir and the Small Republic”; Zlatar, Dubrovnik’s Merchants and
Capital in the Ottoman Empire, xxvi–xxviii.
83. Moroni, L’impero di San Biagio, 82 (figures for the 1560s).
84. Instructions for Clement de Gore, Sarajevo, 8 May 1551, “Lettere de Levante,” Br. 24, f.
262.
85. Suraiya Faroqhi, “Bosnian Merchants in the Adriatic,” in Markus Koller and Kemal H.
Karpat, Bosnia: A History in Peril (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2004), 225–239.
236 Chapter 4

If the merchants’ goods were lost, as seems the case, this misfortune did not erase their debts to
the orphan fund.
86. Gábor Ágoston, “The Costs of the Ottoman Fortress System in Hungary, 16th and 17th
Centuries,” in Dávid and Fodor, Ottomans, Hungarians, and Habsburgs in Central Europe,
195–228.
87. Daniel Rodriguez, of whom more will be heard in chapter 5.
88. Renzo Paci, La “Scala” di Spalato e il commercio Veneziano nei Balcani fra Cinque e
Seicento (Venice, 1971), 49.
89. DSK I, Zaporeda St. 171, 1st folder (a bound volume of 736 pages, titled “Grenitzen
Hauptberatschlagung zu Wien anno 1577”), here “Verzaichnus der Tuerggischen Reuter,”
601–619. The list of fortresses includes Kamengrad, which will have been an important post,
but no garrison numbers are given for it. Estimates are also given for garrisons in the sancaks of
Požega and Pakrac [Čazma], but not Klis.
90. Cf. the retinue of Ghazi Husrev Beg, chapter 2, note 48.
91. Cf. chapter 2, note 47.
92. Below, notes 237–243.
93. For Duganli Malkoč Beg, also known as Malkoč Beg Osmanović, see Biščević, Bosan-
ski namjesnici, no. 54.
94. Mažuran, Hrvati i Osmansko Carstvo, 128, defeat of a force that came against Senj in
1557.
95. For skirmishes around Bihać, see the memorandum on Ottoman border violations, Vien-
na, 21 February 1560, HHST I 14 Konvolut 4, f. 27–31v, here 31–31v.
96. Below, notes 244–248.
97. Mažuran, Hrvati i Osmansko Carstvo, 127.
98. Mažuran, Hrvati i Osmansko Carstvo, 127–131; Kaser, Freier Bauer und Soldat, 22–23
.
99. Dzafer Beg: Mažuran, Hrvati i Osmansko Carstvo, 132–133. Busbecq’s letters for
1560–1562 have no references to fighting on the Una, but ‘Ali Paşa did complain about
Zrinski’s defeat of the sancakbeg of Požega: Busbecq to Ferdinand, Constantinople, 14 April
1562, HHST I 15 Konvolut 2, f. 85–87.
100. He died there in 1565.
101. Prelog, Povijest Bosne, 67–68; Mažuran, “Požega i Požeska kotlina,” 179, and Hrvati i
Osmansko Carstvo, 138–139. Known as Bosanska Krupa, the fortress-town taken by Mustafa
Paşa is now in Bosnia.
102. For the rest of this paragraph, see Mažuran, Hrvati i Osmansko Carstvo, 178–189.
103. Count Franjo Frankopan Slunjski (1536–1572) and Herbart von Auersperg
(1528–1575), Landeshauptmann of Carniola and captain of Senj.
104. Holi Beg of Klis and Husrev Beg of Požega were captured; the latter was ransomed for
30,000 ducats.
105. Samarđžić, Mehmed Sokolovitch, 245.
106. Above, note 70.
107. For this paragraph and the next, save as noted, see Mažuran, Hrvati i Osmansko Carstvo,
139–141.
108. DSK I, Zaporeda St. 170, 2nd folder, doc. 16, pages 1–18, dated 23 June 1570, here p.
10.
109. Below, notes 145, 146.
110. Rijm to Maximilian II, Constantinople, 17 January 1573, HHST I 29 Konvolut 2, f. 7–8.
111. Gerlach, Gesandtschaft, Sig. Dv (entry for February 1574). Rijm stayed on at the Porte
for a year after Ungnad’s arrival in the fall of 1573.
 War by Consultation vs. War by Command, 1556–1576 237

112. Wolfgang von Auersperg: Prelog, Povijest Bosne, 72; Gerlach, Gesandtschaft, Sig.
Nvi–Nvi-verso.
113. Prelog, Povijest Bosne, 73; Stanko Guldescu, The Croatian-Slavonian Kingdom,
1526–1792 (The Hague: Mouton, 1970), 87.
114. Gerlach, Gesandtschaft, Sig. Uiii–Uiiii-verso, entry for August 1576.
115. Mallett and Hale, Military Organization of a Renaissance State, 257–258, 303–307,
355, 409–412.
116. Chapter 3, note 69; chapter 2, notes 126–134.
117. See the chapter on Venice in Michael J. Levin, Spanish Ambassadors in 16th-Century
Italy (Ithaca, NY, and London: Cornell University Press, 2005).
118. For fighting in Savoy, Siena, and Naples, see Knecht, The Rise and Fall of Renaissance
France, 230–239.
119. Eric R. Dursteler, Venetians in Constantinople: Nation, Identity, and Coexistence in the
Early Modern Mediterranean (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006), chapter
1; Tracy, “Il commercio italiano nel impero ottomano.”
120. Tracy, “The Background War of the Early Modern Era,” 32–32.
121. E.g., for Bernardo Navagero (1550–1552), see chapter 3, note 77, and D. Santerelli, ed.,
La corrispondenza di Bernardo Navagero, amabasciatore veneziano a Roma (1556–1558) (2
vols., Rome: Aracne, 2011); for Marino Cavalli (1557–1560), see Dizionari Biografico degli
Italiani, vol. 22 (1979), www.trecani.it/enciclopedia/marino-cavalli_Dizionario; for Marcanto-
nio Barbaro (1567–1573), see Relazioni, III, 300.
122. Antonio Erizzo: Relazioni, IX, 123–144, here 141.
123. Domenico Trevisano: Relazioni, III, 111–192, here 161.
124. Relazioni, III, 271–298, here 284.
125. Relazioni, III, 111–192, here 149–153.
126. Relazioni, III, 299–346, here 310–311, and VI, 128–192, here 133–137.
127. Relazioni, IX, 173–209, here 190–191 (4,300,000 scudi; the scudi–ducat ratio was about
9:10).
128. İnalcik, Economic and Social History of the Ottoman Empire, I, 188–219.
129. For a discussion of these and other European estimates of Ottoman state income, see
İnalcik, Economic and Social History of the Ottoman Empire, I, 77–83.
130. Relazioni, VI, 128–192, here 174–175.
131. Report of Syndics Michiel Bon and Gasparo Erizzo, 1559, CRV III, doc. XVII, 112–136,
here 125.
132. Chapter 2, note 139; report of Vincenzo Quirini, captain of Zadar, 1561, CRV III, doc.
XXI, 148–156, here 155; Duffy, Siege Warfare, 195.
133. Report of Syndics Michiel Bon and Gasparo Erizzo, 1559, CRV III, doc. XVII, 112–136,
here 125, 130–131; Josip Vrandečić, “Regio maritima. Dalmacija i Dubrovnik u ranome novom
vijeku (1420–1790),” in Josip Vrandečić and Miroslava Bertoša, Dalmacija, Dubrovnik i Itsra
u ranome novom vijeku (Zagreb: Leykam International, 2007), 7–76, here 28–31.
134. From J. de Quarzonibus, Count of Šibenik, 1 July 1557, CRV III, doc. XII, 91–92;
chapter 3, note 98.
135. Pedani, Dalla frontiere al confine, 68; “Report on Šibenik’s countryside,” 1556/1568,
CRV III, doc. XXXI, 238–246, here 239–240.
136. Report of Syndics Michiel Bon and Gasparo Erizzo, 1559, CRV III, doc. XVII, 112–136,
here 125.
137. Report of Vincenzo Quirini as captain of Zadar, CRV III, doc. XI, 148–156, here
150–152, 154–155.
238 Chapter 4

138. Report of secretary Luigi Bonrizzo, 14 January 1565, CRV III, doc. XXV, 160–164, here
160–161.
139. The Bay of Kaštela. From Vetor Bragadin, Count of Split, 8 May 1566, ASV-DAC,
Filza 1, 13–14v; from Antonio Pasquaglio, Count of Split, 1567, CRV III, doc. XXVIII,
182–189, here 184–185; Moačanin, Turska Hrvata, 66.
140. Report of Syndics Michiel Bon and Gasparo Erizzo, 1559, CRV III, doc. XVII, 112–136,
here 123.
141. Poljica. From Antonio Pasquaglio, Count of Split, 1567, CRV III, doc. XXVIII,
182–189, here 184–186.
142. Chapter 1, note 88; chapter 2, note 130.
143. Mocenigo’s report, 3 March 1567, CRV III, doc. XXIX, 189–197, here 190–191; Jakšić,
Zemunik, Srednovjekovni Kaštel i Turska Kasaba, 46–47.
144. Mallett and Hale, Military Organization of a Renaissance State, 218; Raukar et al.,
Zadar pod mletačkom upravom, 220.
145. Between the mainland and the long island of Pag.
146. Raukar et al., Zadar pod mletačkom upravom, 218–222; report of Zuane da Lezze, 17
February 1571, CRV III, doc. XXXIII, 247–267, here 257–258.
147. Report of Zuane da Lezze, 17 February 1571, CRV III, doc. XXXIII, 247–267, here
247–251. Da Lezze was named proveditor generale for Dalmatia and Albania in February 1570
and dismissed in November 1570 after a quarrel with officials in Zadar. His successor also says
Zadar was not attacked: report of Giacomo Foscarini, 1572, CRV IV, doc. I, 1–59, here 31.
148. For this paragraph, see Raukar et al., Zadar pod mletačkom upravom, 218–222.
149. Vrandečić, “Regio maritima. Dalmacija u ranome novom vijeku,” 22.
150. Vrandečić, “Regio maritima. Dalmacija u ranome novom vijeku,” 24; Mallett and Hale,
Military Organization of a Renaissance State, 239.
151. Esma Korić, “Uloga Ferhad-Bega Sokolovića u utvrđanja granica između Osmanskog
carstva i Mletačke republike nakon završetka Kiparskog rata 1573. Godine,” Anali Ghazi
Husrevbegove biblioteke 33 (2012): 133–144; Mayhew, Dalmatia between Ottoman and Vene-
tian Rule, 26–27.
152. Compare the maps in Raukar et al., Zadar pod mletačkom upravom, 223 and 225.
153. Vrandečić, “Regio maritima. Dalmacija u ranome novom vijeku,” 24.
154. Karel Rijm to Maximilian II, Constantinople, 21 October 1571, HHST I 28 Konvolut 1,
f. 48–51; Bailo Marcantonio Barbaro remained at the Porte during the war under house arrest.
155. Noailles to Charles IX, Venice, 4 November 1571, Charrière, III, 208–214. Noailles
(1519–1585) was Bishop of Dax from 1556.
156. Rijm to Maximilian II, Constantinople, 7 January and [February] 1572, HHST I 28
Konvolut 3, f. 10–19, here f. 17 and f. 64–65. Rijm obtained copies of Noailles’s dispatches to
Paris.
157. Noailles from Pera (a suburb of Constantinople) to Henry Duke of Anjou, 25 April
1572, and to Charles IX, 31 July 1572, Charrière, Négotiations, III, 260–264, 278–282.
158. Noailles to Ferrals (France’s ambassador in Rome), Dubrovnik, 3 March 1573,
Charrière, III, 362–362, and to Charles IX, Pera, 31 July 1572, Charrière, 287–293. For the
king’s rebuke, see Charles IX to Noailles, Paris, 18 January 1573, Charrière, III, 276–280.
159. Relazione of Costantino Garzoni, who accompanied Badoer, Relazioni, III, 369–436,
here 373.
160. Benjamin Arbel, Trading Nations: Venetians and Jews in the Early Modern Eastern
Mediterranean (New York: Brill, 1995), 77–86; ASV-DAC, Filza 6, f. 352–353v; Noailles to
Charles IX, Pera, 6, 8 March 1573, Charrière, III, 355–361, 361–369. The treaty also envi-
 War by Consultation vs. War by Command, 1556–1576 239

sioned that Bar and Ulcinj would return to Venetian control, but these towns too were retained
by the Ottomans.
161. Van den Boogert and Fleet, The Ottoman Capitulations.
162. Dispatch of Badoer and his colleagues, 28 September 1573, ASV-DAC, Filza 6, f.
352–353v.
163. ASV-DAC, Filza 6, f. 355v–355. Noailles agreed on this point: to Catherine de’ Medici,
Pera, 5 November 1573, Charrière, III, 441–442. Cf. the relazione of Badoer’s secretary, 16
September 1573, ASV-DAC, Filza 6, f. 355–356.
164. Tracy, “The Background War of the Early Modern Era,” 30–32.
165. ASV-DAC, Filza 6, 23 and 28 October 1573, f. 358–359v, 361–364v. Cf. chapter 2, note
23, and the dispatch cited in note 162: when Rabbi Solomon suggested the sultan might be
“lacking” in his word if he kept Zemunik, Mehmed Paşa asked him if he wanted to find himself
“lacking” a head.
166. ASV-DAC, Filza 6, 3 and 8 November 1573, f. 364v–365v, 365v–366v.
167. That is, 20,000 akçe, or (at then-current rates) about 333 gold ducats.
168. Dispatch of Badoer and his colleagues, Pera, 30 December 1573, ASV-DAC, Filza 6,
373v–374v. For Ferhat Beg’s property around Tinj, near Vrana, see Mayhew, Zadar between
Venetian and Ottoman Rule, 107.
169. Dispatch of Badoer and his colleagues, Pera, 15 January 1574, ASV-DAC, Filza 6, f.
377–377v.
170. Noailles from Pera to Henry of Anjou, king of Poland-Lithuania, 14 February 1574, and
to Charles IX, 17 February 1574, Charrière, III, 396–399, 400–404.
171. Relazione of Andrea Badoer, 1573, Relazioni, III, 347–368, here 354–355, where Bos-
nia’s governor is called “Assan Pasha” (Cf. note 74; Hasan-Beg Sokolović had been governor
there in 1561–1562).
172. Paci, La “Scala” di Spalato, 47–51.
173. Da Canal’s report, 12 December 1559, CRV III, doc. XVIII, 141–147.
174. Bracewell, The Uskoks of Senj, 107.
175. Bakar on the Gulf of Rijeka, and, on the Vinodol channel, Novi, Bribir, Senj, and
Starigrad.
176. Report of Vincenzo Quirini, 1561, CRV III, 148–156, here 149.
177. Reports of two proveditors of Krk, Angelo Gradonico, 16 July 1559, and Andrea Bon-
dumier, 3 June 1571, CRV III, docs. XVIII, 136–141, and XXIV, 267–273; Bracewell, The
Uskoks of Senj, 84–85.
178. Da Canal’s report, 12 December 1559, CRV III, doc. XVIII, 141–147, here 142.
179. Domenico Mocenigo’s report, CRV III, doc. XXIX, 189–197, here 191–192.
180. Bondumier’s report, CRV III, 3 June 1571, and da Lezze’s report, 17 February 1571,
CRV III, doc. XXIV, 267–273, here 270, and doc. XXIII, 247–267, here 253.
181. A report dated 8–9 March 1573, Monumenta Uscocchorum, no. 14, 8–9.
182. Šmitran, Gli Uscocchi, 53. After the war Venice offered to resettle its uskoks in Istria,
but they preferred to cross the border and live under Habsburg rule.
183. Report of Antonio Michiel, rector of Zadar, CRV III, doc. XII, 99–104, here 102; da
Canal’s report, CRV III, doc. XVIII, 141–147, here 142.
184. For two strongly stated and sharply contrasting views, see Fine, When Ethnicity Did Not
Matter in the Balkans, and Neven Budak, “Kako se doista s jugonostalgičarskih pozicija može
negirati hrvatska povijest ili o knjizi Johna V. A. Fine,” Radovi Zavoda za Hrvatsku povijest 41
(2009): 487–495. Bracewell, The Uskoks of Senj, 28, finds some evidence for “a sense of
political unity embracing the Croat nation.”
185. Bracewell, The Uskoks of Senj, 28, 232.
240 Chapter 4

186. The Rhineland Palatinate, Brandenburg, and Saxony. The other electoral princes were
the prince-archbishops of Cologne, Mainz, and Trier and the king of Bohemia (Ferdinand
himself).
187. Kohler, Ferdinand I, 258–271. Never crowned by the pope, Ferdinand styled himself
“elected emperor.”
188. E.g., subsidies with a nominal value of over 100,000 Rhine gulden a month for
1557–1559: Schulze, Reich und Türkengefahr im späten 16en Jahrhundert, 78; Rauscher,
Zwischen Ständen und Gläubigern, 96.
189. For the three Inner Austrian provinces, 134,000 gulden per year in 1546 and approxi-
mately 280,000 gulden per year in 1556 and 1565: chapter 3, notes 256–260; Simoniti, Vojaška
organizacija na Slovenskem.
190. Pálffy, The Kingdom of Hungary, 113–120.
191. David Ungnad to Maximilian II, Buda, 27 June 1573, HHST I 29 Konvolut 3, f. 24–25.
192. Petritsch, “Tribut oder Ehrengeschenk?”
193. E.g., Leonhard von Fels to Ferdinand, s.l., May 1545, Austro-Turcica, Letter 22, 69–70.
194. E.g., a plea that Suleyman allows Ferdinand to save face: Ferdinand to Busbecq,
Vrančić, and Zay, Vienna, 14 November 1555, HHST I 12 Konvolut 1, f. 153–161, here f.
159v–160.
195. Petritsch, “Die Ungarnpolitik Ferdinands I,” iii.
196. Busbecq, Vrančić, and Zay to Ferdinand, 28 April 1556, and extracts from their letter of
9 April 1556, HHST I 12 Konvolut 4, ff. 77–80, f. 96–98; for the consultation, see Tracy, “The
Road to Szigetvár,” 31–32.
197. The consultations are summarized in Ferdinand to Busbecq, Vienna, 27 June 1558,
HHST I 13 Konvolut 3, f. 135–141.
198. Ferdinand to Busbecq, Vienna, 23 June 1558, and to Archduke Maximilian, Prague, 29
November 1558, HHST I 13 Konvolut 4, f. 126–128, and f. 210–211; Relatio of Busbecq’s
legation, [Vienna, December 1562], HHST I 16 Konvolut 2, f. 31–42, here f. 31v.
199. Opinion of Lower Austria’s councilors and nobles, HHST, I 13 Konvolut 2, 150–157,
here 151v.
200. Anna Maria Grünfelder, “Vojna Krajina i reformski procesi u ranom novom vijeku, s
posebnim na primorski Krajinu i Grad Senj,” Senjski Zbornik 36 (2009): 91–122, here 99;
Schulze, Landesdefension und Staatsbildung, 61.
201. Loserth, Innerösterreich und die militärischen Massnahmen, 62–64; in 1558, the cost of
improvements needed at fortresses all along the frontier, including Hungary, was estimated at
2,174,212 gulden.
202. Fichtner, Emperor Maximilian II, 32–44.
203. Kohler, Ferdinand I, 286–303.
204. Fichtner, Emperor Maximilian II, 56–57, 47: September 1562, December 1562, and
August 1563.
205. Fichtner, Emperor Maximilian II, 9.
206. Fichtner, Emperor Maximilian II, 51, 61, 86; below, note 304.
207. Maximilian Lanzinner, “Geheime Räte und Beräter Kaiser Maximilians II, 1564–1576,”
Mitteilungen des Instituts für Österreichische Geschichte 102 (1994): 296–315, here 297, 308,
312.
208. Fichtner, Emperor Maximilian II, 55.
209. The fortress was Babócsa. Ferdinand to Busbecq, Linz, 9 April 1558, and to Toygun
Paşa of Buda, Vienna, 15 April 1558, HHST I 13 Konvolut 3, f. 57–59, and f. 68–69.
210. Ferdinand to Maximilian as above, note 198.
211. Above, note 27.
 War by Consultation vs. War by Command, 1556–1576 241

212. Archduke Ferdinand to Maximilian II, Prague, 5 October 1564, Korrespondenz Maxi-
milians II, I, Letter 31, 37–42.
213. Maximilian II to Archduke Ferdinand, Vienna, 22 September 1565, and to Archduke
Charles, Linz, 4 January 1566, Korrespondenz Maximilians II, I, Letter 225, 264–265, and
Letter 318, 319–362.
214. Wagner, “Maximilian II, der Wiener Hof, und die Belagerung von Sziget”; Fichtner,
Maximilian II, 128. Cf. Archduke Karl to Maximilian II, Graz, 19 November 1567, Korrespon-
denz Maximilians II, II, Letter 252, 259–261: he wishes His Majesty’s ambassadors at the Porte
had not been so weak.
215. James D. Tracy, “The Logic of Kleinkrieg: The ‘Book of Halil Beg’ and Habsburg-
Ottoman Diplomacy, 1564–1576,” for a conference sponsored by the Institut für
Osteuropäische Geschichte at the University of Vienna in October 2015. The conference vol-
ume is to be edited by Prof. Marija Wakounig. The treaty of November 1574, invalidated by the
death of Sultan Selim II, was finally accepted in December 1576 by Sultan Murad III and
Emperor Rudolf II. The main Habsburg negotiators were Karel Rijm (ambassador from 1570 to
1574) and David Ungnad (ambassador from 1573 to 1578).
216. E.g., Rijm to Maximilian II, 7 January 1572, HHST I 28 Konvolut 4, 10–19, here f. 12v;
Rijm and Ungnad to Maximilian II, 23 October 1573, HHST I 29 Konvolut 4, f. 45; cf. HHST I
29 Konvolut 1, f. 8485, a memo from the Council of Hungary on how to repress hajduk
misbehavior.
217. Rijm and Ungnad to Maximilian II, 11 April 1574, and Ungnad to Maximilian II, 4 May
1574, HHST I 30 Konvolut 2, f. 152–152 and 213–216v. On Kanizsa, commanded from 1571
to 1573 by Gaspar Alapy and then from 1574 by Juraj Zrinski, see Štefanec, Heretik njegova
Veličanstva, 36–38, 86–89.
218. Maximilian II to Rijm, Vienna, 12 April 1572, HHST I 28 Konvolut 3, f. 96–101v, here
96–97v (the quote); above, note 110.
219. Extracts from a letter of Rijm and Ungnad to Maximilian II, 12 October 1574, HHST I
30 Konvolut 3, f. 188–189v. A new treaty was concluded after Maximilian’s death, in 1578.
220. On the fortress of Kalló, see Council of Hungary to Maximilian, Posonia, 24 March
1575, HHST I 31 Konvolut 1, f. 93–94, and Maximilian to the paşa of Buda, Vienna, 24 April
1575, HHST I 31 Konvolut 3, f. 225–230, here f. 228.
221. For Maximilian II’s ambivalent view of the Jesuits, see Fichtner, Maximilian II,
114–116.
222. Regina Pörtner, The Counter-Reformation in Central Europe: Styria, 1580–1630 (Ox-
ford: Clarendon, 2001), chapters 2 and 3.
223. Loserth, Innerösterreich und die militärischen Massnahmen, 64–71. Maximilian in-
creased the allotment of imperial funds for Slavonia and Croatia from 40,000 to 60,000 gulden
a year.
224. Berthold Sutter, “Karl II,” Neue Deutsche Biographie (25 vols. to date, Berlin: Duncker
and Humbolt, 1951–), vol. 11, 240ff. For Karl’s advisers, see Johann Andritsch,
“Landesfürstliche Beräater am Grazer Hof, 1564–1619,” in Alexander Novotny and Berthold
Sutter, eds., Inneröstereight 1564–1619 (Graz: Styria, 1967), 73–117, here 76–78.
225. Schulze, Landesdefension und Staatsbildung, 62.
226. Schulze, Landesdefension und Staatsbildung, 56; Poppendorf’s report (commenting on
previous suggestions by “the Italian”), DSK I, Zaporeda St. 170, 2nd folder, doc. 16, f. 1–18,
dated 23 June 1570.
227. Karl to Maximilian, Eisenerz, 16 July 1565, Korrespondenz Maximilians II, I, Letter
195, 235–236; Schulze, Landesdefension und Staatsbildung, 61: the three Kriegsräte were
seconded to Lenković in 1561.
242 Chapter 4

228. Karl to Maximilian, Eisenerz, 15 July 1565, Korrespondenz Maximilians II, I, Letter
194, 235; Loserth, Innerösterreich und die militärischen Massnahmen, 63–65. Lenković was
replaced by Lukas Szeckel.
229. Schulze, Landesdefension und Staatsbildung, 53–54.
230. Grünfelder, “Vojna Krajina i reformski procesi u ranom novom vijeku,” 99.
231. Dispatch of Hieronimo Lippomano, 1568, Monumenta Uscocchorum, 3–6; Poppen-
dorf’s memo, agreeing on this point with the unnamed Italian, DSK I, Zaporeda St. 170, 2nd
folder, doc. 16, f. 1–18, here f. 13.
232. Lukas Szeckel to Archduke Karl, 9 November 1566, HSS III, Letter 108, 149–150;
resolutions of the Sabor, 5 January and 5 April 1571, HSS III, Letters 243, 309–311, and 252,
318–321.
233. Letter patent of Archduke Karl, Posonia, 22 February 1566; Archduke Karl to the Sabor,
Posonia, 19 March 1566: HSS III, Letters 87, 134–135, and 89, 135–136.
234. Relatio read to the Sabor at Križevci, 15 March 1528, HSS I, Letter 95, 147–148;
Archduke Karl to the Chamber of Accounts, Posonia, 13 May 1566, Vienna, 22 May 1566,
HSS III, Letters 92, 138–139, and 93, 139.
235. The chamber to Ban Juraj Drašković, Posonia, 28 July 1570, and to Archduke Karl, 2
September 1570, HSS III, Letters 231, 297, and 234, 298–300; Karl to Drašković, Wiener
Neustadt, 10 September 1570; Chamber to Archduke Karl, Posonia, 10 September 1570, and to
its two commissioners in Slavonia, 10 November 1570, HSS III, Letters 235, 300; 237, 301;
and 238, 302–303.
236. Maximilian II to the Chamber, Posonia, 1 March 1571; the Chamber to Maximilian,
Posonia, 21 January 1573; Council of Hungary to Ban Juraj Drašković, 26 March 1573; and the
Chamber to Maximilian, Posonia, 17 March and 7 December 1574: HSS III, Letters 248,
314–316; 304, 377–378; and 328, 402–403.
237. DSK I, Zaporeda St. 210, Fasc. 126a, doc. 17, dated 3 March 1556.
238. Klaić, Povijest Hrvata, V, 277. Hans von Auersperg served in both capacities.
239. Chapter 3, note 213.
240. Klaić, Povijest Hrvata, V, 268–271.
241. Loserth, Innerösterreich und die militärischen Massnahmen, 67. In 1565 the Inner Aus-
trian estates reported arrears of 280,000 gulden on the Slavonian and Croatian frontiers.
242. E.g., Ferdinand to Melchior von Hoberckh, Regensburg, 11 February 1557, ZML I,
Letter CCXCII, 441–442 (Zrinski is owed 7,355 gulden); Maximilian to the Hungarian Cham-
ber, 10 November 1564, HSS III, Letter 63, 113 (Erdödy is owed 4,000 Hungarian florins).
243. E.g., Zrinski to Nádasdy, Ujudvar, 18 August 1556, ZML I, Letter CCLXII, 399–400.
244. E.g., Lenković to Erdödy, Varaždin, 23 June 1557, HSS III, Letter 8, 14–15.
245. Chapter 3, note 207.
246. E.g., under Styria’s Veit Halleck at Varaždin. Klaić, Povijest Hrvata, V, 277.
247. Mažuran, Hrvati i Osmansko Carstvo, 128–129 (the reference to equilibrium), 132.
248. Zrinski to Archduke Maximilian, Čakovec, 26 July 1559, ZML I, Letter CCCXXXIX,
513–515.
249. He became captain of Szigetvár in 1561.
250. Mažuran, Hrvati i Osmansko Carstvo, 132–133.
251. Busbecq to Ferdinand, Constantinople, 14 April 1562, HHST I 15 Konvolut 2, f. 85–87.
252. Above, note 101; Klaić, Povijest Hrvata, V, 318–320.
253. E.g., concerning Bihać, see Ferdinand to Lenković, Vienna, 20 April 1560, HSS III,
Letter 41, 80–81.
254. Bracewell, The Uskoks of Senj, 121.
 War by Consultation vs. War by Command, 1556–1576 243

255. Above, note 178; F. de Turri to Ferdinand, Venice, 6 February 1559, HHST I 14
Konvolut 1, f. 50–51.
256. Ferdinand to Archduke Maximilian, Augsburg, 6 March 1559, HHST I 14 Konvolut 1, f.
91–95, 92v.
257. Bracewell, The Uskoks of Senj, 126–127; [Michael Černović] to Ferdinand, Constantin-
ople, 4 August 1557, HHST I 13 Konvolut 2, f. 26–27.
258. Lenković to Ferdinand, Freyenthurm, 5 May 1560, HSS III, Letter 42, 81–82.
259. Above, note 101.
260. Archduke Karl to Maximilian II, Pardublitz, 24 August 1565, Korrespondenz Maximil-
ians II, I, Letter 215, 255.
261. Above, notes 98–100.
262. Chapter 3, note 211.
263. Ferdinand to the Sabor at Steničnjak, 7 July 1558, HSS III, Letter 14, 21–26.
264. Resolutions of the Sabor at Zagreb, 3 March 1560, HSS III, Letter 37, 64–72, here 68;
Tracy, “The Road to Szigetvár,” 30n110. The thaler was valued at two-thirds of a Venetian
gold ducat: Albert de Wyss to Maximilian II, Constantinople, 18 April 1569, HHST I 12
Konvolut 2, f. 146–147.
265. Reply of Ferdinand’s commissioners, 8 March 1560, HSS III, Letter 39, 77–79.
266. Mažuran, Hrvati i Osmansko Carstvo, 127, 131–132.
267. Kaser, Freier Bauer und Soldat, 27–32.
268. Ban of Croatia from 1567 to 1572.
269. Lenković to Erdödy, Freyenthurm, 20 July 1558, and Erdödy to Archduke Maximilian,
Wywar on the Sava, 24 July 1558, HSS III, Letter 16, 27–28, and Letter 17, 29–31. A triage of
this kind was decreed by the estates of Hungary in 1556: Pálffy, “Origins and Development of
the Border Defence System,” 36.
270. See below, “Robot and Revolt.”
271. Articles of the Sabor, 7 July 1558, HSS III, Letter 14, 21–26.
272. Royal proposition of 4 April 1562 for the Sabor meeting at Varaždin, HSS III, Letter
48a, 86–88; Mažuran, Hrvati i Osmansko Carstvo, 129.
273. Above, notes 63, 65.
274. Wyss to Maximilian II, Constantinople, 11 May 1568, HHST I 24 Konvolut 2, f. 42–47;
above, note 198.
275. Wyss to Maximilian II, 11 May, 29 October 1568, and 9 July 1569, HHST I 24 Konvo-
lut 2, f. 42–47, I 25 Konvolut I, f. 25–28, and I 25 Konvolut 3, f. 66–69; instructions for Karel
Rijm, Vienna, 1 February 1570, HHST I 25 Konvolut 4, f. 55–57v.
276. Caspar von Minkwitz to Maximilian II, Constantinople, [after October 1571], HHST I
28 Konvolut 2, f. 136–137.
277. Rijm to Maximilian II, Constantinople, 7 January, 9 July 1572, HHST I 28 Konvolut 3,
f. 10–19, and I 28 Konvolut 5, f. 15–16; David Ungnad to Maximilian II, Constantinople, 12
October 1573, and Rijm and Ungnad to Maximilian, 6 November 1573, HHST I 29 Konvolut 4,
f. 33–35v and f. 63–64.
278. Above, note 228.
279. Mažuran, Hrvati i Osmansko Carstvo, 137–141; Rijm to Maximilian II, 26 March 1572,
HHST I 28 Konvolut 3, f. 68v–70v.
280. See below for the Peasants’ Revolt of 1573.
281. Lukas Szeckel to Archduke Karl, 9 November 1566, and resolutions of the Sabor, 24
February 1568, HSS III, Letter 108, 149–150, and Letter 139, 203–204.
282. Resolutions of the Sabor, Zagreb, 12 April 1570, HSS III, Letter 226, 288–294; Maxi-
milian II to the Hungarian Chamber of Accounts, Posonia, 20 March 1572; and resolutions of
244 Chapter 4

the Sabor, Zagreb, 30 October 1571: HSS III, Letters 226, 288–294; 271, 342–343; and 263,
331–334.
283. Hungarian bishops to Maximilian, Posonia, 9 December 1573; Maximilian to Archduke
Rudolf (his eldest son), 17 March 1574; and Council of Hungary to Maximilian, Posonia, 27
March 1574: HSS III, Letters 324, 389–390; 329, 403; and 331, 404. On Vice-Ban Gaspar
Alapy, chosen as co-ban in 1574, see below, note 304.
284. Resolutions of the Sabor, Zagreb, 15 May 1574, and Drašković to Archduke Karl,
Zagreb, 26 April 1575, HSS III, Letter 336, 408–414, and Letter 373, 446–447.
285. Memo from Franz Poppendorf, 23 June 1570, DSK I, Zaporeda St. 170, 2nd folder, doc.
16, f. 1–18, here f. 10; Poppendorf notes that if Bihać is held, martolossi can cross the Una only
a few at a time, on leather pillows.
286. E.g., for allocations of peasant labor to work at Hrastovica, see resolutions of the Sabor,
22 February 1568, 12 April 1570, HSS III, Letters 137, 195–202, and 226, 288–294.
287. Resolution of the Sabor, 23 March 1575, HSS III, Letter 268, 440–441.
288. Resolution of the Sabor, 5 April 1571, HSS III, Letter 253, 321–324.
289. Resolution of the Sabor, 30 December 1573, HSS III, Letter 25, 391–397.
290. Simoniti, Vojaška organizacija na Slovenskem, 26–49.
291. A pattern set by Spain’s tercios: Quatrefages, “L’Organisation militaire de l’Espagne,
1492–1592.”
292. E.g., DSK I, Zaporeda St. 169, 2nd folder, doc. 11, dated 6 March 1556, p. 9; resolution
of the Sabor, 21 May 1559, HSS III, Letter 21, 55–60.
293. Guldescu, The Croatian-Slavonian Kingdom, 76.
294. Simoniti, Vojaška organizacija na Slovenskem, 26–49.
295. Nobles did pay some extraordinary taxes. E.g., DSK I, Zaporeda St. 169, 2nd folder,
doc. 11, dated 6 March 1556: the five duchies consent to Ferdinand’s request that a special half
levy to pay for fortifications shall apply to the lands of the nobles as well as those of their
peasants.
296. Chapter 3, notes 256–259.
297. Josip Adamček, Seljačke Buna 1573 (Zagreb: Vjesnik, 1968), 43–44, 67, 184 (refer-
ences are to the English-language chapter summaries). The tax on exports was known as the
“thirtieth” (tricesima), i.e., 3.33 percent.
298. Resolutions of the Sabor, 8 March, 12 June 1560, and 15 May 1562, HSS III, Letters 37,
64–72; 43, 82; and 49, 90–99.
299. E.g., Hans Ungnad to the five Austrian duchies, Wittenberg, 6 January 1556, DSK I,
Zaporeda St. 170, 1st folder, first of two letters from Ungnad, 1–24, here 14.
300. Karl to Maximilian, Posonia, 5 March 1566, Korrespondenz Maximilians II, I, Letter
381, 441–444.
301. Hermann Rebel, Peasant Classes: The Bureaucratization of Property and Family Rela-
tions under Early Habsburg Absolutism, 1511–1636 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 1983), 126–137.
302. Resolutions of the Sabor, 21 May 1559, 3 March 1560, 12 June 1560, 22 April 1562, 15
May 1562, 10 October 1562, 25 September 1567, 22 February 1568, 12 April 1570, and 2 June
1572: HSS III, Letters 21, 55–60; 36, 64–72; 43, 82; 49, 90–99; 50, 100–101; 118, 160–167;
137, 195–202; 139, 203–204; 226, 288–294; 275, 345–348.
303. Resolution of the Sabor, 25 June 1568, HSS III, Letter 155, 215–220; see chapter 1, note
129.
304. Adamček, Seljačke Buna 1573, 44, 104–105, 184–185; Winkelbauer, Österreichische
Geschichte, I, 48. For the suggestion about the Zumberačka uskoks, see Winkelbauer,
Österreichische Geschichte, I, 48–52.
 War by Consultation vs. War by Command, 1556–1576 245

305. Resolutions of the Sabor, 30 December 1573, 20 December 1574, 19 June, and 9 July
1576, HSS III, Letters 325, 391–397; 359, 427–432; 398, 469–470; and 400, 470–473; on
Alapy as ban, see HSS III, Letter 355.
306. Resolution of the Sabor, 15 May 1574, HSS III, Letter 336, 408–414.
307. The best study is Kaser, Freier Bauer und Soldat.
308. Above, note 286.
309. Gerlach, Gesandtschaft, Sig. Lvi-verso–Mi.
310. Above, notes 112–113.
311. Report of the Council of Hungary, Posonia, 7 August 1576, HSS III, 403, 474–475.
312. Report of Carniola’s delegates, [after 18 June 1548], DSK I, Zaporeda St. 169, 1st
folder, doc. 24.
313. Five duchies to Ferdinand, 6 March 1556, DSK I, Zaporeda St. 169, 2nd folder, doc. 11,
1–17, here 8.
314. Ivan Lenković to Petar Erdödy, Zagreb, 28 July 1558, HSS III, Letter 19, 33–35; cf.
above, notes 269–272, 273–276.
315. Maximilian II to Archduke Ferdinand (then representing him in Prague), Vienna, 12
October 1565, Korrespondenz Maximilians II, I, Letter 240, 273–275.
316. HHST I 13 Konvolut 2, f. 150–157.
317. E.g., advice of Archduke Maximilian, 17 February 1559, HHST I 14 Konvolut 1, f.
101–106; Council of Hungary to Maximilian II, Posonia, 13 February 1568, HHST I 24 Kon-
volut 1, f. 21–24v.
318. Brady, German Histories; James B. Collins, The State in Early Modern France (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); José-Antonio Fortea-Peréz, Las Cortes de Castilla
y Léon bajo los Asturias. Una interpretación (Valladolid: Junta de Castilla y Léon, 2008).
319. E.g., Fichtner, Emperor Maximilian II, 119–120. Cf. James Tracy, The Founding of the
Dutch Republic (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 2–4, 130–131.
320. Karl to Maximilian II, Posonia, 5 March, 3 April 1566, Korrespondenz Maximilians II,
I, Letter 381, 441–444, and Letter 403, 488–491.
321. Tracy, The Founding of the Dutch Republic.
322. Above, note 223.
323. Maximilian II to Archduke Karl, Augsburg, 9 February 1566, and Karl to Maximilian, 6
and 10 March 1566, Korrespondenz Maximilians II, Letter 347, 397–100; Letter 381, 441–444;
and Letter 385, 445–448.
324. Karl to Maximilian, Vienna, 3 April 1566, Korrespondenz Maximilians II, I, Letter 403,
488–491.
325. Loserth, Innerösterreich und die militärischen Massnahmen, 61–69.
326. Schulze, Landesdefension und Staatsbildung, 63–65, and Simoniti, Vojaška organizaci-
ja na Slovenskem, 58–64.
327. For a general discussion, see Werner Hahlweg, Die Heeresreform der Oranier und die
Antike (reprint of 1941 edition with a new preface by the author, Osnabrück, 1987).
328. Ungnad to the Austrian estates, Istanbul, 1 October 1576, DSK I, Zaporeda St. 210,
Fasc. 126, doc. 1, 54 pages; he writes at His Majesty’s behest (p. 3), and mentions (p. 2) a letter
of January 1576. The nemci han was purchased by Busbecq, with Ottoman approval: Zweder
van Martels, Aurelius Busbecquius, chapter 9.
329. For Habsburg candidacies for the Polish-Lithuanian throne in 1572 and 1575, see Chris-
toph Augustynowicz, “Interessenknotenpunkten in den ersten beiden polnisch-lituaischen
Interregna (1572–1576),” in Christoph Augustynowicz, Andreas Kappeler, et al., eds., Russ-
land, Polen und Ŏsterreich in der frühen Neuzeit = Wiener Archiv für die Geschichte des
Slawentums und Osteuropas, 19 (Vienna: Böhlau, 2003), 19–35. Ungnad to the Austrian es-
246 Chapter 4

tates, 1 October 1576, 5–7, insists that the failure of the most recent effort was not due to
Maximilian himself.
330. Ungnad to the estates, as in note 328, e.g., 16–17, 12.
331. Fodor, “Sultan, Imperial Council, Grand Vizier,” 207–226.
332. Baki Tezcan, The Second Ottoman Empire: Political and Social Transformation in the
Early Modern World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 95–96.
333. Ágoston, Guns for the Sultan, 190–198; Peter Frenn, “Die Rüstungsboom in der Steier-
mark von 1575 bis 1590,” in Gerhart Pferschy and Peter Frenn, eds., Die Steiermark. Brücke
und Bollwerk (Graz: Steiermärkisches Landesarchiv, 1986), 247–252; Jozsef Kelenik, “The
Military Revolution in Hungary,” in Dávid and Fodor, Ottomans, Hungarians, Habsburgs,
117–159.
334. Moačanin, Town and Country on the Middle Danube, 1526–1690, 120–127.
335. Surayija Faroghi, The Ottoman Empire and the World around It (New York: I. B.
Tauris, 2007), 44–49.
336. [Michael Černović] to Ferdinand, Edirne, 5 January 1557, HHST I 13 Konvolut 1, f. 1–2
(a conversation with the “procurator” of the sancakbeg of Bosnia); Ungnad to Maximilian II,
Constantinople, 5 May 1575, HHST I 31 Konvolut 4, f. 13–14 (a conversation with Achmat,
the secretary of the paşa of Buda).
337. Busbecq to Ferdinand, Buda, 12 December 1554, HHST I 11 Konvolut 1, f. 201–204
(describing the paşa of Buda as sensitive to the “murmur” of the “military prefects” [vojvods?]
who surrounded him as he gave audience to Busbecq.
338. The communitas of Ottoman seniores mentioned by Sprinzenstein (chapter 2, note 45)
might have included civil as well as military officials.
339. England, Castile, Portugal, Naples, and Sicily had no provincial estates or parliaments.
340. Holland was then a province, not a country, and for Dutch speakers it still is; the Dutch
name for the country is Nederland.
341. Tracy, The Founding of the Dutch Republic, 289–295.
342. The crown of Aragon was made up of three “kingdoms,” each with its own parliament.
343. After about 1440, the French king’s powers of taxation were generally not constrained
by parliamentary assemblies. But the so-called pays d’état, representing about a fourth of the
kingdom, had parliaments that collected customary taxes and gave their consent to new levies.
 Chapter Five

War in a Time of Peace, 1576–1593 1

From 1576 to 1593, the lands that had once comprised the kingdom of
Hungary did not experience a general war. Excursions from both sides con-
tinued: in Upper Hungary, which shared a border with Transylvania; on the
Trans-Danubian frontier in southwestern Hungary; and along the Kupa, near
where Croatia shared a border with Bosnia. Since these ventures often in-
volved five thousand men or more, it was reasonable to believe they had the
blessing of their respective governments. Yet official reaction was invariably
muted because each of the three mega-states with stakes in the region had
good reasons for not wanting to commit the resources needed for an all-out
war.
For the Ottomans, Shi’ite Iran remained the great enemy. As Ferhat Beg’s
representative at the Porte was reportedly told, even if Christian armies pene-
trated as far as Istanbul, the sultan would still worry most about his eastern
frontier where his real interest lay. 2 Since Ottoman and Safavid forces had
often clashed in the Christian principality of Georgia, the Caucasus region
was one possible target for expansion. Opportunity beckoned in 1577 when
the shah was preoccupied by Uzbek invaders who occupied historic Iranian
cities in the northeastern part of his realm. The Ottoman capture of Tbilisi in
1578 led the Iranians to seek an ally in Moscow, but to no avail since an
ongoing war with Poland-Lithuania required all of Tsar Ivan the Terrible’s
attention. Further Ottoman expeditions, supported by a massive mobilization
of men and resources, led to the capture of Tabriz in 1585 and, in 1587, of
Gori, the center of Georgian resistance. Although ten years of war in the
Caucasus was a great burden on the Ottoman treasury, it redounded to the

247
248 Chapter 5

sultan’s glory. As Shah ‘Abbas I (1587–1629) began his reign, the Uzbeks
were the greater threat. Hence he agreed in 1589/1590 to a treaty that recog-
nized recent Ottoman gains. 3 Meanwhile, since it served the Porte’s interest
to keep Hungary relatively calm, peace with the Habsburgs was renewed for
eight years in 1584. In 1591 Emperor Rudolf II hoped to renew it again, but
opinion in Istanbul had shifted. In a debate before the sultan, one vezir urged
caution: victory in the East was due to Iran’s focus on the Uzbeks, not to
Ottoman prowess. But his opponents carried the day. 4 Bosnia’s governor-
general, Hasan Paşa, was already preparing a new offensive.
Under Murad III (b. 1546, r. 1574–1595), state policy was not guided by a
single personality. Though much older than his nearest brother, and thus the
obvious successor, Murad had passed a quiet life as heir apparent. From 1562
he had been a governor east of Izmir, in the town where he had been born.
Until the early 1580s he lived monogamously with his wife Safiye, who in
1566 gave birth to the future Mehmed III. Like his father, Murad avoided the
public rooms of the palace, preferring his private chambers. But while Selim
II had resided in the third courtyard, Murad III built a pavilion in the garden
of the harem, with a domed throne room adjoining his bedroom. Communi-
cation with the divan was now in writing—even with the grand vezir—and
Murad’s chief advisers were men he had brought with him from western
Anatolia: his tutor, his spiritual guide, and his comptroller. They undermined
the authority of Mehmed Paşa Sokolović and may even have encouraged the
man who murdered him in 1579. Also, the fact that the sultan now lived in
the harem enhanced the influence of his ladies. Nur Banu (d. 1585), the
valide sultana, persuaded him to take multiple consorts, for reasons of state.
As his harem grew, Murad endowed the office of Chief Black Eunuch with
new powers. After Nur Banu died, decisions on appointments to high office
were often swayed by Safiye or by the Chief Black Eunuch. 5
Murad III’s reign was long regarded as marking a period when Ottoman
institutions began to weaken. The grand vezir had little authority, since the
office changed hands eleven times under Murad’s rule as one harem faction
or another promoted its favorite. 6 In 1580, when the last man who had been a
vezir under Suleyman the Lawgiver died, Murad even considered abolishing
the divan altogether. In the military hierarchy, ranks formerly awarded on the
recommendation of field commanders were now just as likely to be sold by
court or harem officials. 7 The greatest blow to the traditional system came
when the government, desperate for silver to fund the war against Iran,
lowered the silver content of the akçe by 44 percent, probably in 1585. This
 War in a Time of Peace, 1576–1593 249

debasement reduced by nearly half the real value of treasury receipts, paid
mainly in akçe. 8 One solution to the shortfall, apparently introduced soon
after Murad III’s death, was to convert the timars that had hitherto supported
the sipahis to tax farms, auctioned to the highest bidder. 9 Meanwhile, elite
infantry units were paid in debased silver. In 1589, forced to accept coins
“thin as almond leaves,” the Janissaries rebelled. For the first time ever, they
broke into the divan and would not accept the bags of gold piled up by
officials until Murad III agreed to give them the heads of two high officials. 10
One can easily find Murad III portrayed as devoting himself to his pleas-
ures while signs of collapse sprouted around him. Against this view, Baki
Tezcan maintains that the whole idea of imperial decay was created by re-
formist writers of the following generation: their resentment of the penetra-
tion of the Ottoman elite by outsiders (notably the newly minted tax farmers)
led them to see things in a gloomy light. In Tezcan’s reading of the sources,
Murad’s regular promotion of favorites to high positions, seen by many
contemporaries as a form of nepotism, is better understood as an attempt to
reclaim authority for the sovereign at the expense of the households of the
vezirs, which had become independent loci of power. 11 It may be that Tezcan
gives Murad III more credit than he deserves, but it is hardly unreasonable to
regard the immense power and wealth of a vezir like Mehmed Paşa
Sokolović as representing a danger to the state. More broadly, Tezcan fol-
lows the tendency of recent students of Ottoman history in that he contests
the notion of decline: the empire of the late sixteenth century did not fall
apart; it was being reorganized along different lines. 12
What matters here is what contemporary Europeans thought. At the Porte,
diplomats scouted out any signs that the Turk might be relaxing his iron grip,
and their reports were sometimes tinged with wishful thinking: “God willing,
there is some beginning of decline.” 13 But in an age when a ruler’s majesty
was measured by external pomp, there was no doubt about whose court was
most splendid. As a Venetian ambassador wrote, “all Christian princes must
yield in magnificence to the Ottoman Porte, for I do not believe that any
other court, even with great labor and preparation, can match what is to be
seen on an ordinary day in the seraglio of the Gran Signore.” 14 The Porte
also had extraordinary days. At the celebration of Murad III’s enthronement
in 1574, for example, 110 bags of gold coins were brought out for the custo-
mary distribution to soldiers and officials; the sum involved, 1,100,000 duc-
ats, was about half the annual income of the Venetian Republic. 15 Two years
later, for the wedding of the third vezir, the groom’s mother (it was Mihri-
250 Chapter 5

mah, the widow of Rüstem Paşa) paid an estimated 200,000 ducats for
sweets and refreshments for the guests. For the circumcision in 1582 of
Prince Mehmed (the future Mehmed III), court officials organized a fifty-
five-day celebration, perhaps the most lavish festival in Ottoman history. 16 If
anyone were of a mind to argue that mere splendor did not mean real power,
the sultan’s victory over Iran pointed to a different conclusion. With the
Treaty of Istanbul, “the Ottoman Empire attained its maximum size.” 17 In
sum, for actual or potential enemies, in Vienna, Venice, Cracow, Moscow, or
Isfahan, 18 Murad III’s state looked as formidable as ever.
In Venice, the Cyprus War cast a long shadow. To fund the war, the
Signoria used an improved method of public borrowing: instead of imposing
forced loans, on which interest was paid irregularly, the state guaranteed
annual returns on voluntary deposits at the Mint, a quasi-independent agency.
By 1574, interest on deposits at the Mint ran to over 500,000 ducats, about a
fourth of total revenue. For the prudent Venetians, debt at this level was not
sustainable, and another Turkish war was out of the question. 19 Also, Venice
could not fight the Ottomans without Spain, and Spain was looking less and
less like an ally. Venetians believed Lepanto had been their victory, but
Spain had claimed credit and then abandoned the eastern Mediterranean,
leaving Venice to face the sultan’s wrath. Tensions were also rising in Lom-
bardy, along the border between Spanish Milan and Venetian Terraferma.
Meanwhile, the Counter-Reformation offensive against heresy, backed by
Catholic Spain, threatened the interests of a mercantile city. Papal officials,
concerned about Protestant visitors from the north, made Venice nervous by
proposing a local branch of the Roman Inquisition, answerable to the pope. 20
Finally, the Cyprus War had demonstrated once again the precariousness
of Venice’s lifeline to the East. The merchant shipping of Dubrovnik, Ven-
ice’s rival, reached unprecedented levels during the war. 21 It was also not
entirely clear that the government remained committed to defending Ven-
ice’s trade with the East. The great patrician families, whose members regu-
larly filled the highest offices, had lost interest in the Levant. They no longer
sent their sons east for an apprenticeship in commerce, and by shifting assets
to landed estates in Terraferma, they accounted for “a significant tip in the
balance of investments” during the second half of the sixteenth century. 22 In
Istanbul, Venetian firms were now usually represented by men from the
towns of Terraferma, who had recently gained permission to trade over-
seas. 23 Still, many lesser patricians had their wealth tied up in trade, and their
 War in a Time of Peace, 1576–1593 251

concerns about the priorities of the ruling elite came up for discussion in the
governing councils. 24
For some time, the Council of Ten had managed both foreign affairs and
financial matters, with the assistance of a thirty-member Zonta elected by the
Grand Council. In 1579, the elaborate, multi-stage procedure by which doges
were elected led to the choice of Nicolò da Ponte (r. 1579–1583). Venetian
sources of this era often distinguish between groups of patricians loosely
known as the old (vecchi) and the young (giovani); the difference had less to
do with age than with degrees of respect for tradition and unwritten rules. Da
Ponte, the new doge, was an enemy of Spain, and he was also linked to the
current group of giovani. Their leader was Leonardo Donà (1536–1612). In
token of his “almost sacerdotal devotion to public office,” 25 Donà had taken
a vow of perpetual chastity. In 1582, the Grand Council was asked to elect a
new Zonta; in a vote that was attributed to the influence of the giovani, the
council refused by a large margin to do so. As a result, the Council of Ten
was henceforth restricted to its original mandate, having to do with state
security, while the Senate assumed control of finance and foreign affairs. 26
The French ambassador did not believe that a body with 340 members could
handle matters of state as discreetly as the Council of Ten had done. 27
Yet it does not seem that policy changed under Senate control, because
Venice’s strategic position remained the same: there were still potential ene-
mies to the west as well as to the east. On fiscal matters, the Council of Ten
had in 1577 established a sinking fund for the amortization of the debt
represented by deposits at the Mint; the Senate kept this measure in place
until the debt was retired in 1597. 28 If there was in these years an informal
locus of power, it was perhaps at the palace of the Morosini brothers on the
Grand Canal, a favored gathering place for the giovani. The Morosini were
one of the few great families “still devoted to commerce in the Levant.” 29
Although it is not clear that the improvement can be ascribed to state policy,
Venetian trade with the East expanded, and not just in Asian spices. In the
last two decades of the sixteenth century, the flow of woolens and silks to
Aleppo and Alexandria matched any levels seen previously, while raw silk
and cotton were shipped back from the Levant in far greater quantities than
ever before. 30
No Holy Roman Emperor has been more a puzzle to his subjects or to
historians than Rudolf II (r. 1576–1612). 31 At the insistence of Philip II, who
feared Protestant influences at Maximilian II’s court, Rudolf spent his teen-
age years in Madrid (1563–1571), where he acquired a taste for Spanish
252 Chapter 5

dress and a preference for speaking Spanish. In Prague, which he chose to

make his capital, his key advisers had Spanish connections: Adam von Die-
trichstein, his majordomo in Spain; Vratislav Pernštein, whose wife was a
Castilian grandee; and their son-in-law, Zdenek Popel z Lobković. Yet suc-
cessive papal nuncios, eager for state intervention in a Bohemia where both
Lutherans and Bohemian Brethren 32 outnumbered Catholics, got nothing
from Rudolf but official pronouncements, which were then ignored. Indeed,
Rudolf grew increasingly resistant to pressure from Rome, even as he absent-
ed himself more and more from the Catholic sacraments. Meanwhile, relig-
ious divisions were growing sharper across Europe as the uncompromising
doctrines of Calvinism made headway in Lutheran territories, 33 while Jesuit
confessors pressed Catholic rulers to impose penalties on dissenters. Yet
Rudolf favored religious thinkers who still hoped for a grand compromise,
including his Lutheran humanist-physician, and his confessor, who was also
a student of the Cabbala. 34 Rudolf himself was “addicted to the mysterious
and the miraculous,” and he made Prague a center for alchemy and natural
magic, but also for science in today’s sense of the term, such as astronomy;
Tycho Brahe lived his last years at the court, assisted by Johannes Kepler. 35
Rudolf’s intellectual curiosity and his fondness for the arts have attracted
much attention. 36 But he took little interest in the affairs of the empire, where
he did not convene a diet between 1582 and 1594. He rarely visited his
hereditary lands, except when he placated the Hungarian aristocracy by at-
tending diets in Posonia. 37 Scholars rarely comment on Rudolf’s political
goals, leaving it unclear whether he had any.
Rudolf kept the reins of diplomacy in his hands. From the Porte, David
Ungnad reported that the new sultan and his advisers, worried about the
accession of a new shah in Iran, wanted to conclude the treaty whose terms
had already been agreed to under Selim II. Rudolf II was of the same mind,
and the new treaty was ratified in January 1577. 38 Still, as Ungnad had said
in his circular letter to the Austrian estates, this new agreement did not
prevent the Ottomans from “attacking Hungary and Slavonia day by day,
almost hour by hour, and raiding far and wide into Christendom.” 39 Ung-
nad’s pessimism about what diplomacy could achieve may be taken as an
indication of the government’s determination to find, somehow, the money to
build a better-defended frontier.
For the monarchy’s internal affairs, authority was divided among the
Habsburg dynasts. From Vienna, Archduke Ernst (1553–1595), the oldest of
Rudolf’s five brothers, ruled Hungary as well as Lower and Upper Austria.
 War in a Time of Peace, 1576–1593 253

When Ernst was called away to the Habsburg Netherlands as regent (1593),
the next brother, Archduke Matthias (1557–1619), replaced him in Vienna.
In Inner Austria, Rudolf’s uncle, Archduke Karl, ruled until his death in
1590. Another of Rudolf’s brothers, who was grand master of the Teutonic
Knights, took over as regent for Karl’s son, Archduke Ferdinand
(1578–1637), the future Ferdinand II. 40 Regular consultation among the
reigning princes afforded scope for a common policy, even if Rudolf’s insis-
tence on final authority for decisions often caused delays.
The emergence of a supranational aristocracy provided a further basis for
cohesion. No Habsburg dynast governed without the active support of mag-
nates; they controlled vast estates, and in the eastern Habsburg lands they
also dominated the provincial parliaments. These great nobles married
among their peers. Frequenting the imperial court, they entered into cross-
border alliances, gradually forming what one scholar has called “the glue of
the Habsburg Monarchy.” 41 For example, the Ungnad of Styria and the Salm
of Lower Austria became kin to the Thurzo of Hungary and the Pernštein of
Bohemia. The second wife of Count Nikola IV Zrinski (d. 1566) was Eva
Rožmberk; her brother, Vilem Rožmberk (d. 1592), one of Rudolf’s compan-
ions in Spain, was burgrave of Bohemia. The first wife of Zrinski’s eldest
son, Count Juraj, was an Arco of Tirol, his second wife a Stubenberg of
Styria. Two of his daughters married Thurzos, and a younger son chose a
Bohemian bride, from the Kolovrat clan, who had close ties to the above-
mentioned Vilem Rožmberk. 42 Magnate cousins often found themselves on
the opposite sides of the growing religious divide. The Ungnad were pillars
of Lutheranism in Styria and Carniola, just as their Pernštein in-laws were
pillars of Catholicism at Rudolf II’s court. While the Rožmberks promoted a
zealous Catholicism in Bohemia, Eva’s stepson, Count Juraj Zrinski, was
certainly a Protestant and probably a Calvinist, like his friend Boldizsár
Batthyány. 43 Yet creedal differences did not override shared loyalty to a
dynasty on which these families depended, nor a common recognition of the
existential threat that Ottoman expansion represented.
Their social position required magnates to take the lead in military affairs,
even if they did not have lands on the border. In 1566, for example, the
Bohemian contingent of the army raised by Maximilian II, ostensibly for the
relief of Szigetvár, was commanded by Nikola Zrinski’s brother-in-law, Vi-
lem Rožmberk. 44 Magnate-commanders shared in the humiliation of the
Szigetvár War, and the experience of defeat recommended to them a princi-
ple formulated by Lazarus Schwendi: the monarchy must avoid at all costs
254 Chapter 5

another head-on confrontation with the Ottomans. Instead, treaties of peace

must be used to gain the time needed to make the border defensible. 45 Thus
Rudolf II made sure the sultan received his annual tribute and interpreted
Ottoman border infractions in the best light possible. Meanwhile, Habsburg
princes worked with the provincial estates to build a military frontier. Even
without benefit of strong guidance from the center, the monarchy had an
overall strategy.

OTTOMAN BOSNIA

Bosnia’s Two Roles in the Ottoman System

Bosnia is the only European province of the Ottoman Empire to have

emerged as a modern country within more or less the same borders. Since the
last quarter of the nineteenth century, when Bosnia came under Austro-
Hungarian administration, scholars have sought to define a Bosnian identity,
especially for the Bosniak or Bosnian-Muslim community. Some have seen
Bosniaks as descended from adherents of the pre-conquest Bosnian Church.
Others have suggested that their conversion to Islam was facilitated by the
preaching of heretical Sufi sects, including one that publicly venerated Jesus
Christ. 46 Still others have contended that Bosnia was unusual among Otto-
man provinces in the degree to which local sipahis were able to pass their
timars on to sons or nephews, thus creating a hereditary aristocracy along
European lines. One recent historian argues that Bosniaks were unlike Ortho-
dox and Catholic neighbors in that they formed a complete society, with a
feudal elite, a learned clergy, urban merchants and craftsmen, and, in the
countryside, free peasants as well as serfs. 47
None of these arguments has held up well. As of ca. 1463, Bosnian
Christians were too few in number to give rise to Bosnia’s large Muslim
population. 48 The heretical Sufi sect in question was indeed persecuted, as
Ottoman authorities grew more concerned to protect Sunni orthodoxy. But in
Bosnia they were always outnumbered by another Sufi order, the perfectly
respectable Bektaşis, favored by the Janissaries. 49 The common view that
timars across the empire came to be monopolized by favored families is
contradicted by recent study of timar grants, which finds that the proportion
of awards to sons of sipahis and to “nobodies” remained roughly the same all
through the sixteenth century, about 40 percent for the former and 30 percent
for the latter. 50 Finally, while Bosnian Catholics were a distinct minority,
 War in a Time of Peace, 1576–1593 255

they too comprised not just peasants and serfs, but also miners, craftsmen
(despite the connection between Sufi orders and the guilds), and merchants
traveling to other lands. 51
A better case for Bosnia’s uniqueness may lie in the fact that this province
had two distinct roles in the Ottoman system. Sarajevo, though no longer the
capital, was by about 1580 the leading commercial center and the largest city
in the western Balkan region, with perhaps forty thousand people. Officials
stationed elsewhere in the province will have kept residences here, and in
later years they perhaps retired to Sarajevo, remote from the war-frontier.
One way or another, Sarajevo still housed a sizeable Ottoman elite, and their
expensive tastes supported a thriving artisan community. Sarajevo’s mer-
chant class grew rapidly, importing cloth and other European luxuries and
exporting the hides, wool, and wax for which there was growing demand in
Italy. 52 Bosnia also had an Adriatic outlet, at the mouth of the Neretva, with a
resident and long-serving defterdar who promoted his port as a rival to the
trade of nearby Dubrovnik. Although evidence to this effect is slim, 53 Bos-
nia’s sancakbegs and paşas were probably encouraged to promote trade and
customs revenues.
Banja Luka became the capital in the 1550s because of its proximity to
the fighting, and under Ferhat Beg Sokolović (1574–1587) it became a prop-
er city. One could reach Croatia’s Kupa frontier by striking directly west
from here, across a range of mountains and then the Una; by 1578 there were
three bridges over the Una to facilitate the passage of troops. Since the
Ottomans controlled both the middle Sava and the lower Una, supplies and
artillery could also be floated down the Vrbas from Banja Luka and then up
the Sava and the Una to the war zone. 54 Meanwhile, nearby mines yielded
iron that a Banja Luka foundry turned into cannon balls; there was also an
arsenal that supplied powder and shot to neighboring sancaks. According to a
Venetian rector of Split, two master cannon founders had come from Istanbul
to rework guns captured by Ferhat Beg and then stayed on in Banja Luka,
“where, I am told, they have made thirty pieces, three of them very large.” 55
For the Hauptberatschlagung that convened in 1577, Habsburg officials
made an estimate of the manpower in Ottoman border forts. Positions facing
Croatia proper were said to have 3,700 paid men, those on the Slavonian
frontier 2,863 men, and those “on this side of the Drava, facing Kanizsa,”
6,180 men. 56 These troop levels would seem to approximate Ottoman prior-
ities: whereas the frontier in Slavonia had been stable since the 1550s, Croa-
tia proper still offered opportunities for extending the sultan’s borders, and
256 Chapter 5

Kanizsa, the Habsburg replacement for Sizgetvár, posed a threat to neighbor-

ing sancaks. Yet the estimates do not give a full picture. The “very many”
unpaid martolossi raiders at Kamengrad (in Bosnia) and in Požega are not
counted in the total. There is also no mention of the Janissaries and other
troops who made up Ferhat Beg’s military retinue in Banja Luka, possibly
four thousand men, 57 nor of the able-bodied civilians who could be called to
arms as needed. 58 Finally, Ferhat Beg’s elevation in 1580 to the rank of a
paşa meant unity of command. According to the Venetian rector of Split, the
nine sancakbegs who sent gifts to acknowledge their submission were now
expected to obey Ferhat’s commands “promptly, with no delay or excuse, on
pain of death.” 59 One must allow for exaggeration in such reports, but Ferhat
as paşa will have had an authority over the whole region that his predeces-
sors lacked. Nonetheless, because of the war in the Caucasus, he seldom had
permission to mobilize all the forces under his command for a general march
to the west.

Campaigns under the Direction of Ferhat Beg, 1576–1587

Despite the peace treaty of 1576/1577, Ferhat Beg apparently had no orders
to lay aside the methodical Ottoman campaign to extend the sultan’s domin-
ion beyond the Una. This at least was the opinion of Archduke Ernst, who
doubted that the grand vezir would restrict the operations in Croatia of his
cousin Ferhat. 60 In the fall and winter of 1577, Ferhat captured Ostrožac
(near Cazin), other fortresses near Bihać, and Zrin, from which the Zrinski
clan took their name; the citadel at Gvozdansko, guarding the Zrinski mines,
fell in January 1578. By the end of that year, the Habsburg frontier had been
pushed back to the Korana and Kupa Rivers. 61 Not all excursions into enemy
territory were led by Ferhat himself. A Habsburg document that lists “major”
attacks from 1575 through 1582 is clearly defective in some respects, but it
also gives estimates of how many attackers there were. 62 On four occasions
when between 1,500 and 2,800 men were said to be involved, the command-
er was Ferhat Beg’s first chamberlain (kapigi bassa). On the four occasions
involving five thousand men or more, Ferhat himself commanded. In May
1578, taking five thousand men to lay an ambush for the captain-general of
Croatia as he returned from provisioning Bihać, Ferhat got the worst of
things. As another supply expedition returned from Bihać in August, Ferhat
waited with twelve thousand men but was again forced to withdraw; Habs-
burg forces now briefly reoccupied Cazin and Ostrožac. In late September,
Ferhat returned with twenty-four thousand men and large siege guns; he
 War in a Time of Peace, 1576–1593 257

stalled the advance of a large Habsburg invasion force and recaptured Cazin
and Ostrožac. These numbers suggest a hierarchy of objectives, with Ferhat
taking charge of important expeditions. 63 For the campaign of September
1578, the Porte surely authorized him to mobilize the forces of neighboring
sancaks to make good the humiliation he suffered. If one had to estimate
potential Ottoman strength in this region, twenty-four thousand men would
not be a bad guess.
Another Ottoman initiative in this region may be traceable to Ferhat Beg.
In 1577, Habsburg sources report that Vlachs were being brought in to garri-
son twenty abandoned castles in Lika in the sancak of Klis, a district con-
quered in the time of Ghazi Husrev Beg. 64 The fact that Lika was a prime
target for uskok raids had no doubt inhibited resettlement. A Venetian report
for 1572, describing most local troops as unpaid Morlacchi, offers indirect
confirmation for this area’s lack of military infrastructure. Ottoman sources
indicate that Vlach encampments in this region had by 1604 given way to
settled villages. 65 Habsburg and Venetian documents agree that repopulation
was decreed by the Porte and aimed at shoring up Lika’s defenses. Since
Lika had in the past served as a jumping-off point for Ottoman raids through
Croatia into Carniola, Archduke Karl and his estates interpreted the garrison-
ing of castles as a hostile move, and they reacted accordingly. 66 Ferhat Beg
was governor of Klis from 1566 to 1574. In 1577, when the resettlement
began, his younger brother may still have been sancakbeg here. 67 In 1578 the
Porte made Lika a separate sancak, entrusting it to a military entrepreneur
who promised to “populate the mountains of Lika and defend the sancak at
his own expense.” As is clear from the complaints of Venetian officials, the
understanding was that the sancakbeg and his men would pay themselves
from the profits of plunder. 68
Despite Ferhat’s victories, the conquest of fortified sites had become
more difficult. In western Slavonia, where the two mega-states were divided
by a line from the Drava to the Sava, the Habsburgs had had a defensible
frontier since the 1550s. 69 To the south, the loss of the Una valley left a
Croatia proper that was smaller but sheltered for the most part behind the
rivers Korana and Kupa. 70 The best way for the Ottomans to advance was by
implementing a version of their classic strategy: burn out villages and terrify
or take captive the peasant populations, without whose support no fortress
could long survive. Given the active market for slaves, and not just on the
Ottoman side of the frontier, depopulation campaigns were also a way of
keeping the troops content. 71
258 Chapter 5

Villages around Steničnjak, just east of the Korana, were raided repeated-
ly. Turopolje, the “populated island” between the Kupa and the Sava, was an
even better target. In June 1580 Ferhat led a reported five thousand men
across the Kupa into Turopolje and is said to have brought back eight thou-
sand captives. He then received orders to deal with Požega, where Habsburg
invaders had killed the sancakbeg and captured hundreds of his men. For the
next three years Ferhat resided in Požega or, to the west, in Pakrac. He also
transferred men from his own command to his brother ‘Ali Beg, now the
sancakbeg of Pakrac. 72 From Pakrac, ‘Ali Beg crossed the Sava into Turo-
polje in July 1581 and again in September 1581, with a reported five thou-
sand raiders. 73 The year 1583 was relatively calm along the border, but the
raids resumed in 1584, capped by an attack across Croatia into Carniola led
by Ferhat Beg’s treasurer. As the Ottomans returned laden with booty, Ban
Tamás Erdödy waited near Slunj. In the ensuing battle, the treasurer was
killed, with some two thousand of his men. This defeat led Ottoman strate-
gists to reconsider their options, and Ferhat called a temporary halt to raids
across the frontier. In 1585 he launched a major but unsuccessful assault on
Bihać. In 1586 he struck north across the Sava to attack a fortress-town in
Slavonia, again without success. In January 1587, according to Habsburg
sources, Ferhat’s brother was killed when he led five thousand men from
Pakrac against the fortified cloister at Ivanić in Slavonia and was intercepted
and defeated by a smaller force. It seems Ferhat Beg was now relieved of
command. The campaign of revenge that Habsburg commanders expected,
led by Ferhat’s successor, did not end well for the Ottomans. 74 In 1588,
Ferhat himself was promoted to the paşaluk of Buda, where he died in 1590.

A Trade Corridor between Sarajevo and Split

Trade between Sarajevo and the Adriatic passed up and down horse-caravan
tracks. A settlement called Gabela, near modern Ploče, grew up around the
Ottoman toll station at the mouth of the Neretva. Tolls and salt taxes, shared
with nearby Dubrovnik, were important enough that the treasurer of Bosnia
kept a residence at Gabela. 75 Sephardic Jews, whose ancestors were expelled
from Spain in 1492, managed the caravan trade and formed a merchant
community at Gabela. Just after peace between Venice and the Ottomans was
concluded in 1573, the doge received a letter from the sancakbeg of Herzeg-
ovina 76 proposing that Split be refitted to serve as an entrepôt for trade with
the sultan’s lands. The idea came from Daniel Rodriguez, consul of Sephar-
dic merchants on the Neretva, and the Signoria now appointed Rodriguez
 War in a Time of Peace, 1576–1593 259

consul of the “Western” (Sephardic) Jews trading to Venice. 77 For Ottoman

traders, Split offered a more defensible refuge for merchants than Gabela,
where uskok raids caused havoc; for Split, a new harbor might revive the
city’s fortunes. In 1576, the Senate gave Rodriguez permission to proceed
with the project, provided he could raise money to build the needed infra-
structure at Split and persuade Ottoman merchants to pay customs duties
there. 78
The obstacles were daunting. The count whose tenure ended in 1580
reported that Split’s patricians did not want more Jewish merchants in their
city. Rodriguez himself was “poor” and lacked the funds to build harbor
facilities. Some Ottoman merchants coming from Italy did call at Split in
1579 but then sailed on to Gabela: they refused to pay tolls, and they could
not find horses to organize a caravan. They also said their ships were perfect-
ly well protected against uskoks by the Ottoman fuste that convoyed them to
and from Gabela. 79 Yet the syndics for Dalmatia in 1580 had great hopes for
the project, as did Nicolò Correr, the next Count of Split. Correr had Rodri-
guez start on a customs house and a lazaretto, only to see work abandoned
when Rodriguez ran out of money. In Correr’s view the solution was to
persuade merchants at Gabela to transfer business to Split and pay tolls that
would support the improvements. He claimed to have won over Memishah
Beg, but the “authority” of Bosnia’s defterdar would not by itself suffice to
point Ottoman traders in the direction of Split. Correr recommended an ex-
tension of Venice’s usual proto-mercantilist strategy. Ottoman merchants
would come to Split only if they saw no other way of keeping their ships safe
from uskok raiders. Hence Venetian war galleys patrolling the Adriatic
should prevent Ottoman fuste from sailing out of the Neretva and so claim
for themselves the sole right of protecting Ottoman shipping. 80
Correr’s recommendation was apparently not adopted. The first real step
toward realization of Rodriguez’s plan did not come until 1588, when the
ever-parsimonious Venetian Senate voted 3,000 ducats for the construction
of new facilities at Split. As work proceeded, Rodriguez and the Count of
Split conducted negotiations with the defterdar who had succeeded Memi-
shah Beg, leading to an agreement in 1589 with the sancakbeg of Klis. In
1590, a merchant galley from Venice, laden with goods for Ottoman buyers,
called at Split for the first time. But there was as yet no assured connection to
Sarajevo, the prime inland market for Mediterranean goods. For want of
roads and bridges, the route up-country from Split was swampy in some
places and altogether impassable in others. Also, rich caravans would be
260 Chapter 5

targets for the uskoks. 81 Yet an overland connection to Sarajevo and beyond
had become almost a necessity for Venice because the Mediterranean was
now more than ever infested by pirates, some of them operating from men-
of-war of British provenance. Bosnian officials may have become more will-
ing to consider an alternative to their own entrepôt on the lower Neretva,
because traders reportedly deserted Gabela in 1590 to escape higher taxes. 82
Although a Bosnian envoy to Zadar urged that Venice make an overture to
the current paşa of Bosnia, it is not evident that the Signoria followed up on
his suggestion. But in 1591, the next paşa, Hasan Paşa, agreed to make the
route from Split passable and to provide an armed escort for each caravan.
Writing to the Porte, he justified this arrangement by explaining that having
only the one toll collector at Split would bring in more revenue than the four
collectors hitherto stationed in each of the main Venetian-Dalmatian harbors.
Before long, the packhorse train winding northeast from Split was larger than
any of the other caravans supplied by Venetian traders in the Levant. Bosnian
merchants gradually supplanted the men of Dubrovnik in providing Western
goods beyond Sarajevo as far as Belgrade. 83

The Campaigns of Hasan Paşa, 1591–1593

Peace with Iran (1589/1590) implied an easing of the restrictions under

which Ottoman commanders on the Western frontier had been operating. Of
the four governors of Bosnia who followed Ferhat Paşa in quick succession,
none had time to make his mark. Hasan Paşa Predojević (1591–1593) was
the first to take advantage of the new geopolitical circumstances. He had a
reputation as a successful field commander, trusted by his subordinates. In
the “divan house” or seat of government at his previous post in southern
Hungary, he kept a special room for taking coffee with his officers and
advisers. As the protégé of Grand Vezir Sijavuş Paşa, another South-Slav, he
also had a free hand to do in Bosnia as he thought best. 84 The paşaluk, with
its nine sancaks, had enough manpower and weaponry to overwhelm Croatia,
and Hasan Paşa seems to have come to Banja Luka with a clear grasp of how
to reach this goal: one had to pinch off the Habsburg salient at Bihać, empty
Turopolje of its peasant population, and capture the fortress of Sisak, thus
opening a path along the Sava to Zagreb.
By July 1591, Ban Tamás Erdödy knew that Bosnia’s new paşa was
mobilizing troops in Banja Luka but could not tell what their target might be.
Then on August 1 a reported thirty thousand men from Bosnia made camp
across the Kupa from Sisak. After a week or so, Hasan Paşa withdrew. His
 War in a Time of Peace, 1576–1593 261

two small cannon, firing shot “the size of goose eggs,” were of no use against
Sisak’s unusually thick brick walls. 85 As the Bosnians pulled back, Erdödy
crossed the Sava to conquer and burn the fortress of Moslavina in Slavonia.
In response, as ordered by the Porte, Hasan Paşa took fifteen thousand men
and marched across Habsburg Slavonia, together with six siege guns
mounted on carriages. He conquered a fortress west of Zagreb while other
units burned and plundered in the countryside. As the army headed back,
Habsburg troops gave chase and recovered several hundred captives; the
precious cannon were buried lest they be lost to the enemy, but peasants dug
them up. When Ottoman prisoners were asked why Hasan Paşa had come,
they said his only order from the Porte was to rebuild the castle at Moslavina.
If this was true, Hasan Paşa was not a stickler for obedience; on his march to
the West, he had bypassed Moslavina. In any case, he regrouped for another
attack. In December, his men stormed Ripac, downstream from Bihać. All
routes leading to Bihać were now guarded by Ottoman troops. 86
In February 1592, a spy who had previously been held captive in Bosnia
reported to his superior that Hasan Paşa had traveled to Sofia, where he
received “permission from the sultan to come strongly against Turopolje and
Sisak, with siege artillery, as soon as the snow melts.” This may have been
the occasion referred to by a Venetian writer, when Hasan Paşa got permis-
sion to attack into Croatia but without letting it be known that his orders
came from the sultan. 87 In March, another Habsburg commander claimed to
have a copy of a letter from Murad III to Hasan Paşa: “The German king’s
ambassador has submitted grave complaints against you, but you are to think
nothing of it; rather, continue faithfully in the execution of the orders you
have received.” In May the paşa again brought a large force to the Kupa
equipped with materials for construction; as some men plundered in Turopol-
je, others began building a fortress on an island in a small stream that flowed
into the Kupa above Sisak. Leaving craftsmen to finish the work and a
garrison of 1,900, including 300 Janissaries, Hasan Paşa returned to Banja
Luka. Within weeks he had another contingent of men ready to march, this
time against Bihać. After a brief but effective bombardment, Bihać surren-
dered. Hasan Paşa stayed long enough to reorganize its defenses and returned
to the new fortress opposite Sisak, known as Petrinja to the Habsburgs and
Hasan Grad to the Ottomans. On July 14, his men laid oak planks on a bridge
of boats across the Kupa “to bear the weight of artillery.” Meanwhile, pow-
der for his artillery arrived, carried on the backs of camels. On July 19, Hasan
Paşa inflicted a humiliating defeat on Ban Erdödy and the Austrians. In token
262 Chapter 5

of his triumph, he sent two thousand heads to the Porte, with two hundred
captives and five large cannon. Rudolf II’s ambassador took pains to refute
the official account, which had Hasan Paşa defeating twenty thousand
would-be invaders of Ottoman territory; rather, he had bested a small force
that included “unarmed peasants . . . who came merely to defend their
homes.” Somehow, Sisak’s garrison stood firm. Hasan Paşa evidently drew
the conclusion that Turopolje had to be devastated before Sisak would fall.
He burned twenty-eight villages and left the captain of Petrinja to continue
the work over the winter. Hasan was reportedly promised appointment as a
vezir if his successes continued for another year. 88
According to Ibrahim Pečevija, Grand Vezir Sijavuş Paşa, Hasan’s pro-
tector, thought the Habsburgs would try to avenge the losses they suffered in
1592. Accordingly, he appointed another of his protégés as beglerbeg of
Rumelia, with orders to join forces with Bosnia’s governor-general. This
may have been why Hasan Paşa deferred his next attack until the spring,
when he and the beglerbeg would have been able to conduct joint operations.
Unexpectedly, however, Sijavuş Paşa was ousted in January 1593. Again
according to Pečevija, the new grand vezir, Sinan Paşa, had an old quarrel
with his onetime neighbor, Hasan Paşa. He named a new beglerbeg, and
since the army of Rumelia had to wait for their commander before setting
out, Hasan Paşa was left to face a larger Habsburg force on the fatal day of
22 June 1593. But Ottoman scholars discount the idea of a personal feud
between Hasan Paşa and Sinan Paşa. They disagreed over strategy. Hasan
hoped to advance through Croatia, fortress by fortress, up to the Austrian
border; Sinan thought a war against the Habsburgs was better waged in force,
across the plains of Hungary, where Ottoman cavalry could operate to advan-
tage. 89 As to the balance of forces at Sisak, Habsburg sources give a quite
different account and are discussed below.
Preparations for a siege of Sisak resumed in April as men from Petrinja
built a bridge across the Kupa. In May, the Chapter of Zagreb heard that
Hasan Paşa was assembling a river fleet at Gradiška; his plan was to float
“wall-breaking artillery” up the Sava to Sisak. But another Habsburg report
had him ordering his sancakbegs to meet him at Cazin, well south of the
Kupa. In other words, Bosnia’s paşa kept the enemy guessing. 90 Before
Habsburg commanders knew it, he had a large army at Petrinja, opposite
Sisak. He had every reason to expect victory.
 War in a Time of Peace, 1576–1593 263

VENETIAN DALMATIA

A Depopulated Countryside

Venetian officials now referred to their rural districts simply as the territorio.
There was no point pretending that the patch of land a city controlled still
represented a proper “county” (contado). In areas remaining under Venetian
sovereignty after 1573, only a fraction of the land was tilled by peasants
owing allegiance to Venice. At Trogir, nine villages along the shore were
protected by the castles of Trogir nobles, but these private strongholds
caused the Venetians much grief because their garrisons raided Turkish terri-
tory, sending their booty to market on nearby Venetian islands. 91 Inland, the
border as Venice understood it extended for twelve miles, but Venetian sub-
jects farmed only the first three miles, up to the summit of a line of hills.
Sixteen villages beyond the hills were claimed by Venice but were occupied
by Turkish Morlacchi. After paying rent to landlords in Trogir for decades,
they decided to send an envoy to the Porte to complain of dual taxation.
Trogir’s rector got them to reconsider, promising that “as colonists or farm-
ers” they would not be molested by the uskoks. But the rector was in fact not
so persuasive, because a few years later the Morlacchi complained again, this
time to the sancakbeg of Klis. When the sancakbeg visited Trogir, he scoffed
at a Venetian map and produced a document in Turkish which he said as-
serted that Trogir’s territory stopped at the summit of the hills. As of 1588,
however, the villages were still paying rent to Trogir in hopes that their status
as Venetian taxpayers would shield them from raids by the uskoks. 92
At Split, the border began only two miles beyond the city walls. 93 The
former inhabitants of a village just beyond that point now lived in the city
and paid the Ottomans tribute in order to work their fields. Showing them a
decree of the Senate that prohibited submission to the sultan, rector Nicolò
Correr somehow got the villagers to abandon their fields and their attempt at
dual citizenship. Šibenik had lost roughly half its countryside. Only the vil-
lages east and west along the shore had proved defensible during the war
because each had a wall or a castle and could be supplied from the sea. 94 But
on the landward side, as the rector reported in 1587, “no one lives in the
territorio”; peasants who had not fled Dalmatia altogether had come to reside
within the city’s walls. According to another rector, Šibenik would have been
better off without these “low people” (bassa gente); the fact that they had
been trained in the use of the arquebus made them more dangerous than
useful. In the 1570s the Ottomans had agreed to let Venice resettle a walled
264 Chapter 5

hilltop village ten miles east of Šibenik; as of 1587, this was the only pocket
of the city’s inland territorio still occupied by Venetian subjects. 95
Zadar’s contado, by far the largest, covered 14,300 square kilometers
before the war and only 600 square kilometers after the peace of 1573. The
swath of fruitful land defended by Zemunik was lost for good. Zadar’s territ-
orio now resembled a pair of bull’s horns pointing southeast. One started
from an island northwest of Zadar, the other from the town of Novigrad,
northeast of the city. Land between the prongs had been ceded to what
became the sancak of Lika. Along the Adriatic, there was an angle of land
with populated villages, beginning at a point eight miles east of Zadar. But
from there farther to the east, as far as the border with Šibenik’s jurisdiction,
Venetian territory was less than a mile wide. Zadar’s officials had orders to
promote resettlement, but “for want of peasants” the rector could cite only
two successes in his report of 1578. A later captain of Zadar who devoted
himself to this task managed only to fortify one village and repopulate an-
other. Still another official made a point of visiting all of Zadar’s eleven
villages for their “consolation”; the two thousand inhabitants lived in fear for
their lives and for their children. 96
As their hinterland was whittled away, Dalmatia’s coastal cities became
more dependent on foodstuffs from Ottoman Lika and Klis. 97 This was how
the rector of Trogir described his city in 1575:

Many merchants come to Trogir and its outlying castles, and they send their
goods on to Turkish subjects, who in turn bring us wheat, cheese, honey, wax,
and every sort of meat in great quantity. They also help themselves to salt and
other merchandise they need, to the benefit of Your Serenity’s customs, and to
the profit and comfort of our citizens. 98

The next rector of Trogir made sure to bribe the sancakbeg of Klis (even
though he had already received his annual “present” from the rector of
Šibenik), because the sancakbeg might otherwise prohibit Morlacchi cara-
vans from coming from Klis to Trogir. At Šibenik, to which Ottoman sub-
jects brought wheat, cheese, animals, and wool, trade was “the very nerve of
Your Serenity’s revenues, and the Turkish hamandar (clerk) also takes a
handsome sum.” 99 In the past, Venetian officials had recommended making
the visitors transact business outside city walls; the Morlacchi were notorious
troublemakers, and they could also pass on to the Ottomans information
about local fortifications. Thus Zadar now had an extramural “place” called
San Marco, with houses “for Morlacchi and Turks, so that they do not have
 War in a Time of Peace, 1576–1593 265

to come into the city.” By 1578, as commercial disputes became common,

the enforced separation between marketplace and town was seen as a nui-
sance. Either Morlacchi litigants should be allowed to enter the city, or the
rector should hold court at San Marco once a week. 100
The Morlacchi did well by selling in their home country the kerseys and
other manufactured goods they obtained on the coast. What they could not do
without was salt. Throughout Dalmatia, the retail sale of salt was a state
enterprise, regulated by agreements between Venice and the Porte. 101 The
Ottomans had no major salines here, but the sultan’s officials tried to build
smaller facilities that would tap into a lucrative trade, as at Poljica, east of
Split. On the Krka, above Šibenik, workers came from Bosnia in 1579 or
1580 to erect salines in Ottoman territory. But rector Nicolò Correr bought
off Ferhat Beg’s officials and got the project postponed. 102 By default, Klis
and Lika depended on Venetian salt. Even during the 1570–1573 war, Venice
could not enforce a ban on selling salt to Ottoman subjects, especially on the
island of Pag, where Venetian officials bought salt from local producers at
half the price that visiting Morlacchi had to pay. Šibenik was the most impor-
tant salt market, but other cities undercut its price, leading the rector to ask
the Signoria to set a uniform price for Dalmatian salt. His plea was not heard,
because a subsequent rector reduced Šibenik’s price so as to compete with
Split and Trogir. Even so, Morlacchi coming to Šibenik still paid 33 percent
more than Venetian subjects. 103
Morlacchi also continued to settle on vacant Venetian territory. 104 The
bravery of these “colonists” had been invaluable during the war, but in
peacetime the herder folk did not take up farming as they had promised, and
they raided into Ottoman land as often as they pleased. Incidents of this kind
were common enough that Ottoman officials “professed to believe” that the
uskoks who harassed their subjects were all subjects of Venice, not Archduke
Karl. 105 Yet growing familiarity with the Morlacchi led some Venetian offi-
cials to reconsider their habitual suspicions. According to Luca Valier, rector
of Šibenik (1585–1587), these warlike people were foes of the Signoria more
because of Ottoman intimidation than by choice: “If left to themselves they
would on their own initiative devastate the Muslims.” As proof, Valier cited
“certain proposals made to me in secret” and a public show of respect: when
the proveditor-general for Dalmatia passed through Morlacchi territory, “all
these people,” seeing the standard of St. Mark waving from his trumpets,
“knelt down and prayed to God and to our heavenly protector for an opportu-
nity to free themselves.” 106
266 Chapter 5

The Uskok Offensive: By Land

From 1577, the paid garrison at Senj was increased from 150 to 200 men.
More important, the authorized number of unpaid “adventurers” (venturini)
was raised from 250 to 800, and then 1,800. These men served for booty,
under elected commanders who did not always take orders from the captain
of Senj, Kaspar Raab. 107 Fearing that the Turks planned to seize Bag on the
Velebit channel, sixty miles south of Senj, Raab fortified the small port.
Renamed Karlobag in honor of Archduke Karl, it now had a paid garrison
and no doubt a contingent of venturini. 108 What most concerned the Aus-
trians was the above-noted resettlement of Lika. 109 With men from Senj and
Karlobag, Captain Raab reinvigorated a long and at least partially successful
campaign to prevent the Ottomans from establishing a stable population in
Lika. 110 This strategy worked well for the Habsburgs, but it presented Vene-
tian Dalmatia with an intractable problem.
To reach Lika, the uskoks sailed through Venetian waters, along the
Velebit channel past Karlobag and through the Novigrad Strait; landing in
Venetian territory, they marched east. Obrovac, across from Novigrad, might
have been a base for Ottoman fuste to guard the strait, but uskoks burned the
harbor in the 1580s, as they had in the 1560s. In 1582, they made a pact with
the Ottoman captain at Knin, near Obrovac, not to raid his land if he let them
pass through. The deal was brokered by the Venetian captain at Novigrad,
who wanted the Turks to stop attacking his town in retaliation for uskok
raids. 111 Frustrating the Ottoman resettlement of Lika remained the main
objective for authorities in Graz. 112 But for the raiders themselves, burning
villages and stealing cattle was less interesting than attacking the merchant
caravans winding up and down mountain tracks. This at least is the impres-
sion one gets from Venetian sources, which focused on damage done near or
within their own territory. Around 1580 the captain against the uskoks hired
150 Albanian mercenaries to protect trade to and from Šibenik. But the
Albanians’ barks were too heavy to catch those of the uskoks, and the men
showed little fighting spirit. 113 The next captain against the uskoks burned
the houses of villagers who collaborated with the raiders, but this did not stop
them either. In Šibenik, as of 1583, “the great caravans that usually come
down to the shore with great quantities of victuals often do not come at all,
for fear of the uskoks, and also by order of their superiors.” In 1587,
Šibenik’s rector hoped to remedy things by detailing his few precious cavalry
to escort the caravans. 114
 War in a Time of Peace, 1576–1593 267

At some point between 1578 and 1581, fifty barks and four thousand men
headed down the Velebit channel; alerted by his spies in Senj, the captain
against the uskoks sent word via Novigrad so that the Ottomans got a timely
warning. 115 Attacks of this magnitude could not have been contained by the
forces Venice kept in Dalmatia in peacetime. Normally, however, raiders
came in parties of no more than three hundred or four hundred, and they
came again and again along the Velebit channel and through the Novigrad
Strait. One reason that Venice did not do better at stopping them was that
expenses in Dalmatia were carefully monitored by authorities bent on paying
off debt, the Council of Ten and then the Senate. 116 Officials sent to Dalmatia
had orders to find ways of saving money. In Trogir, which had no town
treasury, the syndics for 1576 established one. In Split, they saved the local
treasury money by canceling payment on bonds issued by the city prior to
1570, some dating back 150 years. 117 One sometimes finds claims that the
difference between the Signoria’s income and expenses in Dalmatia had been
reduced to a small sum, but the trend surely ran in the other direction. The
annual deficit was 18,000 ducats in 1559, and the costs of defending against
the uskoks will have made it much larger. 118
The countryside might have been better protected by a larger contingent
of cavalry, but mounted troops in Dalmatia were cut back, from 400 in 1559
to 257 in 1580. 119 Hiring peasants to protect their own territory was a cheap-
er method of defense, but not a very reliable one. For example, when locally
manned brigantines were set to guard the Novigrad Strait, the men refused to
fire at passing uskoks lest they be attacked; they merely fired blanks to let the
Ottomans know that trouble was coming. At a point west of Zadar, would-be
guards cooperated with the raiders in return for a share of kerseys and other
stolen goods. 120 Finally, one might have encouraged repopulation of the
countryside by building redoubts where villagers might shelter with their
animals in case of attack, an approach whose value had been demonstrated
by the example of Zemunik. But Zemunik was exemplary in another respect,
too, because the castle was built by the Dalmatian branch of the Venier
family, not by Venetian authorities. Venice had always followed a laissez-
faire policy in this respect, and still did: if landowners wanted to make their
holdings profitable, it was up to them to provide would-be settlers with
protection. There were exceptions. Of nine castles mentioned in a 1581 re-
port on Zadar’s territory, four had been built by the state, only one of which
was “granted” to a Zadar nobleman. At Trogir, all nine castles that protected
Venetian villages were built and maintained by “private persons” (particula-
268 Chapter 5

ri). 121 What mattered to the Venetian government was not the countryside
per se, but the provisioning of Dalmatia’s port cities, which now depended
on connections to the Ottoman hinterland. In the end, this problem was
solved by funneling trade through Split, where caravans had to traverse only
a few miles before reaching the safety of an Ottoman military escort.

The Uskok Offensive: By Sea

From the standpoint of Habsburg strategic objectives, raids that disrupted the
trade of Ottoman Lika and Klis were not as helpful as raids that burned
villages and drove inhabitants away, though they still served a purpose. By
contrast, raids by sea did the Habsburgs much harm; they worsened an al-
ready prickly relationship with Venice and compromised Vienna’s standing
at the papal court, where Habsburg diplomats always represented the war
against the Ottomans as a latter-day Crusade. 122 For the venturini, on the
other hand, piracy was highly profitable. Uskok barks ranged as far as the
Bay of Kotor, about 250 miles southeast of Senj, stopping as needed for
water and food, with help from Venetian subjects living on offshore “rocks”
or small islands. Along the long coast of Pag, they faced no obstacle whatev-
er; indeed local barks joined with them to sail in search of prey. Islanders
were expected to sound the tocsin and take up arms if raiders came by, but
they ignored such edicts. One Venetian official professed to believe that
people helped the uskoks more from fear of retaliation than from sympathy
with them, but this may have been a way of putting the best face on a bad
situation. After a period when there had been no captain against the uskoks
for several months, Alvise Balbi found “many of your Serenity’s subjects
ready to sail out as corsairs.” 123 At sea, raiders hunted for “ships of Turks and
Jews” sailing for Venice. 124 Ottoman ports were fair game, especially Gabe-
la, to which men in small barks had easy access through numerous marshy
channels. Salt in Dubrovnik’s warehouse was easy prey. 125
Diplomacy was not much help. An Ottoman merchant ship (caramusali)
taken in 1577 must have carried a rich cargo, for its capture caused repercus-
sions as far as Prague, where Venice’s ambassador demanded compensation.
In this case even the burghers of Senj professed to despise the evildoers, “all
of them from Vinodol,” who had raped virgins and robbed and killed inno-
cent folk. 126 Since the malefactors were indeed from Vinodol, and thus not
subject to the jurisdiction of the captain of Senj, satisfaction was slow in
coming. 127 The Habsburgs either could not control the venturini, as seems
likely, 128 or, as the Venetians believed, they would not. Either way, it was
 War in a Time of Peace, 1576–1593 269

incumbent on the Venetians to show the Ottomans that they really did have
mastery of the Gulf. 129
One option was to retaliate against the trade of Rijeka, an important
source of customs revenue for Archduke Karl. In 1576, for example, goods
of Turkish and Jewish merchants were taken from a Venetian ship called the
Mauritia. The captain against the uskoks extracted 15,000 ducats worth of
compensation by seizing a ship from Rijeka laden with silk, grain, and leath-
er; in hopes of getting more, he had also sequestered merchandise from Senj
stored in a town on the Venetian island of Krk, opposite Senj. 130 A few years
later, the Signoria told Alvise Balbi, the next captain against the uskoks, to
expect five more galleys to interdict the trade of Senj and Vinodol. Balbi sent
an envoy to Rijeka, where he found the captain of Croatia, and with him the
Ottoman customs official from Gabela, recently taken captive and now re-
leased into Venetian custody. But the extra galleys never reported for duty as
promised, and since Rijeka would not agree to stop sending victuals overland
to Senj, bottling up the harbors of Senj and Vinodol would have done little
good. 131
From 1536, four of the medium-size war vessels known as fuste had been
assigned to a captain against the uskoks; as of 1577, this division of the Gulf
fleet had been upgraded to three full-size galleys, one of which patrolled the
Novigrad Strait. 132 But when Alvise Balbi became captain of the uskoks soon
thereafter, he had only two galleys, one of which had to keep station opposite
the mouth of the Neretva. Balbi had an extra ship when one of the galleys
that accompanied Venice’s Levant merchantmen was temporarily placed
under his orders, but on another occasion he expected to have but one galley.
For a time, Balbi’s duties devolved to his superior, the Captain of the Gulf,
but he too had only two galleys for the campaign against the uskoks; one had
to guard the Neretva, while the other patrolled Krk, opposite Senj, where the
uskoks did business with Venetian subjects. The sea was thus open to cor-
sairs, especially during the season of local trade fairs, when merchants
shipped their wares. The Captain of the Gulf thought that four galleys could
do the job, but he was too optimistic. In 1591 his successor had six galleys at
his disposal, and even when he had his full complement of vessels, the only
thing he could do was to blockade Rijeka by sea; supplies still came over-
land, from Habsburg Trieste. 133 Venice’s uskok problem was getting worse,
and there was no solution in sight.
270 Chapter 5

Ottoman Neighbors

‘Ali Beg, Ferhat Beg’s younger brother, ruled the sancak of Klis, not from
the isolated fortress of that name but from the city of Livno in modern
Bosnia. 134 For the Venetians, he was not a good neighbor. In 1575, four
Turks crossed the hills north of Trogir into territory that was undisputedly
Venetian, where they kidnapped four boys. In response to a letter from Tro-
gir’s rector, ‘Ali Beg said he had punished the malefactors and promised to
return the boys; in fact, he kept them at his court, as was attested by two of
the four who subsequently escaped. Then some eighty armed men came at
night and carried off three Morlacchi brothers who had settled in Trogir’s
territory, accused by the Ottomans of participating in uskok raids. Through
correspondence with Venice and with the bailo, the rector obtained “effica-
cious commands” from the Porte and found two local officials to bring the
commands to Livno. But those responsible for these breaches of the peace
were not punished. Meanwhile, as the envoys from Trogir dined with one of
‘Ali Beg’s vojvods, a quarrel broke out in which the vojvod suffered a fatal
wound. The envoys were arrested and made to pay 300 thaler in blood
money, ostensibly for the dead man’s kin. Two months later his cousins
came to Trogir demanding blood money: ‘Ali Beg had kept it for himself.
Trogir’s rector was no doubt glad to report that ‘Ali Beg was finally deprived
of office “for his tyrannous and evil behavior.” Unfortunately things did not
improve under his successor. 135
In Lika, the military entrepreneur to whom this sancak was entrusted
caused further troubles. 136 One of his vojvods resided at Šibenik, where he
gathered information useful for raiders from Lika. In the fall of 1582, for
example, in addition to burning two Šibenik villages, they ventured out to sea
and captured a ship carrying cash to the island of Pag. Bailo Paolo Contarini
protested vigorously at the Porte and won a promise from Grand Vezir Sinan
Paşa that the sancakbeg would be replaced. In turn, the Ottomans com-
plained about a major raid by men said to be Venetian subjects and about a
battle near Split in which two Ottoman officials were captured by men from
Venetian galleys anchored nearby. In the end, the sancakbeg of Lika kept his
post. When Sinan Paşa was removed from office, the new grand vezir sug-
gested that both sides should simply “forget the past.” For its part, the Porte
agreed not to insult Venice by sending a çavuş with a command from the
sultan to return the captured officials. 137
Despite such incidents, it seems that problems along the Dalmatian border
were manageable so long as the Porte wished to maintain peace. As one
 War in a Time of Peace, 1576–1593 271

rector of Šibenik said, “being good neighbors means not giving the Turks any
occasion for resentment.” When a sancakbeg of Klis refused to restrain his
raiders, this rector initiated correspondence that got him removed. The next
sancakbegs included a young man who tolerated no raids and a sixty-year-
old gentleman who wished to live in peace. Things got worse under a hot-
tempered and inexperienced youth, but the then rector of Split restrained the
anger of his own subjects long enough to negotiate the release of captives.
When the rector of Trogir received orders from the Porte to tear down a
tower just north of the area Trogir controlled, he left it standing, trusting that
this difficulty would be resolved at the Ottoman capital “by the great pru-
dence of Your Serenity.” 138 In fact, economic logic—the flow of commerce
between the mountains and the shore—pointed to a more peaceful Dalmatia.
The Orthodox-Slav Morlacchi who mainly populated the sancaks of Klis and
Lika 139 were cultural cousins of the Morlacchi occupying Venetian territory.
Despite their mutual feuds and the provocations of Ottoman and Venetian
governments, they surely grasped that much was to be gained by participat-
ing in peaceful trade between the coast and the hinterland. In this sense, the
Veneto-Ottoman trade agreements of 1589–1591 were indicative of larger
trends.

HABSBURG CROATIA

While Vienna and Graz worked to shore up their defenses against the Otto-
mans, another military frontier was built up at the opposite end of Europe and
under comparably difficult conditions. In Hungary and Croatia, the Austrian
Habsburgs were holding back the Ottomans; in the northern provinces of the
Low Countries, the government of the nascent Dutch Republic was holding
back the Spanish Habsburgs. 140 Notwithstanding their political and religious
differences, 141 Habsburg rulers in southeastern Europe and Dutch rebels in
the Netherlands faced comparable difficulties. In both cases, the defenders
faced a fearsome military machine led by the finest fighting men of the age—
Ottoman Janissaries in the one case, Spanish tercios in the other. In both
cases, central governments proposed comprehensive strategies, but provin-
cial parliaments paid the bills and often dictated decisions about the alloca-
tion of resources, taking local priorities into account. 142 In both cases, plans
called for defense-in-depth: anchor fortresses in the rear, stone-built castles
on the frontier, and rammed-earth forts in between—called sconces (schan-
sen) by the Dutch and redoubts by the Austrians. In both cases, tacticians and
272 Chapter 5

armaments makers worked to build an advantage in firepower. 143 Finally,

and against all odds, the war frontier was stabilized in both cases. The Dutch
defended the key provinces of Holland and Zeeland, then, in the 1590s,
pushed back Habsburg forces in neighboring provinces. The Habsburgs did
not roll back the Ottoman conquest of Hungary until the 1690s, but in the
1580s they did halt the Ottoman advance. In the polities that achieved these
successes, decision-making authority was not concentrated at the center:
provinces pursued their own aims, and the plans somehow had to work
together. That they eventually did was partly because of coordination from
the center and partly because local parliaments pursued their objectives with
intelligence and determination, backed by a creditworthiness that enabled
them to borrow the sums needed to keep armies in the field.

Hauptberatschlagung, March 1577–February 1578

In November 1576, the Hofkriegsrat prepared a fifty-page document iden-

tifying fifteen themes for further discussion. 144 Rudolf II saw the need for a
“high consultation” (Hauptberatschlagung) with military experts and repre-
sentatives of the estates. Archduke Ernst advised against it, apparently shar-
ing the Hofkriegsrat’s fears that a large gathering would be hobbled by petty
disputes. But in March 1577 Rudolf gave the order to proceed. Originally set
for June 3, the meeting was postponed to await news from Regensburg. The
previous year, the imperial diet authorized 705,000 gulden a year for Hun-
gary for the years 1577–1582, a decisive increase from previous levels. De-
tails were left to a committee whose members included Lazarus Schwendi. In
the summer of 1577, the committee made its recommendations, which were
then given final approval by the diet in Regensburg. In turn, the Habsburg
lands were expected to raise their contributions. The diet’s committee stipu-
lated that each Austrian and Bohemian province must assume responsibility
for full or partial funding of a given frontier sector. 145
Buoyed by the prospect of added support from the empire, deputies con-
vened in Vienna in August. The provincial estates were willing to take on
added burdens, but, as in the case of Styria, on certain conditions. Rudolf
proposed to allocate 140,000 gulden of the diet’s annual grant to Slavonia
and Croatia, plus 60,000 more if Styria took Kanizsa under its wing. The
Styrians preferred to limit their obligations and be content with 140,000
gulden; Kanizsa was in Hungary and should therefore come under the aegis
of Lower Austria. Since Rudolf wanted the “high consultation” to bypass
contentious issues, this question was not resolved. At discussions that lasted
 War in a Time of Peace, 1576–1593 273

into September, Nicholas Rauber, the captain of Košice, pleaded for bringing
the European powers together for a grand offensive against the Turk. But
Schwendi’s cautious view won out: European states did not keep their prom-
ises to fight against the infidel, and Habsburg forces were still not ready for a
full-scale confrontation. Thus defense must be the order of the day. Schwendi
particularly recommended increasing the number of men equipped with fire-
arms, as the Spanish did in the Netherlands. Over two months, imperial
secretaries made copies of the meeting’s voluminous conclusions. 146
First, the ravages of the Turk were to be understood as punishment for the
sins of Christians. To assuage God’s wrath, the faithful must “live in friend-
ship and good understanding with respect to religion,” without “persecution
or recrimination.” His Majesty was thus gently reminded that leading nobles
were mostly Protestant. The estates had already won the right for nobles to
worship as they pleased, in Upper and Lower Austria in 1568 and in Inner
Austria in 1571. 147 The question of extending this liberty to townsfolk did
not surface at Vienna but was raised at subsequent local diets.
Since His Majesty had decided “to set offensive war aside for now,” the
deputies focused on defense. 148 For each of six frontier sectors, they worked
out specific proposals for how many troops of varying types should be added
to the existing complement of men at each fortress. Results of their delibera-
tions for the Slavonian and Croatian sectors are shown below; spending for
each was to increase by roughly 37 percent. Styria, which had had partial
responsibility for Croatia as well as full responsibility for Slavonia, would
pay 56 percent of the budget; Carinthia was to pay 27 percent and Carniola
17 percent. Overall, between 1546 and 1578, quotas for the annual subsidies
of the three duchies rose by about 300 percent, from about 130,000 gulden
per year to about 400,000. 149 Assuming an inflation rate of 2 percent per
annum, prices would have risen over these years by about 180 percent. There
was thus a gain in real income for the Habsburgs—albeit less than these
numbers would indicate, because the estates were usually in arrears on their
subsidy obligations. 150 Adding in the annual grant from the imperial diet, the
post-1578 military budget for the three duchies was roughly 550,000 gulden
per year. 151
Contrary to long-standing custom, both Styria and Carniola now agreed
that troops paid by the estates could be stationed permanently beyond the
border. Another innovation was that Slavonia and Croatia were each to have
250 “arquebusiers,” with 50 or 100 posted at key fortresses. The context
indicates that these men were the mounted marksmen known as Schützpferde
274 Chapter 5

The Six Sectors of the Hapsburg Monarchy’s Ottoman Frontier

in German and strelsi in Croatian. 152 Schützpferde were already serving in

the Imperial Guard at the Vienna Hofburg by the end of Ferdinand I’s reign
in Vienna. Even though “arquebuses” weighed two kilograms (and muskets
ten kilograms), the men were trained to fire from the saddle. 153
Rudolf II asked Archduke Karl to assume command in Slavonia and
Croatia as of 1 March 1578. Before responding, Karl convened a committee-
diet in Graz. The deputies urged him to waste no time in taking charge of the
frontier, for “the enemy is at our fences.” They agreed with Karl’s plan to
summon a full meeting of the Inner Austrian estates, but they firmly refused
to limit its agenda to military questions. At the Diet of Bruck-an-der-Mur
(November 1577–February 1578), Karl issued a declaration signed by forty-
one deputies. His conscience, he said, would not allow him to tolerate Lu-
theran preachers or schools in the small cities and market towns belonging to
the ducal domain. But he promised not to molest preachers or schools already
established in the free cities: Graz, Ljubljana, Klagenfurt, and Judenburg. In
the Austrian lands, this was the first time that freedom of worship for Luther-
 War in a Time of Peace, 1576–1593 275

ans was extended beyond the ranks of the privileged nobility. Also, Catholic
preachers were henceforth to refrain from “scolding,” provided Lutheran
preachers did the same. The budget adopted at Bruck included salaries for an
Evangelical preacher at Varaždin and a Catholic chaplain at Koprivnica (see
table 5.1). 154
The diet at Bruck called for a captain-general of Slavonia, to reside at
Varaždin, and a captain-general of Croatia, to reside at a new fortress yet to
be built. Under each captain-general, individual fortresses were, as before,
grouped into captaincies, and the headquarters-fortress of each captaincy
typically received special attention in the allotment of troops. 155 The estates
did not pull back from the financial commitments their deputies had made in
Vienna, 156 but they allocated the money differently. In particular, only 2,485
men were now to be stationed in Croatia’s border fortresses, not the 4,298
proposed at Vienna. It may be that planners in Vienna were not aware how
much the Ottomans had recently gained in Croatia, and thus assigned men to
fortresses that were already lost. 157 But the more obvious explanation for the
change is that the deputies at Bruck took 80,000 gulden from the frontier
budget in order to create a mobile strike force under Croatia’s captain-gener-
al, including three hundred mounted arquebusiers. 158 Styria too created a
strike force to guard the approaches from Kanizsa. 159
Discussions at Bruck were led by senior military advisers who had also
taken part in the Vienna Hauptberatschlagung. Given this pool of experi-
ence, deputies thought the time had come for a joint Inner-Austrian Krieg-
srat, resident in Graz and answerable to the estates. Archduke Karl approved
the idea and asked for nominations. The names put forward by the estates
were all Protestant, and most were acceptable to Karl, including Franz Pop-
pendorf as president. But the archduke wanted some of his own men as well.
Also, in the wake of a Habsburg family compact aimed at preserving the
Catholic religion in the Austrian lands, Karl was determined to use what
powers of appointment he had to favor the Catholic nobility. 160 There was
thus a conflict over lines of authority, which worsened as time passed. Even
so, the Graz Hofkriegsrat played a key role in military planning and in the
implementation of decisions made by Karl and his estates. 161

The Military Frontier in Slavonia and Croatia

Much like Szigetvár prior to its fall to the Ottomans, Kanizsa was vital to the
defense of Slavonia, even though it lay beyond the Mur, in Hungary’s Zala
county. Situated in marshy country, it was easily defended but not easily
276 Chapter 5

Table 5.1. Vienna High Consultation, 1577: Proposed Changes in Budgets for
Troops

Slavonia Croatia Totals

Length of frontier 54 miles 144 miles 198 miles
“Houses” to be 28 52 80
garrisoned
Budget for 1577: 1,570 2,129 3,699
infantry
Budget for 1577: 475 531 1,006
cavalry
Budget for 1577: 2,045 3,078 5,123
total number of
troops
Budget for 1577: 103,614 148,988 252,602
total cost
Cavalry to be added 359 727 1,096
1578
Infantry to be added 654 821 1,475
1578
New total for 2,224 2,950 5,174
infantry
New total for 854 1,258 2,112
cavalry
New total number of 3,040 4,298 7,338
troops
New annual cost 165,468 240,468 405,936

Note: Numbers of troops before and after the change come from a proposal to the estates
of Inner Austria, Vienna, August 1577, Spomenici Hrvatske Krajine, doc. XXV, 33–40;
the numbers do not add up properly. Budget figures come from a summary in the war
budget, Vienna, December 1577, Spomenici Hrvatske Krajine, doc. XXXI, 54–55. The
“Grenitzen Hauptberatschlagung” itself (note 147) does not always total up numbers of
troops, but it gives the same budget figures as the December 1577 summary. For length of
the frontiers, I count 7.5 kilometers for each “German mile” in the sources.

approached without attracting the notice of Ottoman units patrolling near-

by. 162 The “high consultation” of 1577 envisioned one thousand infantry and
eight hundred cavalry for Kanizsa, more paid men than for any fortress in
Slavonia or Croatia. Count Juraj Zrinski, the captain, wanted even more
troops, to be paid by Styria, but he was told to count on Styria for supplies,
nothing more. Kanizsa faced much larger Ottoman garrisons, including 6,180
 War in a Time of Peace, 1576–1593 277

at Szigetvár and nearby fortresses. Habsburg planners thought local sancak-

begs in this region could muster eleven thousand men against Kanizsa in four
days. 163 Not surprisingly, this “Trans-Danubian” sector of the frontier wit-
nessed constant fighting; the History of Hungary by Míklós Istvánffy, an
adviser of Archduke Ernst, reports only the major attacks. 164 What matters
here is that Kanizsa’s mobile units could as needed cross the Mur or the Sava
into Slavonia.
Slavonia did not have an anchor fortress that backed up the others, like
Kanizsa in the Trans-Danubian sector. There were, however, two lines of
well-garrisoned strongholds. The three that faced the Ottoman frontier—
Koprivnica, Križevci, and Ivanić—were constructed or remodeled in the
modern style, with bastions to serve as artillery platforms. So was Varaždin,
some twenty miles to the rear, the headquarters of the captain-general. 165
Two other positions on the same line as Varaždin were strongly built, if not
so up to date: the Zrinski castle at Čakovec and the dual, royal and episcopal
city of Zagreb. Finally, although Slavonia had a much shorter frontier than
Croatia, plans made at Bruck gave Slavonia nearly the same number of
defenders as Croatia. This allocation may reflect the influence of wealthy
Styria, which bordered on Slavonia. 166
In any case Ottoman commanders evidently did not find Slavonia an
inviting target. Of the forty-one attacks from Bosnia into Croatia or Slavonia
recorded by one Habsburg source, only nine were directed against Slavonia.
Raiders burned villages here, but every time they attacked a fortified position
they were repelled. 167 Also, Habsburg forces taking the offensive did better
in Slavonia than in Croatia, probably because the sancaks of Pakrac and
Požega, bordering on Slavonia, were not so well defended as Bosnia. In
1580, for example, Kanizsa’s Juraj Zrinski joined other Habsburg captains
for a full-scale raid into Požega, during which they chanced on the sancak-
beg, out for a raid himself with a smaller force; in what Istvánffy calls a
slaughter, the sancakbeg and many of his men perished. 168 In 1587, Ferhat
Beg’s successor in Bosnia gathered eight thousand men. Crossing the Sava
and the swampy terrain south of Kanizsa, they raided into Styria, burning
villages along the left bank of the Mur. But striking between two strongly
defended sectors was a dangerous ploy. As the raiders returned, their path
was blocked by Zrinski, with reinforcements from Koprivnica and Varaždin.
Cavalry operated poorly in this country, but arquebusiers on foot routed the
enemy; among those who fled into the swamp and were later captured was
the paşa of Bosnia, clad in a tiger skin. 169
278 Chapter 5

For Croatia, the diet at Bruck decided that an anchor fortress was needed;
Poppendorf was named head of the building committee. When Croatia’s
Sabor urged that it be built at Steničnjak, south and east of the Kupa, they
were told a site farther west had already been chosen, where the river Korana
flows into the Kupa, only twenty miles from the border of Carniola. Karlo-
vac, named for Archduke Karl, was constructed in the modern style, in the
form of a six-pointed star. Work began in the summer of 1578 and was
largely completed by 1581. 170
Elsewhere in Croatia, Senj was now to have 695 paid troops, with more
venturini, and was doubly protected by geography. Unable to drag artillery
across the mountains to Senj and lacking an Adriatic navy to support an
attack by sea, the Ottomans made few ventures in this direction. 171 Senj and
its uskoks were the key element in Carniola’s strategy of preventing the
Ottomans from resettling Lika so as to make it a base for attacks toward
Austria. As has been seen, however, the uskoks also embarrassed the Habs-
burgs by pursuing their own profit. Military commanders thus had the deli-
cate task of keeping these valued fighting men content while giving Vienna
and Graz some evidence that the chain of command actually worked. In
1579, for example, after a Turkish caramusali accompanied by Venetian
galleys was captured, Archduke Karl ordered the arrest of the leaders, includ-
ing Juraj Daničić, vojvod of the venturini. Kaspar Raab, the loyal captain of
Senj, explained that he could not comply because few of his men could be
trusted to carry out an order for Daničić’s arrest. (Raab had led uskok raids
into Lika, but then lost respect because he could not get wages for his sala-
ried men delivered on time.) Raab’s caution was backed by his superior,
Weikhard von Auersperg, the captain-general of Croatia. Raab finally lost
patience when the uskoks who had been sentenced to death for the attack on
the Turkish ship were broken out of jail. He now charged Daničić with
insubordination. Yet charges were dismissed by the Hofkriegsrat. In the end,
Daničić was moved a bit further from temptation by awarding him a castle in
the Vinodol, ten miles north of Senj. 172
Bihać, fifty miles west-by-southwest of Senj, was an obvious weak point
in Croatia’s defenses, exposed to attack from fortresses farther down the Una
that were now under Ottoman control. 173 Habsburg strategists, however,
were loath to abandon a position that would be crucial in any effort to
reclaim the Una as a frontier. Also, Bihać was partially shielded by smaller
fortresses nearby, one of which held out until shortly before Bihać itself fell
in June 1592. The city, once a center for trade, still had a civilian population
 War in a Time of Peace, 1576–1593 279

willing to join in its defense. 174 Finally, it was a matter of prestige for the
Habsburgs to defend their last major position on the Una, much as Hungary’s
kings had once defended the isolated stronghold of Jajce. 175 Hence the two
large expeditions mounted in 1578 for the resupply of Bihać, one led by
Captain-General Fernberger, the other by Archduke Karl’s most trusted ad-
viser, Georg Khevenhüller, Landeshauptmann of Carinthia. 176 Yet planners
must have known that the Bihać salient, like Jajce, was not defensible over
the long term. The decision by deputies at Bruck not to station one hundred
mounted arquebusiers at Bihać, as was proposed at Vienna, points in this
direction. 177 Moreover, the Ottomans already had forward positions at Bužim
and Cazin. Even without Bihać, they were well positioned for attacks toward
the Kupa, the weakest link in Croatia’s defenses.
As a natural barrier against the Ottomans, the Kupa left much to be
desired. Between Karlovac and Sisak, where the Kupa enters the Sava, there
were seventeen fords that had to be watched. In dry weather the river was in
places low enough for soldiers to walk across. 178 Whereas the Una had once
been guarded by the strong castles of magnate clans like the Zrinski, 179 the
Kupa region was home to lesser nobles who lacked the resources to make
their family castles defensible in a gunpowder age. Steničnjak, the one ex-
ception, was hounded by Ottoman attacks. 180 What lay behind this porous
barrier was the “populated island” of Turopolje. For the outcome of the war
in Croatia, much depended on whether the sizeable peasant population here
was protected 181 or driven out. Ferhat Beg did his best to make this district a
wasteland, and Hasan Paşa seems to have completed the task. After two
years of his raids into Croatia, the Sabor claimed that Hasan Paşa had carried
off thirty-five thousand captives. This number is improbably high, but it does
seem the area was now largely depopulated. By April 1593, months of raid-
ing from Petrinja had left this once-fruitful district “utterly bereft of farmers
and inhabitants.” 182
Had Habsburg defensive plans been guided solely by strategic logic, the
meetings at Vienna and Bruck would have done more for the Kupa frontier.
But these consultations served, in part, the interests of the provinces whose
delegates took part. The underlying premise was that, as the imperial diet had
directed, each province was to protect itself by protecting a portion of the
frontier. The willingness of Archduke Karl’s estates to protect territory be-
yond their borders was thus instrumental to their own well-being. For Styria,
the slice of neighboring Slavonia that remained under Habsburg rule was
narrow enough that all of it had to be defended; hence troops from Styria
280 Chapter 5

served in fortresses all across Slavonia. 183 For Carniola and Carinthia, on the
other hand, some parts of Croatia’s long frontier were less important than
others. Karlovac’s position on the Kupa provided support for positions
downstream, but the more obvious reason for choosing this site was to guard
the nearby border of Carniola. If captains-general from Carniola shielded the
uskoks from Archduke Karl’s wrath, it was because major raids into Ottoman
Lika, as in 1584, meant fewer raids from Lika toward Carniola. 184 But “the
ban’s country” or “the ban’s border”—the lower Kupa and its tributary, the
Glina—was not Inner Austria’s concern. In fact, plans made at Vienna and
Bruck did not allot troops for this area. One may infer that “the ban’s coun-
try” was to be left to Croatia’s care, even though the Sabor had not been
invited to send observers to the Beratschlagungen. 185 The ban, with his three
hundred light cavalry and three hundred infantry, was to be paid from Hun-
gary, as decreed by Rudolf II. Archduke Ernst, Rudolf’s regent for Hungary,
issued payment orders regularly. 186 If more was needed, that was the Sabor’s
problem.

The Croatian Micro-State

Nataša Štefanec raises the question of whether the Croatia of these years can
properly be called a state; wisely, she does not offer a definitive answer. One
reason for Croatia’s unclear status was that the lines of authority that normal-
ly define a state were in this case deliberately blurred. According to Hungar-
ian law, the ban was the king’s “viceroy” for Croatia; he could only be
appointed by, and take orders from, the king himself. Hence the “ban’s
border” was supervised not by the Hofkriegsrat in Graz but by its counterpart
in Vienna, under the authority of Archduke Ernst. Yet since Rudolf entrusted
the Slavonian-Croatian frontier to Archduke Karl, he placed the ban under
Karl’s command. The Diet of Hungary protested this violation of the king-
dom’s privileges, as did the Croatian Sabor, but to no avail. 187 Christoph
Ungnad, the Styrian magnate who was ban from 1578 to 1584, opposed the
new arrangement for personal reasons. His father, Hans Ungnad, was given
Varaždin in compensation for his service; with the estates of Styria, he spent
large sums to improve the city’s fortifications. Now, Veit Hallek, a mere
lesser noble from Styria, was named captain-general for Slavonia, with
Varaždin as his command post. Hallek evicted the younger Ungnad from
Varaždin castle and dismissed the castle guard, replacing them with men who
swore obedience to Archduke Karl. 188
 War in a Time of Peace, 1576–1593 281

The Sabor objected to being ruled from Graz 189 and often appealed Arch-
duke Karl’s decisions to Vienna, where Archduke Ernst and his Hofkriegsrat
represented Rudolf II as king of Hungary. But the potential authority of the
Sabor itself was undermined by a sharp division between magnates and less-
er nobles. Meetings were summoned by the ban, usually to the Sabor’s
“house” in Zagreb, and were commonly attended by thirty-five or forty lesser
and middling nobles. Magnates rarely came and no longer even bothered to
send letters of credence excusing their absence. 190 The fundamental issue
was one of long standing in the lightly governed Hungarian-Croatian king-
dom: great men expanded their estates by seizing land from social inferiors.
Lesser nobles claiming to have been robbed brought suit before the Sabor,
which sat as high court at least once a year. There was, however, no real
judicial remedy because magnates simply ignored unfavorable judgments. 191
Some magnates had estates in Hungary as well, like Juraj Zrinski, the captain
of Kanizsa, or Míklós Istvánffy, the historian. 192 But even if they had lands
only in Croatia, their status as magnates made them members of the upper
house of Hungary’s diet. The diet thus became a forum for their complaints
of unfair treatment at the hands of Croatia’s Sabor. 193
Matters came to a head when Archduke Karl demanded that Croatia hire
peasant soldiers to guard mountain passes and the fords of the Kupa. When
the Sabor reluctantly raised the level of the dika (hearth tax), magnates or-
dered their peasants not to pay. Within a few years there were five hundred
men on the payroll, supported by higher taxes, but magnate lands still did not
pay. 194 After touring the frontier early in 1584, David Ungnad, now president
of the Hofkriegsrat in Vienna, urged that His Majesty send special envoys to
command the magnates to have their peasants pay, “by royal authority,”
since they would not obey the Sabor. Rudolf II eventually sent his confirma-
tion of the Sabor’s resolutions, but the council of Hungary then asked that
nothing be decided until the diet approved the actions of the Sabor. Archduke
Ernst fended off this request, with the help of testimony from Christoph
Ungnad: in his time as ban, the diet never thought to review the Sabor’s
decisions. 195 Magnates now began attending sessions of the Sabor, if only to
dissent from its resolutions. But they still claimed that their peasants were
liable for taxes only if magnate-lords consented. They would not accept the
Sabor’s latest tax resolution unless it was first approved by the Hungarian
Diet. On one magnate estate, an official sent by the Sabor to collect fines for
non-payment of previous taxes was beaten up by the peasants. 196
282 Chapter 5

In a monarchy in which each province was expected to carry its burden,

Croatia cut a poor figure. At a time when the three Inner Austrian duchies
were to contribute roughly 400,000 gulden to support an annual military
budget of approximately 550,000, the Sabor struggled to keep five hundred
peasant soldiers at their stations. Croatia’s nobles claimed they could not do
more, because “our peasants do not even have chestnuts to eat.” 197 But were
their lamentations credible? The truth is that all Habsburg parliaments played
the game of bemoaning the poverty of the common people—that is, those
who paid taxes. In Croatia’s case, the destitution was real enough. The yield
of the traditional hearth tax or dika was greatly reduced by loss of population.
North of the Sava, Križevci and its county were found to have only three
thousand hearths in 1584; at one time, there had been twelve thousand. 198
Exemptions were another problem. South of the Sava, much of the land in
the “ban’s country” belonged to the Chapter of Zagreb and was freed from
the dika to help support the chapter’s critical fortress at Sisak. 199 Because
Croatia’s revenues had declined, Rudolf II had to have the ban and his men
paid from Hungary. As always, however, the Hungarian Chamber of Ac-
counts had trouble finding the money. By 1583, Ban Christoph Ungnad was
owed 20,000 Hungarian florins. To raise funds to pay his soldiers, he mort-
gaged Varaždin to Styrian merchants—a decision that eventually cost him
his rights there, because Croatian law forbade the mortgaging of property to
“foreigners.” 200 In any case, Croatia needed help that Hungary could not
provide and which could only come from Inner Austria. But what could the
Sabor offer in return? One thing the Austrians needed was peasant labor,
robot, for work at fortresses beyond their borders, as at Karlovac or Kopriv-
nica. This was not a very impressive way of showing that Croatia carried its
weight as one Habsburg province among others, but it was one thing the
Sabor could do. Requests from the Austrian estates were usually met, albeit
amid constant bickering about numbers of workers and where they were
assigned. 201

The Kupa Frontier

Two fortified sites defended the approaches to the Kupa. Hrastovica, a few
miles south of the Kupa, was the seat of a captaincy under the Austrian
captain-general for Croatia. It had an “upper” and a “lower” fortress at the
corners of its partially completed town walls. The Sabor deemed Hrastovica
to be vital for the protection of Turopolje, but by 1580 Archduke Karl had
concluded that its dilapidated fortifications were not worth repairing. Given
 War in a Time of Peace, 1576–1593 283

the Habsburg Monarchy’s layers of authority, final decisions came slowly. In

September 1583, Rudolf II informed Archduke Karl that the lower fortress
and the town walls would indeed be razed, but that the upper fortress would
be spared, out of respect for the opinions of the Sabor. Building stones were
carefully preserved as the work of demolition proceeded, and the Sabor
discussed how they might be used elsewhere. 202 To the south and west, the
Cistercian abbey of Topusko, halfway between the Kupa and the Bosnian
border, now belonged to the bishop of Zagreb. In 1579, the bishop obtained
from Rudolf II a mandate requiring the ban to station some of his men for
Topusko. Ban Ungnad protested: the previous ban, Juraj Drašković, had kept
troops in Topusko not as ban, but rather as bishop of Zagreb. The Sabor
agreed with Ungnad, as did the Hofkriegsrat in Vienna; since the abbey had
been incorporated into the bishopric, the cost of protecting it should be borne
by the bishop. Nonetheless, men under the ban’s command remained at To-
pusko until inspectors sent by the Hofkriegsrat determined that it, too, had
best be razed. 203
In effect, Habsburg princes and their military advisers were conceding
that the country between the Una and the Kupa could not be held. The line of
the Kupa was thus all the more important. Everyone agreed that it had to be
strengthened by erecting rammed-earth redoubts on the left bank. In the fall
of 1579, Archduke Karl sent Franz Poppendorf with plans for work at two
sites, including an existing fort at Brest, about twenty-five miles upstream
from Sisak along the river’s twisting course. The task was not simple, be-
cause, as the Sabor noted, the left bank had no oak trees to supply foundation
timbers. Peasant laborers could maneuver tree trunks across from the right
bank, but only if they had protection, since raiders from nearby Kostajnica
were always in the vicinity. Accordingly, the Sabor issued a general call to
arms to have men on guard at Brest. 204 Almost none of the needed materials
were available locally. For bolts and bars to reinforce the gate, for example,
the Chapter of Zagreb was asked to have German or Italian merchants bring
iron from Ljubljana. As of summer 1583, roof tiles were still needed for
Brest and for a second fort nearby. The following spring, however, the Kupa
flooded, washing away the foundations at Brest. The Sabor hoped to rebuild
in stone, using blocks from the razed walls of Hrastovica. 205 The second fort
survived the flood but was in a “ruinous” state by 1586. There are later
references to a castellan at Brest and to ongoing work at a third site. 206 At
least in places, workers also dug a ditch along the right bank of the Kupa to
284 Chapter 5

retard an enemy advance. 207 But these projects were not enough to stop
attacks across the Kupa into Turopolje.
The only real obstacle to an assault on Zagreb was Sisak castle. Sisak
guarded the apex of a triangle of land formed by the Sava on the north and
the Kupa on the south. It did not stop the Turks from crossing Turopolje
upstream on the Kupa, but it did prevent them from floating siege artillery up
the Sava for bombardment of Zagreb’s walls. 208 Archduke Karl’s advisers
saw that the Chapter of Zagreb was not properly maintaining Sisak. The best
solution would have been for His Majesty to take it over. Toward this end,
officials in Vienna proposed trading the chapter’s lands here for royal estates
in Slavonia or elsewhere in Hungary. Though the idea of an exchange was
not dropped altogether, it had to be deferred because, as the Sabor reported,
His Majesty had no estates of equivalent value in Slavonia. 209 Hence the
Hofkriegsrat in Graz stepped in by assigning extra men to Sisak from Inner
Austria’s budget—initially, fifty arquebusiers and fifty Croatian infantry.
Other troops were assigned along the Kupa, as at Brest, which became a
permanent army camp if not always a fortress. Sisak’s captain (sometimes
there were two) was still a canon of Zagreb, appointed by the chapter. But the
security of his castle now depended on decisions made in Graz. By 1590,
Sisak had enough men that five hundred of them conducted a raid into
Bosnia, allegedly without notifying the captain. 210

Sisak, 1591–1593

The correspondence of Sisak’s captains gives the impression that a collapse

of Habsburg defenses at this point was imminent. The burghers of Sisak
resented not being allowed to fish in the river, they had to be threatened with
whips to get them to work on the fortifications, and they might even be
plotting to betray Sisak to the Ottomans. 211 At higher levels, Habsburg offi-
cials showed a sober realization that Sisak’s situation was indeed perilous. In
more than a century of fighting against the Ottomans, many a fortress had
been called a “bulwark of Christendom.” 212 Some deserved the appellation,
like Belgrade and Klis—their fall was followed immediately by Ottoman
occupation of a large swath of land. Did Sisak belong in this category, so that
it warranted a major concentration of forces? Possibly so, but not so clearly
as the threatened anchor fortress of Kanizsa, 213 not to speak of the frontier
sectors facing Vienna or the mining country in what is now Slovakia. Even
though the Ottomans grew more aggressive after the 1589/1590 peace with
Persia, the Habsburgs could not risk concentrating their expenses on the
 War in a Time of Peace, 1576–1593 285

frontier at one or two sites. Moreover, it would have taken months of mobil-
ization to match the twenty-five thousand or so men that Bosnia’s Hasan
Paşa could raise in a matter of weeks. Finally, large-scale troop movements
would have undercut Rudolf II’s stated intentions of seeking another eight-
year treaty of peace with the Porte. 214
On the other hand, the Habsburg Monarchy was now better able to re-
spond to crises. Commanders habitually shared information and coordinated
their movements under the intelligent supervision of the captains-general and
the war councils in Graz and Vienna. Because of their emphasis on equipping
professional soldiers with firearms, 215 the Austrians could hope to surpass in
firepower an enemy whom they could not match in numbers. What the Habs-
burgs lacked was reliable information about the enemy’s intentions. Local
commanders had money for spies, whose reports circulated along an efficient
postal network, but regional intelligence was not enough. After 1566, there
was nothing like the high-quality intelligence Michael Černović had pro-
vided about the Ottoman central government during his service at the
Porte. 216 Maximilian II’s one initiative in this area ended badly because the
Hungarian nobleman on whom he relied turned out to be a double agent. 217
Rudolf II’s officials took advantage of improved relations with Dubrovnik,
an Ottoman tributary. With the knowledge and approval of the republic’s
magistrates, an erstwhile town secretary of Senj was allowed to live in Du-
brovnik, ostensibly as a merchant; he relayed back what he learned from
Dubrovnik merchants traveling in the sultan’s realm. But when asked about
the plans of Bosnia’s Ferhat Beg, he replied that while his sources had
knowledge of some Ottoman provinces, including Serbia and Macedonia,
Bosnia was beyond their ken. For knowledge of Bosnia, they told him, one
had to have a spy resident there, with a cohort in Split to forward his reports
to Graz. 218 Things were no better during Hasan Paşa’s tenure in Bosnia. The
only thing Habsburg commanders knew was that he would, at some time,
come in force against Sisak.
According to the captain of Koprivnica, Sisak was fortunate to survive
assault in 1591: had Hasan Paşa brought heavier artillery and put his army
across the Kupa, he could have done great harm. Left to his own devices, the
paşa might well have returned to Sisak in a matter of weeks, equipped with
artillery on carriages. Instead, ordered to avenge Ban Erdödy’s capture of
Moslavina, he took his siege guns to Slavonia, where, as in other recent
attacks in this direction, the Ottomans met stiff resistance. 219 Early in 1592,
intelligence from two sources indicated that Hasan Paşa had authorization to
286 Chapter 5

take the field again as soon as the snow melted. Bihać might be the first
target, but he would certainly come again for Sisak. 220 The Sabor and the city
of Zagreb joined in petitioning the Austrian estates for help. Styria agreed to
send three light cannon to Sisak and to pay for one hundred more infantry;
one of Styria’s cannon would also be loaned to Zagreb, against proper assu-
rances. But Carniola had no artillery to spare, and Carinthia sent a price list
in case Croatia could pay in cash. 221 Concurrently, the Ottoman garrison at
Petrinja brought in two “huge cannon,” and the first salvos toward Sisak
were launched with great ceremony on April 25. The garrison at Sisak were
told to build a bridge on the Kupa, possibly to receive peasants fleeing from
the right bank, but a rising river tore away its foundation. 222 When Austrian
troops posted at Brest ran out of food and came to Sisak for shelter in July,
the captains would not let these “Germans” inside the walls. 223
The closest large garrison was across the Sava, at Koprivnica, whose
captain was Kaspar Graswein. It did not help that Graswein and Ban Tamás
Erdödy mistrusted each other; the Styrian captain openly accused the ban of
incompetence. 224 Graswein had sent three hundred infantry to Sisak but re-
fused to honor further requests unless so ordered by Styria. If Sisak was truly
threatened, let the canons of the cathedral chapter, those “bottomless priest
bellies,” dig into their own pockets. 225 The upshot was that while the captain-
general of Croatia sent men to help Erdödy defend Sisak, Graswein’s superi-
or, the captain-general of Slavonia, did not. Hasan Paşa’s men now bridged
the Kupa. What followed on July 19 was a general rout, from which, fortu-
nately for the Habsburgs, garrisons in Slavonia were spared. 226 In the after-
math, Brest and other fortresses were burned. Using seven cannon, including
a great gun captured from Katzianer in 1537, the Ottomans began bombard-
ing Sisak from Petrinja and the right bank of the Kupa. By July 25 they had
battered down the outer gate and opened a small breach in the walls. 227
Meanwhile, Graswein’s usually reliable spies reported that still more Otto-
man troops were coming to Bosnia; this could be a reference to orders sent to
the beglerbeg of Rumelia. 228
How Sisak’s garrison managed to withstand the barrage is not clear. The
fact that they did seems to have moved Sisak up a notch on the priority scale
of the Habsburg government—this castle was not just vital; it could also be
defended. In Styria, notwithstanding everything they had already done to
help hold back the Turks, “the honorable estates” agreed to send to Zagreb
“in a few days” two hundred German infantry and some Croatians. Muskets,
powder, and shot would be ready for pickup in Ptuj by Croatia’s envoys. 229
 War in a Time of Peace, 1576–1593 287

Most important, Styria promised to arrange the dispatch of “a few companies

of German cavalry.” A few weeks later, five hundred mounted arquebusiers
from Upper Austria were headed for Styria; their arrival in Zagreb was
acknowledged by the chapter on September 2. 230 Meanwhile, the captain of
Ivanić crossed the Sava and reconquered a fortress on the Kupa between
Brest and Sisak. 231 From Vienna, Archduke Matthias gave orders for one
thousand Hungarian cavalry to cross into Croatia. 232
Over the winter, disturbing reports filtered back to Vienna: Sisak was
poorly maintained, foot soldiers paid by Styria were not allowed inside the
gates, and mounted arquebusiers were not getting the provisions they
needed. In response, the Chapter of Zagreb presented its own complaints:
“German and Hungarian soldiers” were ravaging the countryside; some of
the troops sent from Styria had never arrived at Sisak, and those who did
refused to take orders from the captains. 233 But the greatest failing was one
of intelligence. As noted above, Hasan Paşa had brought his army to Petrinja
before Habsburg authorities knew what his intentions were. At this point,
Ruprecht von Eggenberg, the captain-general of Slavonia, was named overall
commander for the defense of Sisak; he brought men forward to Zagreb by
the middle of June. His counterpart in Croatia, Andreas von Auersperg, did
not even receive an appeal for help until June 16. 234

The Battle of Sisak, 22 June 1593 235

After the battle, the victors counted the enemy dead, interrogated captives,
and inspected the main Ottoman camp on the right bank of the Kupa. Within
a day or two, the three leading commanders described what happened in
letters to Archduke Ernst. From Ptuj, a few weeks later, Melchior von Re-
dern, a Bohemian nobleman, added important details. 236 From these ac-
counts, it seems that Hasan Paşa led only his elite units across the bridge. 237
On the right bank, he left a force of cavalry and peasant-soldiers estimated by
Habsburg observers at twenty thousand men, 238 together with five siege guns
on carriages to batter Sisak. 239 Those who crossed over were from the palace
guards of Hasan Paşa and the seven sancakbegs who had come at his com-
mand. 240 Taken together, their retinues amounted to sixteen thousand men
according to Ban Erdödy, or nineteen thousand according to Eggenberg, the
overall commander. But Auersperg, the captain-general of Croatia, says Ha-
san Paşa had eight thousand men facing Sisak, a figure that comports with
the tally for Ottoman dead as reported at Rudolf’s court in Prague. 241 One
can account for the difference by assuming that survivors gave their captors
288 Chapter 5

numbers for the total retinue of each Ottoman sancakbeg; some will have
remained in the camp on the right bank or stayed home. Hasan Paşa thus had
a bit more than eight thousand men on the left bank (some escaped the
slaughter) and possibly as many as twenty thousand on the right bank—all in
all, an army of comparable size to those of Ferhat Paşa. 242
To reinforce Ban Erdödy and the Sisak garrison, Habsburg troops con-
verged on a campsite east of Zagreb. Eggenberg, who had overall command,
came from Varaždin, while Graswein, promoted to the captain-general of
Slavonia, brought men from Koprivnica and Ivanić. Auersperg arrived from
Karlovac a few days later, followed by cavalry from Carinthia and Carniola,
including some five hundred mounted arquebusiers. Still other units came
from farther away. Wolf Dietrich von Raittenau, prince-archbishop of Salz-
burg (r. 1587–1612), sent a regiment commanded by his father, including one
hundred cavalry and four companies of infantry. 243 From Silesia, one of the
principalities that made up the crown of Bohemia, Melchior von Redern led a
regiment of 1,300 men “with green and white tunics,” including 500
mounted arquebusiers. 244 In all, the Habsburgs had about five thousand men.
On June 19, they camped on the Sava. Some crossed the river to rout four
hundred Ottomans; Sisak’s garrison, watching from the walls, cheered them
on. Early on June 22, advancing from a third campsite, the army came to a
point on the Kupa from which they could not see Hasan Paşa or Sisak, but
they did see the large Ottoman encampment on the right bank. Some com-
manders wanted to turn back, and others perhaps hoped to await the arrival of
more troops coming from Hungary. Then came a plea came from Sisak that
could not be ignored: Hasan Paşa was attacking. 245
Rounding a bend in the Kupa, Habsburg troops came upon the enemy,
drawn up facing them in a half-moon line. Although the customary battle
order placed light cavalry and arquebusiers on the wings, Eggenberg concen-
trated firepower in the center, hoping to take advantage of the spread-out
Ottoman formation. The Croatians were in the van, with Auersperg on the
right and the cavalry from Carinthia and Carniola on the left. Eggenberg’s
men, together with the Salzburg and Silesian regiments, formed a reserve. 246
As the engagement began, Janissary arquebusiers on the Ottoman left, near
the Kupa, drove back an attack by the Croatians. But as the Austrians ad-
vanced, their mounted arquebusiers brought the Ottoman center under heavy
fire. Eggenberg was able to break through a gap in Ottoman ranks, while
mounted arquebusiers from Karlovac cleared a path to the bridge and thus
robbed the Ottoman infantry of their one path to safety. 247 Hasan Paşa vainly
 War in a Time of Peace, 1576–1593 289

tried to halt what was now a rout. His men entrusted themselves to the Kupa,
a fatal mistake because the steep bank along the far side was very difficult to
climb. 248 Among thousands of bodies, Habsburg soldiers found Hasan Paşa
(whose head was sent to Rudolf II), seven of his sancakbegs, and the captains
of Petrinja and Gradiška. 249 Pečevija’s account makes it seem the Habsburgs
won because they had a larger force than Hasan Paşa did. But the four
Habsburg reports, from participants in the engagement, indicate that the Ot-
tomans had, even in defeat, more men on the left bank of the Kupa, not to
mention those on the right bank. The battle was won because of Habsburg
firepower and because Hasan Paşa had put his best troops in a precarious
position, linked to the main army by a single bridge.
This victory had wider implications. It shows—as if proof were needed—
that military historians are right to stress the growing importance of gunpow-
der weapons. All sixteenth-century strategists urged that armies be equipped
and trained to maximize firepower. 250 Some European states moved in this
direction earlier than others; Schwendi wanted the Austrians to do as the
Spanish had already done during the reign of Charles V. As between Aus-
trians and Ottomans, one must not press the argument. Scholars have largely
demolished the idea that Ottoman armies failed to keep up with European
gunpowder technology. 251 Yet how armies were equipped was another mat-
ter. As a Bosnian judge remarked in a 1596 treatise on good government,
“We have neglected to arm soldiers with firearms as the Christians do.” 252
Sisak was neither the first nor the last time that a Habsburg edge in firepower
compensated for an Ottoman advantage in numbers.
As far as Croatia is concerned, it has been argued that Sisak was a battle
“on whose outcome the destiny of Croatia depended.” 253 But the well-for-
tified centers of Slavonia, garrisoned and funded by prosperous Styria, would
probably have survived attack, and the uskok-corsair enclave around Senj
was virtually impregnable. Thus a Habsburg Croatia in some form would
likely have survived a disaster on the Kupa. On the other hand, the Sabor’s
main role in recent years had been to help defend Turopolje, the “ban’s
country” behind the Kupa. Without Sisak, one could hardly have resettled a
now depopulated Turopolje. In these circumstances, it is not clear what place
in the Habsburg system there might have been for a Croatian micro-state.
Finally, Sisak was the first real calamity the Ottomans had suffered in
nearly seventy years of combat against the Habsburgs. Battles often turn on
unpredictable circumstances. Yet victory can also reflect planning and prep-
aration. Over decades, spurred by Ottoman attacks, patient negotiation be-
290 Chapter 5

tween Habsburg rulers and their estates, culminating in the Beratschlagun-

gen of 1577–1578, built a military infrastructure whose absence had been
conspicuous in earlier disasters. Notwithstanding bitter disputes over efforts
by Archduke Karl to roll back the Reformation, the Inner Austrian estates
voted a total of 12 million Hungarian florins for border defense between
1578 and 1594; they also incurred substantial debts to cover shortfalls. 254
Notwithstanding the blurred lines of authority that connected Croatia to both
Vienna and Graz, there was, in this case, a functioning chain of command.
Croatia still did not have an organization of its own for logistics, but Styria
had arms and supply officials to provide for fortresses in Slavonia, as did
Carniola for Croatia proper. 255 Money was also found to implement some pet
ideas of strategists, such as the companies of mounted arquebusiers attached
to strike forces under the two captains-general. 256 All of these developments
contributed to what Habsburg forces accomplished in the early decades of
Rudolf II’s reign: they turned back the enemy from Slavonia, they kept the
Ottomans off balance in Lika, and they won a great victory at Sisak. Some
problems remained intractable, like the lack of reliable intelligence. But
might one say, overall, that the Habsburgs had now come even with their
adversary in war-making power? This question could only be answered in the
brutal test of a full-scale war.

CONCLUSION

Almost unavoidably, Sisak led to a wider war. At the Porte, support for a
campaign in Hungary was not unanimous, and a look to the East might have
given grounds for caution: ‘Abbas I (r. 1587–1629), the young Shah of Iran,
had thrown off the tutelage of his generals and was building an army along
new lines. 257 On the other hand, Sinan Paşa, who became grand vezir for a
third time in January 1593, favored war against the Habsburgs, and his argu-
ments were abetted by the mournful pleas of two sultanas whose sons were
killed at Sisak. The Ottomans, as the Venetian ambassador in Prague re-
marked, did not “make war for the sake of vengeance.” 258 But “reputation”
was another matter. A state that did not react to a disaster like Sisak under-
mined the confidence of its adherents and invited the contempt of its adver-
saries. 259 Accordingly, in the month after the battle, the Porte made arrange-
ments for campaigns on three fronts. The first thrust was toward Upper
Hungary. On July 27, two Hungarian commanders arrived in Prague to report
that the paşa of Timosoara was on the march toward Satu Mare or Tokay.
 War in a Time of Peace, 1576–1593 291

Two weeks later, Hasan Paşa of Buda acknowledged that the beglerbeg of
Rumelia was leading an army toward Bosnia, only, he said, because the
annual tribute for the sultan had not been sent off and because Habsburg
forces were attacking beyond Sisak. 260 The beglerbeg was accompanied by
the new paşa of Bosnia, who was Sinan Paşa’s younger brother. Murad III
published a declaration of war on August 17. Sinan Paşa had already been
named as serdar to lead a third force—the sultan’s main army—into Hun-
gary, beyond Buda. News of this appointment reached Vienna by August
22. 261
Meanwhile, the Habsburg government professed continuing interest in a
renewal of the existing treaty. Four days after the battle, Archduke Matthias
wrote from Vienna to tell Hasan Paşa of Buda that the annual “gift” for the
sultan—30,000 florins in tribute—would be sent in a few days. Referring in
his response to the loss at Sisak, Hasan Paşa alleged that his namesake in
Bosnia had been justly punished by God for violating the sultan’s direct
orders to keep the peace. This was too much for Matthias. He was well
aware, he replied, that Murad III had honored Bosnia’s governor for his
aggression in Croatia; nonetheless, the “gift” was still coming, though in
mid-July, not by July 1. Rudolf II himself wrote to assure Hasan Paşa that
Popel z Lobković, the new ambassador who was to carry the gift, had already
left for the border. In fact, he was told to proceed no farther than the frontier
fortress of Komárom. 262
Along the Kupa, the victors at Sisak hoped to follow up their success by
seizing Petrinja, just across the river. Short of victuals, they sent an urgent
appeal to Graz. Instead of sending supplies, however, Archduke Ernst sent a
member of the Hofkriegsrat for consultations; he and the local commanders
crossed paths and finally convened in Graz. An attempt was made on Petrinja
in early July but was soon abandoned for want of provisions. 263 On August 9
Rudolf II wrote to urge Matthias not to attack Petrinja again, because it made
no sense to send off the “gift” while putting troops into Ottoman territory.
The warning came too late: a second and more serious assault on Petrinja
was already underway, but it too was turned back. The attackers lacked
proper siege guns, and they feared that the beglerbeg of Rumelia was en
route. As the Austrians fell back to defend Zagreb, the beglerbeg in fact
arrived. He sent ten thousand men and thirty siege guns to Sisak, where the
garrison of two hundred surrendered on August 28. 264 Thus the Habsburgs
first undermined any slim chance of peace by besieging Petrinja, and then
failed miserably to achieve their objective.
292 Chapter 5

For a major war, the Habsburg Monarchy needed support from the em-
pire, where no diet had been convened since 1582. Hence, the crucial deci-
sion for Rudolf II was whether to summon a diet, as the two commanders
from Hungary requested. In late August he announced a diet for January
1594. The Venetian ambassador suspected that the emperor had no intention
of holding a diet, but three weeks later Rudolf made public the names of four
men from his Hofrat who would represent him at the diet, including Count
Juraj Zrinski. He also remitted to Vienna a letter of credit worth 150,000
scudi for the needs of Hungary. 265 Meanwhile, Grand Vezir Sinan Paşa ar-
rived in Buda; when a courier came from Vienna with further excuses as to
why the “gift” had not been sent, the grand vezir reportedly had him impaled.
At about this time, Rudolf sent off to Vienna a letter indicating that if Otto-
man commanders did not cease their aggressive moves, he would have to
avenge his honor. 266
In late September, Sinan Paşa and the governor of Buda jointly besieged
the fortress-city of Veszprém at the northeast corner of Lake Balaton. The
garrison of 1,500 surrendered after three weeks and were slaughtered. To the
south, troops from Bosnia raided up the Mur, reportedly as far as the city
walls of Graz. By the time the Habsburgs mobilized an army to march south
from Komárom, it was too late to save Veszprém. They also failed to take
Székesfehérvár, but before they abandoned the siege due to the onset of
winter, they cut to pieces an Ottoman relief force led by Hasan Paşa of Buda.
According to the Venetian ambassador in Prague, it was “the imperial caval-
ry and the arquebusiers” who did the enemy the most damage. 267 At this
point, if not sooner, the Long Turkish War had begun. 268

NOTES

1. A paradox long familiar to historians: G. Gömöry, “Türkennoth und das Grenzwesen in

Ungarn und Croatien während der Sieben ‘Friedensjahren’ von 1575 bis 1582,” Mitteilungen
des Kriegsarchivs zu Wien 9 (1885): 155–178.
2. Martin Hartensteiner to Joseph Thurn, Bihać, April 1584, Spomenici Hrvatske Krajine,
Letter XCI, 132–133, transmitting a report from Habsburg spies.
3. Finkel, Osman’s Dream, 169–171; Mathee, “Anti-Ottoman Concerns and Caucasian
Interests,” 105–110; Andrew J. Newman, Safavid Iran (Istanbul: I. B. Tauris, 2006), 52; Carl
Max Kortpeter, Ottoman Imperialism during the Reformation: Europe and the Caucasus (New
York: New York University Press, 1972), chapter 3; Ersan Karakoç, “A Brief Overview of
Karabagh History from the Past to Today,” International Journal of Human Sciences 8 (2011):
1003–1026, here 1006–1007.
4. Hammer-Purgstall, Geschichte des osmanischen Reiches, II, 580; Imber, The Ottoman
Empire, 66–67.
 War in a Time of Peace, 1576–1593 293

5. Finkel, Osman’s Dream, 165–168; Imber, The Ottoman Empire, 61.

6. For brief sketches of these men, see Pečevija, Historija, 16–30.
7. Finkel, Osman’s Dream, 165–171; Hammer-Purgstall, Geschichte des osmanischen Re-
iches, II, 438, 469, 554–555, 564–565.
8. Şevket Pamuk, A Monetary History of the Ottoman Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2000), 131–138, esp. table 8.1, 133; Sam White, The Climate of Rebellion in
the Early Modern Ottoman Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 95–102.
9. Imber, The Ottoman Empire, 211; Pamuk, A Monetary History of the Ottoman Empire,
86–87.
10. Hammer-Purgstall, Geschichte des osmanischen Reiches, II, 567.
11. Lord Kinross, The Ottoman Centuries, 273–277; Tezcan, The Second Ottoman Empire,
50–56, 96–107.
12. Linda T. Darling, Revenue-Raising and Legitimacy: Tax Collection and Finance Admin-
istration in the Ottoman Empire, 1560–1660 (Leiden: Brill, 1996), 1–18.
13. Tracy, “Background War of the Early Modern Era,” 32–33.
14. From the report of Andrea Badoer, the ambassador who negotiated the peace treaty in
1573 (chapter 4, note 169), Relazioni, III, 355–356.
15. Hammer-Purgstall, Geschichte des osmanischen Reiches, II, 446; Luciano Pezzolo,
Societá, finanza, e fisco nella Repubblica Veneta del secondo ’500 (Treviso: Il Cardo, 1990),
96 (2,230,000 ducats of income for 1578).
16. Hammer-Purgstall, Geschichte des osmanischen Reiches, II, 454, 517.
17. Imber, The Ottoman Empire, 66. The sultan’s writ now extended from Algiers to Tabriz,
2,358 air miles.
18. Cracow was then the capital of the Commonwealth of Poland-Lithuania; Isfahan was the
capital city built by Shah ‘Abbas I.
19. Pezzolo, Societá, finanza, e fisco nella Repubblica Veneta, 190.
20. William J. Bouwsma, Venice and the Defense of Republican Liberty: Renaissance Val-
ues in the Age of the Counter-Reformation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968),
chapters 4 and 5.
21. Bariša Krekić, Dubrovnik: A Medieval Urban Society, 1300–1600 (Aldershot: Varior-
um, 1993), chapter 15, “Ragusa (Dubrovnik) e il mare: aspetti e problemi (XIV–XVI secolo).”
22. Brian Pullan, “The Occupations and Investments of the Venetian Nobility in the Middle
and Late Sixteenth Century,” in Hale, Renaissance Venice, 379–408 (the quote, 381).
23. Dursteler, Venetians in Constantinople, 41–55.
24. Bouwsma, Venice and the Defense of Liberty, 227.
25. Viggiano, “Politics and Constitution,” 58–59; Bouwsma, Venice and the Defense of
Liberty, 234.
26. Pezzolo, Societá, finanza, e fisco nella Repubblica Veneta, 22; Bouwsma, Venice and
the Defense of Liberty, 226.
27. Report of Hurault de Maisse, 8 May 1583, in David Chambers and Brian Pullan, eds.,
Venice: A Documentary History, 1450–1630 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001), 81.
28. Pezzolo, Societá, finanza, e fisco nella Repubblica Veneta, 202–207.
29. Bouwsma, Venice and the Defense of Republican Liberty, 236.
30. Tracy, “Il commercio italiano in territorio ottomano,” 447–448; Weake, “The Changing
Patterns of Europe’s Pepper and Spice Imports, 1400–1700.”
31. He was Holy Roman Emperor 1576–1612, king of Hungary 1572–1606, and king of
Bohemia 1575–1611. For this paragraph, save as noted, see R. J. W. Evans, Rudolf II and His
World: A Study in Intellectual History, 1576–1612 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1973), chapters 1, 2,
and 4.
294 Chapter 5

32. The more radical and more numerous branch of the Hussite movement, which traced its
ancestry to the martyred Jan Hus (d. 1415). The conservative Utraquists, fewer in number, had
much in common with Catholics, save for their insistence on communion “in both kinds”
(utraque specie).
33. E.g., Martin G. Müller, Zweite Reformation und städtliche Autonomie in königlichen
Preussen. Danzig, Elbing und Thorn in der Epoche der Konfessionalisierung (Berlin, 1997).
34. Howard Louthan, The Quest for Compromise: Peacemakers in Counter-Reformation
Vienna (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). Rudolf’s physician was Johannes
Crato von Crailsheim; his confessor was Johann Pistorius.
35. Evans, Rudolf II and His World, 84 (the quote), and chapters 6 and 7; Penelope Gouk,
“Natural Philosophy and Natural Magic,” in Eliška Fučikova et al., eds., Rudolf II and Prague:
The Court and the City (London: Thames & Hudson, 1997), 231–237.
36. E.g., the volume edited by Fučikova, with 1,500 illustrations and a bibliography of ca.
1,000 items.
37. Miklós Istvánffy, Regni Hungarici Historia Libris XXXV Exacte Descripta (Cologne: J.
W. Friessen, 1685), hereafter abbreviated as Regni Hungarici Historia, XXV, 336 (1577), and
360 (1582).
38. Ungnad to Rudolf II, Constantinople, 27 November 1576, HHST I 34 XI–XII, 1576, f.
32–37, here 32–32v.
39. Ungnad to the estates, Constantinople, 1 October 1576, DSK I, Zaporeda St. 210, 2nd
sub-folder, doc. 1, 16. Cf. page 12, he doubts not that His Majesty [Maximilian II] has also
forwarded to the estates his missive of January 1576, though he has not had a reply.
40. The grand master, Archduke Maximilian (1558–1618), ruled in Tirol from 1595. Arch-
duke Albert (1559–1621) was regent of the Netherlands from 1595; Archduke Wenceslaus
(1561–1578) died young.
41. Géza Pálffy, “An ‘Old Empire’ on the Periphery of the Old Empire: The Kingdom of
Hungary and the Holy Roman Empire in the 16th and 17th Centuries,” in R. J. W. Evans and
Peter H. Wilson, eds., The Holy Roman Empire, 1494–1806: A European Perspective (Leiden:
Brill, 2012), 259–279, here 275, citing an essay by Thomas Winkelbauer. I thank Prof. Pálffy
for sending me a copy of this essay and two others cited in this chapter.
42. Pálffy, The Kingdom of Hungary, 86–87; Štefanec, Heretik njegova Veličanstva,
119–126; and the chart of Zrinski marriages in Géza Pálffy, “The Habsburg Defense System in
Hungary against the Ottomans in the 16th Century,” in Brian J. Davies, ed., Warfare in Eastern
Europe, 1500–1800 (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 35–61, here 80.
43. Štefanec, Heretik njegova Veličanstva, 116 (inheritance dispute between Eva Rožmberk
and Juraj Zrinski), 125.
44. “William of Rosenberg, 1535–1592,” Wikipedia.
45. Nataša Štefanec, Država ili ne. Ustroj Vojne krajine 1578. Godine i Hrvatsko-Slavonsko
staleži u regionalnoj obrani i politici (Zagreb: Srednja Europa, 2011), 142–143; cf. Štefanec,
Heretik njegova Veličanstva, 141.
46. Bosnia came under Austro-Hungarian trusteeship after the 1883 Congress of Berlin and
was formally annexed in 1909. Adanir, “The Formation of a ‘Muslim’ Nation in Bosnia-
Hercegovina,” 274–281, 294; Aščerić, “Dervishes and Islam in Bosnia,” chapter 4. The Ham-
zevis were the sect in question.
47. For the rest of this paragraph, save as noted, Adanir, “The Formation of a ‘Muslim’
Nation,” 292–297.
48. Džaja, Konfessionalität und Nationalität, 14–19, 26–28.
 War in a Time of Peace, 1576–1593 295

49. Finkel, Osman’s Dream, 9; Tijana Krstić, Contested Conversions to Islam: Narratives of
Religious Change in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire (Stanford, CA: Stanford University
Press, 2011), 12–14.
50. Linda T. Darling, “Nasihatnameler, Icmal Defterleri, and the Timar-Holding Ottoman
Elite in the Late Sixteenth Century,” Osmanli Araştirmalari: The Journal of Ottoman Studies
43 (2014): 1–23. My thanks to Prof. Darling for sending me a copy.
51. Aščerić, “Dervishes and Islam in Bosnia,” chapter 3; Džaja, Konfessionalität und
Nationalität, 172–174.
52. İnalcik, Economic and Social History of the Ottoman Empire, 265–266.
53. Chapter 4, note 88.
54. Archduke Karl to Khevenhüller, Ptuj, 20 August 1578, Spomenici Hrvatske Krajine,
Letter XXXIX, 71–73. These will have been bridges of boats, or pontoon bridges.
55. Ágoston, Guns for the Sultan, 176; Correr’s report, 13 June 1583, CRV IV, doc. XXV,
327–347, here 38–40.
56. “Grenitzen Haubtberatschlagung zu Wien anni 1577,” DSK I, Zaporeda St. 171, 1st
folder, “Verzaichnus der Tuerggischen Reuter,” f. 601–619, here f. 601–609. Cf. Simoniti,
Vojaška organizacija na Slovenskem, 236, and “Thuerkischer Kheiser Verzaichnus,” ca. 3
August 1577, DSK I, Zaporeda St. 170, 3rd folder, doc. 30e: 3,960 men facing Croatia proper,
1,830 men facing Slavonia (die Windische Graniz), and, “on this side of the Drava, facing
Kanizsa, 2,460 men.”
57. In his report on the Ottoman defeat at Sisak, Andreas von Auersperg gives a figure of
four thousand men for the Hofgesindt (retinue) of the slain Hasan Paşa: to Archduke Ernst,
Sisak, 24 June 1593, Spomenici Hrvatske Krajine, Letter CXXVII, 184–185. Cf. Metin Kunt,
The Sultan’s Servants: The Transformation of Ottoman Provincial Government, 1550–1650
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1983), 77: officers who brought a large personal
retinue to the front had a better chance of promotion.
58. Correr, as cited in note 55, estimates that the sancaks of Klis and Lika had three
thousand homeni da fattione who could be ordered to appear as needed, with victuals for as
many days as they were to serve.
59. Relatio of Alvise Loredan, 1580, CRV IV, doc. XV, 227–235, here 233.
60. Ungnad to Rudolf II, Constantinople, 27 November 1576 (HHST I 34 1576 XI–XII, f.
32–32v) and 20 January 1577 (HHST I 34 1577 I, f. 64–64v); Mažuran, Hrvati i Osmansko
Carstvo, 155; Archduke Ernst to Rudolf II, Vienna, 3 June 1577, Spomenici Hrvatske Krajine,
Letter XVII, 28–30.
61. For his conquests in 1575–1576, see chapter 4, notes 112–114; Mažuran, Hrvati i Os-
mansko Carstvo, 143–148. The Korana flows northwest to enter the Kupa near Karlovac, the
site of a major new Habsburg fortress.
62. For the rest of this paragraph, see Spomenici Hrvatske Krajine, Letter XVI, 22–28,
“Auszug der furnembsten schaden, 1575–1582.” For 1576, when Ferhat Beg is elsewhere said
to have led or authorized fifty expeditions into Croatia (chapter 4, note 113), this document lists
only fifteen attacks.
63. The ban was in theory vice-regent for Rudolf II as king of Hungary, but the captain-
general of Croatia, Johann Fernberger, represented the real authority of the Habsburg dynasty.
64. Archduke Ernst to Rudolf II, Vienna, 3 June 1577, Spomenici Hrvatske Krajine, Letter
XVII, 28–30, and to the estates of Carniola, Vienna, 17 June 1577, Spomenici Hrvatske Kra-
jine, Letter XX, 31; chapter 2, notes 61–65, 85.
65. Relatio of Jacopo Foscarini, 1572, CRV IV, doc. 1, 1–59, here 41–45; Šarić, “Planini i
Morlački Svijet u Dalmacij,” 69.
296 Chapter 5

66. Estates of Inner Austria to Archduke Karl, 1 August 1577, Spomenici Hrvatske Krajine,
Letter XXV, 33–40; Martin Hartensteiner to Jobst Joseph Thurn, Bihać, April 1584, Spomenici
Hrvatske Krajine, Letter XCI, 132–133; cf. relatio of Almoro Tiepolo as captain against the
uskoks, 1577, CRV IV, doc. 11, 199–207, here 205. Mažuran, Hrvati i Osmasnko Carstvo, 144,
endorses the Austrian view of the resettlement of Lika.
67. The relatio of Alvise Corner, Count of Trogir, makes ‘Ali Beg a nephew of Grand
Vezier Mehmed Paşa Sokolović: CRV IV, doc. 10, 187–197, here 188–189. But Biščević,
Bosanski namjesnici, no. 55, knows only the ‘Ali Beg who was Ferhat Beg’s younger brother,
who was later sancakbeg of Pakrac: Mažuran, Hrvati i Osmansko Carstvo, 153.
68. Bailo Paolo Contarini to the Signoria, 13 October 1582, ASV-DAC, Filza 16, f.
189–191v, 197–198v.
69. Chapter 4, notes 244–248.
70. If reclaiming the Una was not possible, Croatia could only be defended along the
Korana–Kupa line: Johann Fernberger to Archduke Ferdinand, December 1578, Spomenici
Hrvatske Krajine, Letter XLI, 74–75. To retain Bihać, a now-isolated salient on the Upper Una,
Habsburg commanders needed an army to accompany supply trains.
71. Cf. Archduke Karl’s request for information about Turk and Vlach captives in Croatia
proper: Jobst Joseph Thurn to Archduke Karl, 19 December 1587, Spomenici Hrvatske Krajine,
Letter CIV, 154–155.
72. . Spomenici Hrvatske Krajine, Letter XVI, 22–28; Mažuran, Hrvati i Osmansko Carstvo,
150, 153; and Mažuran, “Požega i Požeska kotlina za turska vladavine,” 180–181. The sancak-
beg killed in battle was Skender Beg, son of the Ulama Beg who was Bosnia’s governor from
1550 to 1556.
73. Spomenici Hrvatske Krajine, letter XVI, 22–28; on Turopolje, see chapter 4, note 108.
For Ali Beg, see above, note 67.
74. Below, note 169. Resolutions of the Sabor, Zagreb, 4 January 1587, HSS IV, no. 81,
196–206, here 202; Mažuran, Hrvati i Osmansko Carstvo, 153–157; Regni Hungarici Historia,
XXVI, 372–374.
75. Chapter 4, note 80.
76. Possibly Sinan Beg Boljanić, the nephew of Mehmed Paşa Sokolović, who was sancak-
beg of Herzegovina in 1572.
77. Paci, La “Scala” di Spalato, 45–50; Jonathan Israel, “Venice, Salonika, and the Found-
ing of the Sephardi Diaspora in the North (1574–1621), in his Diasporas within a Diaspora:
Jews, Crypto-Jews, and the World Maritime Empires (1540–1740) (Leiden: Brill, 2002),
67–96, here 71–74.
78. Paci, La “Scala” di Spalato, 51, 57; as part of the eventual agreement, Venice put troops
in Sučurac castle, guarding the approach to Split across the Bay of Kaštela. Bracewell, The
Uskoks of Senj, 178–179.
79. Relatio of Alvise Loredan, 1580, CRV IV, doc. 15, 227–235, here 230–231. Paci, La
“Scala” di Spalato, 52, conjectures that Split’s nobles did not want to be surpassed in wealth
by Jewish traders.
80. Relatio of Syndics Dona Basadonna and Pietro Lando, 1580, CRV IV, doc. 16, 235–250;
relatio of Nicolò Correr, 13 June 1583, doc. 25, 327–347, here 345–346.
81. Paci, La “Scala” di Spalato, 56–59; relatio of Correr, as in note 80.
82. Alberto Tenenti, Naufrages, Corsaires et Assurances Maritimes a Venise, 1592–1609
(Paris: S.E.V.P.E.N., 1959), 13–22, 28–39, and his Piracy and the Decline of Venice,
1580–1615 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1965), 9–66, 73–79.
 War in a Time of Peace, 1576–1593 297

83. Relatio of Alvise Badoer, Count of Zadar, 1582, CRV IV, doc. XXII, 303–313, here
311–312 (infringements on Venetian territory in Dalmatia by Ferhat’s officials are discussed
below); Paci, La “Scala” di Spalato, 60–62; “Documenti Turchi,” doc. 1024, 260.
84. Biščević, Bosanski namjesnici, nos. 70, 72–74 (see below, note 169), and no. 75;
Pečevija, Historija, II, 105–106. Hasan Paşa was a native of Herzegovina, Sijavuş Paşa of
Croatia; Pečevija became acquainted with Hasan Paşa during Hasan’s tenure as sancakbeg of
Szeged.
85. Maja Šercer, “Vojna oprema i naroužanje u vrijeme bojeva kod Siska 1591–1593,” in
Ivo Goldstein and Milan Kruhek, eds., Sisačka Bitka 1593 (Zagreb: Zavod za hrvatske povijest
Filozofskoga fakulteta Sveucilista u Zagreb, 1994), 243–254, here 243; Milan Kruhek, “Rat za
opstojnost Hrvatskog kraljestvana kupskoj granici,” in Goldstein and Kruhek, Sisačka Bitka
1593, 33–66, here 36.
86. Stephan Graswein to Archduke Ernst, enclosed in his letter to the Inner Austrian estates,
Ivanić, 12 August 1591, and again to Archduke Ernst, Koprivnica, 16 October 1591: Sisak u
Obrani, doc. 227, 391–394, and doc. 239, 406–408; Archduke Ernst to Tamás Erdödy, Vienna,
24 October 1591, HSS IV, no. 113, 274–275.
87. Graswein to Archduke Ernst, 6 February 1592; Lazaro Soranzo, L’Ottomano (Ferrara:
Vittorio Baldini, 1598), 68–69: Ottomans called the fortress Hasan Grad. The small stream was
the Petrinjiča.
88. Petar Erdödy to the estates of Styria, Jastrebarsko, 21 March 1592; Graswein to the
estates of Styria, 2 May 1592, enclosing his letter of the same date to Archduke Ernst: Sisak u
Obrani, doc. 247, 417–418 (the first quote); doc. 251, 421–422 (the second quote); and doc.
257, 432–435. Mažuran, Hrvati i Osmansko Carstvo, 159–163; Pečevija, Historija, 108; Frie-
drich von Kreckwitz to Rudolf II, Constantinople, October 1592, Spomenici Hrvatske Krajine,
Letter CXXIV, 173–174 (the third quote); and Bishop Gaspar to the Styrian estates, Zagreb, 1
September 1592, Sisak u Obrani, doc. 285, 471–472.
89. According to “List of Ottoman Grand Veziers,” Wikipedia, Sinan Paşa replaced Sijavuş
Paşa on 28 January 1593. Pečevija’s account (Historija, 108–109) is followed by Biščević,
Bosanski namjesnici, no. 75, and by Hazim Šabanović, Bosanski Paşaluk: Postanak i uprava
podjela (Sarajevo: Oslobodenje, 1959), 79. But cf. Nenad Moačanin, “Neki problemi
tumačenja turskih izvora u vezi s bitkom kod Sisak 1593. Godine,” in Goldstein and Kruhek,
Sisačka Bitka 1593, 125–130, here 127, and Snježana Buzov, “Povjesnica Mustafe Selânîki
efendije kao izvor za povijest osmanlisko-hravtskih sukoba u drogoj polovci 16. Stoljeća,” in
Goldstein and Kruhek, Sisačka Bitka 1593, 131–136.
90. Captains of Sisak to the Chapter of Zagreb, Sisak, 26 April 1593, and Chapter of Zagreb
to Rudolf II, 23 May 1593, Sisak u Obrani, doc. 219, 381–382, and doc. 308, 495–497; Fugger
Newsletters for 1593, citing a report from Andreas von Auersperg, Karlovac, June 1593,
Spomenici Hrvatske Krajine, CCXXVII, 175–179.
91. Relatio of Nicolò Priuli, rector of Trogir, 1 May 1575, CRV IV, doc. 7, 147–152, here
149–151.
92. Relatio of Priuli, as in note 91, 149 (the quote); relatio of Alvise Barbarigo, captain of
Trogir, 5 May 1588, CRV IV, doc. 36, 427–432, here 429. The syndics for 1580 wrongly
claimed that Trogir did not lose any territory in the recent war: Basadonna and Lando, as below
in note 95, 244.
93. Relatio of Syndics Andrea Giustinian and Andrea Valier, 1576, CRV IV, doc. 9,
157–185, here 173–175; relatio of Nicolò Correr, rector of Split, 13 June 1583, CRV IV, doc.
25, 327–347, here 342.
94. Relatio of Correr, as in note 93, XX. I assume that Correr’s “Vuragnizza” was at or near
the modern Vranjača jama; Vrandečić and Bertoša, Dalmacija, Dubrovnik, i Itsra, 20–22.
298 Chapter 5

95. Relatio of Giustinian and Valier, as in note 93, 173–175 (the first quote); relatio of
syndics Dona Basadonna and Pietro Lando, 1580, CRV IV, doc. 16, 235–250, here 245–246;
relatio of rector Antonio de Ca Pesaro, 22 December 1593, CRV V, doc. 6, 81–982, here 84–85
(the second quote); relatio of rector Luca Valier, CRV IV, doc. 33, 393–411, here 395–396. The
walled village was Vrpolje.
96. Vrandečić and Bertoša, Dalmacija, Dubrovnik, i Itsra u ranome novom vijeku, 22;
relatio of Basadonna and Lando, as in note 95, 240; relatio of rector Battista Michiel, 27 March
1596, CRV IV, doc. 29, 369–378, here 371–374; relatio of Jacopo Foscarini, 1572, CRV IV,
doc. 1, 1–59, here 30; relatio of rector Alvise Dolfin, CRV IV, doc. 14, 221–226, here 224 (the
quote); relatio of rector Alvise Barbaro, CRV IV, doc. 22, 306–313, here 308; relatio of captain
Nicolò Marcello, 1585, CRV IV, doc. 27, 363–368, here 367.
97. Chapter 3, notes 102, 114–115.
98. Relatio of Nicolò Priuli, as in note 91, here 150.
99. Relatio of Alvise Corner of Trogir, 1577, CRV IV, doc. 10, 187–197, here 191–192;
relatio of rector Luca Valier of Šibenik, as in note 95, here 403–405.
100. Chapter 3, note 101; relatio of Syndic Antonio Diedo, CRV III, doc. 1, 1–29, here 3;
relatio of rector Alvise Dolfin, as in note 96, here 225.
101. Hocquet, Le sel et la fortune de Venise; İnalcik, Social and Economic History of the
Ottoman Empire, 58–64. At Gabela, Dubrovnik and Herzegovina shared in taxes on salt: e.g.,
Dubrovnik to the orators, 31 August 1560, Lettere de Levante, VIII, f. 66v–67.
102. Relatio of Nicolò Correr, as in note 93, here 341–342; cf. chapter 4, note 141.
103. Jacopo Foscarini, as in note 96, here 35–36; Priuli, as in note 91, here 143–144; Valier,
as in note 95, here 403–404.
104. Chapter 3, note 100; chapter 4, note 134.
105. Relatio of Agostino Moro, rector of Šibenik, 4 July 1575, CRV IV, doc. 6, 137–145, here
139; relatio of Alvise Loredan, rector of Split, 1580, CRV IV, doc. 15, 227–235, here 229–230.
106. Valier, as in note 95, 410.
107. Bracewell, The Uskoks of Senj, 126–127. The Vienna Hauptberatschlagung (Fall 1577)
budgets for two hundred infantry at Senj and twenty more at Nehaj castle but does not mention
venturini: DSK I, Zaporeda St. 171, 1st folder, f. 123.
108. . Relatio of Almoro Tiepolo, captain against the uskoks, CRV IV, doc. 11, 199–207, here
204–205.
109. Above, notes 64–68; also Spomenici Hrvatske Krajine, doc. XXV, 33–40.
110. Bracewell, The Uskoks of Senj, 144, 177.
111. Bracewell, The Uskoks of Senj, 178–179, 183.
112. Martin Hartensteiner to Joseph Thurn, Bihać, April 1584, Spomenici Hrvatske Krajine,
doc. XCI, 132–133, and Archduke Karl to Archduke Matthias, Graz, 5 April 1590, Spomenici
Hrvatske Krajine, doc. CXI, 159–160.
113. Relatio of Alvise Balbi, captain against the uskoks, 13 March 1578, CRV IV, doc. 17,
269–277, here 276; cf. relatio of Piero Badoer, Captain of the Gulf, 1581, CRV IV, doc. 18,
261–268, here 267.
114. Relatio of Giovanni Antonio Foscarini, captain of Šibenik, 28 August 1583, CRV IV,
doc. 23, 315–321, here 317–318 (the quote); relatio of Luca Valier, as in note 95, here
403–404. As of 1572, Šibenik was allotted fourteen cavalrymen: relatio of Jacopo Foscarini, as
in note 96, here 52.
115. Relatio of Alvise Balbi, as in note 113, here 272–273.
116. Above, note 28.
117. Relatio of Giustinian and Valier, as in note 93; relatio of J. Foscarini, as in note 96, here
29.
 War in a Time of Peace, 1576–1593 299

118. Relatio of Basadonna and Lando, syndics for 1580, as in note 95, here 239–240. Accord-
ing to the relatio of Syndics Michiel Bon and Gaspar Erizzo, 1559, CRV III, doc. 16, 112–136,
here 133–134, Venice was then sending 18,000 ducats a year to Dalmatia; relatio of Federigo
Nani, proveditore generale (governor-general) for Dalmatia, 1591, CRV V, doc. 1, 9–36, here
23–24: 36,000 ducats in ordinary income, plus another 70,000 or 80,000 from the salt trade, as
against 24,000 in ordinary expenses and unspecified amounts for troops and building projects.
119. Relatio of Syndics Bon and Erizzo, as in note 118, 112–136; relatio of J. Foscarini, as in
note 96, here 52.
120. Relatio of Almoro Tiepolo, captain against the uskoks, as in note 108, here 203,
204–205; relatio of Lorenzo Cocco, captain of Zadar, 1581, CRV IV, doc. 21, 289–306, here
294, concerning men stationed at Ljubac.
121. Relatio of Cocco, 1581, as in note 120, here 291–293; relatio of Priuli, as in note 91,
here 149.
122. E.g., Ivan Kobenzl to the captain against the uskoks, Rijeka, 12 May 1579, Spomenici
Hrvatske Krajine, doc. XLVIII, 84–85: he asks leave to sail to Ancona, accompanied by a few
soldiers from Senj, for a mission to Rome.
123. Relatio of Almoro Tiepolo, as in note 108, here 202–203; relatio of Alvise Balbi, as in
note 113, here 271–272 (the quote), 274; relatio of Piero Badoer as Captain of the Gulf, 5 June
1578, CRV IV, doc. XVIII, 261–268, here 267.
124. Relatio of Almoro Tiepolo, as in note 108, here 201–202.
125. Bracewell, The Uskoks of Senj, 178–179. For the duties of the “seller of salt” at Gabela,
see Dubrovnik to Dragoman Marino Raicovich, 20 April 1562, Lettere de Levante, VIII, f.
268v.
126. Burghers of Senj to Kaspar Raab, Senj, 22 January 1578, Spomenici Hrvatske Krajine,
doc. XXXII, 55–56; Kaspar Raab to Archduke Karl, Senj, 14 February 1578, Spomenici
Hrvatske Krajine, doc. XXXIII, 55–56.
127. Raab to Archduke Karl, Senj, 14 February 1578, Spomenici Hrvatske Krajine, doc.
XXIII, 56–57; Venetian ambassador to the Senate, Prague, 24 February 1579, Spomenici
Hrvatske Krajine, doc. XLII, 75–76; Archduke Karl to Juraj Zrinski, Lord of Vinodol, Graz, 2
April 1579, Spomenici Hrvatske Krajine, doc. XLIV, 80–81.
128. Below, note 172.
129. . Baili at the Porte kept close watch on naval armaments and what purpose they might
serve, e.g., Paolo Contarini to the Signoria, 14 October 1582, and Giovanni Morosini to the
Signoria, 15 January 1583, ASV-DAC, Filza 16, f. 207–212v, 381–384v.
130. Relatio of Almoro Tiepolo, as in note 108, here 202–203.
131. Relatio of Alvise Balbi, as in note 113, here 273–275. The captain of Croatia was Johann
Fernberger.
132. Relatio of Fabio da Canal, 12 December 1559, CRV III, doc. 11, 141–147, here 142;
relatio of Tiepolo, as in note 108, here 201–202.
133. Relatio of Balbi, as in note 113, here 275; relatio of Zuane Bembo, 1 February 1583,
CRV IV, doc. 24, 323–326, here 323–325; relatio of Federigo Nani, CRV V, doc. 1, 9–36, here
18.
134. According to the relatio of rector Alvise Correr, CRV IV, doc. 10, 187–197, here 191, he
ruled only fifteen months.
135. Relatio of Alvise Correr as rector of Trogir, as in note 134, 188–189, 190, 191 (the
quote). ‘Ali Beg’s successor was one Memeth Beg.
136. Contarini to the Signoria, 1582, as in note 68; relatio of G. A, Foscarini, as in note 114.
The sancakbeg-military entrepreneur was Mehmed Beg.
300 Chapter 5

137. Paolo Contarini to the Signoria, 20 October 1582 and 29 December 1582, ASV-DAC,
Filza 16, f. 197–198v, 315–318v; Bailo Giovanni Morosini to the Signoria, 31 December 1582,
2 January 1583, and two dispatches of 15 January 1583, ASV-DAC, Filza 16, f. 322–323v,
331–338v, 350–352v, and 359–362v (the quote). These letters are difficult to reconcile with the
relatio of Giovanni Antonio Foscarini, who served as captain of Šibenik from 1581 to 1583,
that he had no problems with Sancakbeg Mehmed Beg of Klis, whom he describes as a young
man from a respected family in Skhoder: CRV IVB, doc. 23, 315–321, here 317.
138. Relatio of G. A. Foscarini, as in note 114, here 316–317 (the first quote); relatio of
Marco Barbarigo, rector of Split, CRV IV, doc. 30, 379–387, here 382–385; relatio of Giovanni
Battista Michiel, rector of Trogir, CRV IV, doc. 39, 453–463, here 455 (the second quote).
139. For an Ottoman census of Klis in 1550, see Spaho et al., Opširni popis Kliškog Sandžaka
iz 1550; for the part of Klis later made into the sancak of Lika, see relatio of Jacopo Foscarini,
1572, as in note 96, here 41–45.
140. Save as noted, this paragraph is based on Tracy, The Founding of the Dutch Republic.
141. The Dutch Reformed Church (Calvinist) was the “public church” of the United Prov-
inces, or Dutch Republic.
142. William of Orange (d. 1584) wanted to focus on defending the southern provinces of
Brabant and Flanders, but the province of Holland, which supplied most of the budget, insisted
on a cordon sanitaire along its borders.
143. For the Dutch, see Michiel de Jong, Staat van Oorlog. Wapenbedrijf en militaire her-
vorming in de Republiek der Verenigde Nederlanden, 1585–1621 (Hilversum: Verloren, 2005).
144. Save as noted, this paragraph is based on Štefanec, Država ili ne, 144–157, and Schulze,
Landesdefension und Staatsbildung, 64–66.
145. Nicklas, Um Macht und Einheit des Reiches, 148–1578; Rauscher, Zwischen Ständen
und Gläubigern, 65–67, 93–96; “Kaiser und Reich: die Reichstürkenhilfen,” 58–61.
146. Memorandum from Styria, 3 June 1577, DSK I, Zaporeda St. 170, 3rd folder, doc. 6;
Ágoston, Guns for the Sultan, 25; Pálffy, “The Habsburg Defense System in Hungary against
the Ottomans,” 48.
147. “Grenitzen Hauptberatschlagung zu Wien 1577,” DSK I, Zaporeda St. 171, 1st folder,
1–730, here 5.
148. “Grenitzen Hauptberatschlagung,” as in note 147, 8.
149. From 134,000 gulden in 1546 to 405,000 in 1578. DSK I, Zaporeda St. 169, Fasc. 101b,
folder 1, doc. 31 (summary for Styria, July 1548), and docs. 36 and 34.
150. Nataša Štefanec, “Demographic Changes on the Habsburg-Ottoman Border in Slavonia
(c. 1570–1640),” in Kurz et al., Das Osmanische Reich und die Habsburgermonarchie,
551–578, here 562: later sources show that the number of troops on the frontier lagged behind
the number shown in military budgets.
151. Loserth, Innerösterreich und die militärischen Massnahmen, 96–99.
152. Ágoston, Guns for the Sultan, 25. “Grenitzen Hauptberatschlagung,” as in note 147,
113–117, 131–137. War budgets normally distinguished between Croatian light horse (hussars)
and the higher-paid German heavy cavalry. The text here mentions “arquebusiers” but not
heavy cavalry, suggesting that one kind of unit (of a type favored by Schwendi) was replacing
another. In Croatia, for example, one hundred “arquebusiers” were to be posted at Bihać and
Ogulin, and fifty at Hrastovica.
153. Relazione of Giacomo Soranzo, read to the Venetian Senate in 1563 on his return from
serving as ambassador to Ferdinand I: Fiedler, Relationen Venetianischer Botschafter,
181–225, here 210–212: the two hundred “arcieri de cavallo” serving in the Imperial Guard are
paid 12 gulden a month, a higher wage than troops of any other kind. For the weapons, see
Šercer, “Vojna oprema i naroužanje u vrijeme bojeva kod Siska,” 248–252. I have not seen
 War in a Time of Peace, 1576–1593 301

references in Habsburg sources to the caracole, a tactic in which lines of riders advanced, fired,
and wheeled back to reload.
154. Johann Loserth, Die steierische Religions-Pacifikation von 1572–1578 (Graz:
Veröffentlichungen der Historischen Landes-Commission für Steiermark, 1896); Pörtner, The
Counter-Reformation in Central Europe, 66–70; Štefanec, Država ili ne, 205.
155. In Slavonia, there were captaincies of Koprivnica, Križevci, and Ivanić; in Croatia, there
were captaincies of Senj, Bihać, Ogulin, Slunj, and Hrastovica: Štefanec, Država ili ne,
392–401.
156. With pay for officers and officials, victuals, and fortifications, the total budget was
548,205 gulden: Štefanec, Država ili ne, 355, and Schulze, Landesdefension und Staatsbildung,
71. Cf. DSK I, Zaporeda St. 202, 1st sub-folder, annual subsidies approved by Carniola: 68,181
gulden for the years 1571–1577, 94,222 gulden for 1578.
157. Of the documents cited in notes 155 and 156, one says Croatia has sixty-two “houses” to
be defend, the other fifty-two.
158. “War Budget for the Croatian Border,” Graz, 1 March 1579, Spomenici Hrvatske Kra-
jine, doc. XXXVI, 76–80 (unlike the Vienna “high consultation,” this budget does not assign
arquebusiers to Bihać or any other fortress).
159. “War Budget for the Slavonian Border,” Graz, July 1580, Spomenici Hrvatske Krajine,
doc. LXVIII, 98–105. Štefanec, Država ili ne, 74.
160. For the meeting in Innsbruck (October 1579) between Archduke Karl, Archduke Ferdi-
nand of Tirol, and Archduke Maximilian I of Bavaria (their brother-in-law), see Pörtner, The
Counter-Reformation in Central Europe, 80–82.
161. Štefanec, Država ili ne, 192–194, 205–208, 216–218; cf. “Budget for the Hofkriegsrat,”
24 May 1579, Spomenici Hrvatske Krajine, doc. L, 86–87 (20,400 gulden per year). For
Poppendorf, see chapter 4, note 285.
162. Štefanec, Država ili ne, 303–305.
163. “Grenitzen Hauptberatschlagung,” as in note 147, 96–101, 606–611.
164. Regni Hungarici Historia: for Ottoman attacks between 1576 and 1590, see vol. XXV,
357, 361, and vol. XXVI, 364, 366; for Habsburg attacks, see vol. XXVI, 358–359, 362, 364,
and 372–374. Cf. four attacks on Kanizsa from 1575 to 1578, mentioned in “Auszug der
furnembsten schaden,” above, note 62.
165. Milan Kruhek, Krajiške utvrde i obrana Hrvatskog kraljevsta tijekom 16. Stolječa (Za-
greb: Velika Gorica, 1995), 230–239, 250–251, 280.
166. Above, table 5.1 and note 158.
167. “Auszug der furnembsten schaden,” as in note 62, for the years 1575–1579.
168. The sancakbeg was Skender Beg (above, note 72): Regni Hungarici Historia, XXV,
358–359, places the battle in 1581.
169. Regni Hungarici Historia, XXV, 372–374. Istvánffy’s “Sasvares” is surely Šehsuvar
Paşa, Ferhat Beg’s immediate successor, of whom Muvekkit finds only a bare mention (Povij-
est Bosne, 172) and Biščević says “nothing is known” (Bosanski namjesnici, no. 70).
170. Kruhek, Krajiške utvrde i obrana Hrvatskog kraljevsta, 290–302.
171. Budget for Croatia, Graz, 1 March 1579, Spomenici Hrvatske Krajine, doc. XLIII,
76–86; chapter 4, note 94.
172. Bracewell, The Uskoks of Senj, 145–149; Raab to Archduke Karl, Senj, March 1580, and
Auersperg to Archduke Karl, Crnomlijn, 9 March 1580; patent of Archduke Karl, Graz, 16
January 1582, and confirmation by Rudolf II, Vienna, 4 May 1583: Spomenici Hrvatske Kra-
jine, docs. LXV, 96–97; LXIV, 95–96; LXXVII, 113–115; and LXXX, 118.
173. E.g., “Auszug der furnembsten schaden,” as in note 62, an attack from Krupa in Septem-
ber 1581. Cf. Kruhek, Krajiške utvrde i obrana Hrvatska kraljevsta, 256–258.
302 Chapter 5

174. Tamás Erdödy to the estates of Styria, Jastrebarsko, 10 June 1592, Sisak u Obrani, doc.
261, 437–438 (fall of Ižačić, near Bihać); Neven Budak, “Uloga bihačke komune u obrani
granice,” in Vasa Čubrilović, ed., Vojne Krajne u Jugoslavenskim zemlyama u novom veku do
Karlovačkog Mira 1699 (Belgrade: Srpska Akademija Nauka i Umetnosti [Serbian Academy
of Arts and Sciences], 1989), 47–54.
175. Chapter 2.
176. Archduke Karl to Khevenhüller, Ptuj, 20 August 1578, Spomenici Hrvatske Krajine,
doc. XXXIX, 71–73. On Khevenhüller, see Štefanec, Država ili ne, 183.
177. Above, note 158.
178. Resolutions of the Sabor, all in Zagreb, 25 February 1578 (assignments of robot for the
fords), 1 April 1582, and 1 July 1585: HSS IV, doc. 7, 23–28; doc. 31, 75–80, here 79; and doc.
75, 174–182, here 179.
179. E.g., Kostajnica, Novigrad, and Krupa; see chapters 3 and 4.
180. E.g., above, note 72.
181. E.g., resolutions of the Sabor, Zagreb, 27 June 1582; Archduke Ernst to Ruprecht von
Eggenberg, Graz, 7 April 1593: HSS IV, doc. 36, 86–94, here 91–92, and doc. 119, 288–290.
182. Resolutions of the Sabor, Zagreb, 24 January 1592 and 31 March 1593, HSS IV, doc.
117, 284–287, here 284, and doc. 118, 287–288; Chapter of Zagreb to Archduke Ernst, Zagreb,
1 March 1593, and Tamás Erdödy to Archduke Matthias, [Zagreb], 1 April 1583 (the quote),
Sisak u Obrani, doc. 306, 493–494, and doc. 305, 292.
183. E.g., Kaspar Graswein, captain of Koprivnica, facing the Ottoman border. His letters are
quoted below.
184. Kruhek, Krajiške utvrde i obrana Hrvatskog kraljevsta, 326.
185. Štefanec, Država ili ne, 343, 410, 261. Cf. Christoph Ungnad to Archduke Karl, Vienna,
between 24 January and 20 February 1585, HSS IV, doc. 66, 159–162.
186. Hrastovica, included in the Inner Austrian budget, was not part of “the ban’s border”:
Graz, 1 March 1579, Spomenici Hrvatske Krajine, doc. XLIII, 76–80. Štefanec, Država ili ne,
255, 343; letters of Archduke Ernst, Vienna, 27 August 1579, 29 October 1579, 30 October
1580: HSS IV, doc. 9, 33; doc. 12, 34–35; and doc. 17, 51–52. Cf. Pálffy, “The Hungarian-
Habsburg Border Defense Systems,” 55.
187. Štefanec, Država ili ne, 255–258.
188. Štefanec, Država ili ne, 267–269.
189. Chapter 4, notes 232–236.
190. Štefanec, Država ili ne, 119–121; resolutions of the Sabor, Zagreb, 21 December 1579,
HSS IV, doc. 13, 35–40, here 36.
191. E.g., resolutions of the Sabor in Zagreb, sessions of s.d. February 1578, 25 February
1578, and 21 December 1579: HSS IV, doc. 1, 3–6, here 5; doc. 7, 23–28, here 25; and doc. 14,
42–46, here 44–45.
192. Resolutions of the Sabor, 13 April 1584, HSS IV, doc. 54, 127–136, here 131–132: three
magnates refuse to let peasants in their Croatian lands pay a hearth tax decreed by the Sabor.
193. Council of Lower Austria to Archduke Ernst, Vienna, 17 January 1585, HSS IV, doc. 64,
157–159. The Sabor sent delegates to the diet: Štefanec, Država ili ne, 121–122.
194. Resolutions of the Sabor, Varaždin, 25 April 1580, and Zagreb, 23 July 1583, 13 April
1584: HSS IV, doc. 21, 57–61, here 57–58; doc. 46, 104–109; and doc. 52, 116–124, here
121–122.
195. David Ungnad to Archduke Ernst, Zagreb, 18 April 1584; council of Lower Austria to
Archduke Ernst, Vienna, before 17 January 1585; resolutions of the Sabor, Zagreb, 13 April
1584; Christoph Ungnad to Archduke Ernst, Vienna, between 24 January and 20 February
 War in a Time of Peace, 1576–1593 303

1585; and Archduke Ernst to Rudolf II, Vienna, 20 February 1585: HSS IV, doc. 54, 127–136,
here 131–132; doc. 64, 157–159; doc. 66, 159–162; and doc. 67, 162–163.
196. Resolutions of the Sabor, Zagreb, 1 July 1575, 27 April 1586, and Varaždin, 22 Febru-
ary 1588: HSS IV, doc. 75, 174–182, here 179; doc. 79, 185–195, here 185–186; and doc. 86,
221–230, here 224, 228.
197. Resolutions of the Sabor, Zagreb, 25 April 1580, HSS IV, doc. 21, 57–61, here 57–58.
198. Štefanec, Država ili ne, 19, 333.
199. Chapter 3, note 206.
200. In 1588, Varaždin was awarded to Ban Tamás Erdödy: Archduke Ernst to the Hungarian
Chamber of Accounts, s.l., 11 December 1583, and Vienna, 4 March 1588: HSS IV, doc. 50,
111, and doc. 90, 237–238.
201. Resolutions of the Sabor, Varaždin, 22 December 1578 and 1 May 1581, HSS IV, doc. 6,
15–19, here 16, and doc. 23, 63–64; and at Zagreb, 4 June 1583, 9 May 1589, HSS IV, doc. 44,
98–103, and doc. 94, 244–256, here 246.
202. Resolutions of the Sabor, Varaždin, 25 April 1580; Zagreb, 27 June 1582, 13 April
1584: HSS IV, doc. 21, 57–61, here 57–58; doc. 30, 74–75; and doc. 52, 116–124, here
117–118. Anon. memo, Wien, 9 January 1582, HSS IV, doc. 36, 86–94, here 91–92; Rudolf II
to Archduke Karl, Prague, 16 September 1583, Spomenici Hrvatske Krajine, LXXXIV,
121–122. Cf. Kruhek, Krajiške utvrde i obrana Hrvatskog kraljevsta, 219–220, 303–305. The
upper fortress held out until 1592: estates to Styria to Archduke Ernst, Graz, 20 April 1592,
Sisak u Obrani, doc. 254, 426–427.
203. Resolutions of the Sabor, Zagreb, 25 February 1579, 4 May 1579, and 21 December
1579; and Varaždin, 1 May 1580: HSS IV, doc. 7, 23–28, here 26; doc. 8, 28–32, here 31–32;
doc. 14, 42–46, here 43; and doc. 18, 54–56. Hofkriegsrat memo, Vienna, 10 November 1581;
anon. memo, Vienna, 9 January 1582; and David Ungnad to Archduke Ernst, Zagreb, 16 April
1584: HSS IV, doc. 29, 73–74; doc. 30, 74–75; and doc. 54, 127–136, here 132–133. Kruhek,
Krajiške utvrde i obrana Hrvatska kraljevsta, 306.
204. Kruhek, Krajiške utvrde i obrana Hrvatska kraljevsta, 305–306, 309; resolutions of the
Sabor, Zagreb, 21 December 1579, 1 May 1581, 1 April 1582: HSS IV, doc. 14, 42–46, here
42–43; doc. 23, 63–64; and doc. 31, 75–80, here 78.
205. The second fort was at Sredičko. Resolutions of the Sabor, Zagreb, 3 April 1582, 23 July
1583, 13 April 1584: HSS IV, doc. 32, 80–84, here 81; doc. 46, 104–109, here 105; and doc. 52,
116–124, here 117–118.
206. Resolutions of the Sabor, Zagreb, 27 April 1586 and 2 May 1588, HSS IV, doc. 79,
185–195, here 186–187; doc. 89, 233–237, here 234–236. Castellan Matthias Breztovski to the
captains of Sisak, Brest, 4 February 1592, Sisak u Obrani, doc. 177, 344–345. Kruhek, Krajiške
utvrde i obrana Hrvatskog kraljevsta, 311.
207. Captains to the chapter, Sisak, 3 January 1592, Sisak u Obrani, doc. 173, 341–342.
208. Ivanić, on the left bank of the Sava, a few miles downstream, was also a few miles
inland from the river.
209. Anon. memo, Vienna, 9 January 1582, and resolutions of the Sabor, 23 July 1583: HSS
IV, doc. 30, 74–75, and doc. 46, 104–109, here 107.
210. Kruhek, Krajiške utvrde i obrana Hrvatskog kraljevsta, 313; captains to the chapter,
Sisak, 27 February 1590, Sisak u Obrani, doc. 135, 308–309.
211. Captains to the chapter, 7 September, 16 November 1591, 20 April 1592, Sisak u
Obrani, doc. 142, 314; doc. 157, 326–327; and doc. 184, 350–351.
212. Chapter of Zagreb to Rudolf II, Zagreb, August 1592, Sisak u Obrani, doc. 283,
469–470.
304 Chapter 5

213. Archduke Ernst to Tamás Erdödy, Vienna, 10 August 1591, Sisak u Obrani, doc. 229,
393: he would like to help Sisak more but is concerned by developments near Kanizsa.
214. Below, “Conclusion.”
215. Above, note 152; Simoniti, Vojaška organizacija na Slovenskem, 63, 97–98; for relevant
sections of the “Inner Austrian Defense Ordinance” of 1575, see Schulze, Landesdefension und
Staatsbildung, 254–255.
216. Žontar, “Michael Černović, Geheimagent Ferdinands I und Maximilians II.”
217. For István Kenderessey, see Žontar, Obveščevalnje služba, 162–166.
218. Žontar, Obveščevalnje služba, 168–177. The spy-secretary was Franko Jurković.
219. Stephan Graswein to the Inner Austrian estates, Ivanić, 12 August 1591, Sisak u Obrani,
doc. 227, 391–394; above, note 86: Hasan Paşa’s movements as reported by Habsburg sources.
220. Above, note 90.
221. Letters to the chapter from the estates of Styria (2 September 1591), Carinthia (10
September), and Carniola (12 September): Sisak u Obrani, doc. 232, 399–400; doc. 233, 401;
and doc. 237, 405.
222. Resolutions of the Sabor, Zagreb, 24 January 1592, HSS IV, doc. 117, 284–287, here
286. Zagreb to the estates of Styria, March 1592; estates of Styria to the Chapter of Zagreb, 11
March 1592; captains to the chapter, Sisak, 23 April 1592; Captain Mikac to the chapter, camp
at the bridge, 25 April 1592: Sisak u Obrani, doc. 245, 413–415; doc. 250, 419–421; doc. 185,
351–352; and doc. 186, 352–353.
223. Captains to the chapter, Sisak, 12 July 1592, and Archduke Ernst to the bishop and
Chapter of Zagreb, s.l., 19 March 1593, Sisak u Obrani, doc. 196, 360–361, and doc. 301, 488.
224. Erdödy to the estates of Styria, Jastrebarsko, 24 June 1592, and Graswein to the estates
of Styria, Koprivnica, 24 July 1592, Sisak u Obrani, doc. 262, 438–440, and doc. 267,
447–449.
225. Bishop of Zagreb to Gaspar Wilhelm von Gera [a member of the Hofkriegsrat in Graz],
Zagreb, 28 June 1592; Graswein to the estates of Styria, Koprivnica, 3 July 1592: Sisak u
Obrani, doc. 263, 440–441, and doc. 264, 442–444.
226. Above, note 88.
227. Captain Mikac to the chapter, Sisak, 20 July 1592; captains to the chapter, 20 July 1592;
and captains to the estates of Styria, 25 July 1592: Sisak u Obrani, doc. 200, 364–365; doc.
201, 365–366; and doc. 268, 450–452.
228. Graswein to Archduke Ernst, Koprivnica, 23 July 1592, Sisak u Obrani, doc. 266,
445–448; above, note 89.
229. Estates of Styria to the Chapter of Zagreb, Graz, 1 August 1592, Sisak u Obrani, doc.
273, 459–460, and to the city of Zagreb, Graz, 1 August 1592, Spomenici Hrvatske Krajine,
doc. CXVII, 166–167.
230. Their captain was Christoph Heimbom. Estates of Styria to the Chapter of Zagreb,
[Graz, August 1592], and the chapter to the estates, Zagreb, 2 September 1592, Sisak u Obrani,
doc. 278, 464–465, and doc. 286, 472–474.
231. The fortress of Drenčina. Graswein to the estates of Styria, Koprivnica, 29 August 1592,
Sisak u Obrani, doc. 281, 466–467.
232. Chapter of Zagreb to the estates of Styria, 2 September 1592; Graswein to the estates of
Styria, Koprivnica, 29 August 1592; letter patent of Archduke Matthias, Vienna, 1 September
1592; and Chapter of Zagreb to the estates of Styria, 2 September 1592: Sisak u Obrani, doc.
284, 470–471; doc. 286, 472–474; doc. 281, 466–467; and doc. 284, 470–471.
233. Archduke Ernst to the bishop and Chapter of Zagreb, s.l., 19 March 1993, and chapter to
Archduke Ernst, Zagreb, 14 April 1593, Sisak u Obrani, doc. 301, 488, and doc. 304, 490–491.
 War in a Time of Peace, 1576–1593 305

234. Tamás Erdödy to Archduke Ernst, camp before Sisak, 23 June 1593, Sisak u Obrani,
doc. 310, 498–499; Fugger Newsletters for 1593, citing a report by Andreas von Auersperg,
Karlovac, June 1593, Spomenici Hrvatske Krajine, CCXXVII, 175–179.
235. The most helpful discussions are to be found in Goldstein and Kruhek, Sisačka Bitka
1593, especially Kruhek, “Rat za opstojnost Hrvatskog kraljestvana kupskoj granici”; Šercer,
“Vojna oprema i naroužanje u vrijeme bojeva kod Siska”; and Ács Tibor, “Sisačka bitka u
mađarskoj historiograiji,” in Goldstein and Kruhek, Sisačka Bitka 1593, 211–226.
236. Ban Tamás Erdödy to Archduke Ernst, camp at Sisak, 23 June 1592; Ruprecht von
Eggenberg to Archduke Ernst, Sisak, 24 June 1593; and Melchior von Redern to Rudolf II,
Ptuj: Sisak u Obrani, doc. 310, 498–499, and doc. 312, 501–503; a report from Andreas von
Auersperg, Karlovac, June 1593, from Fugger Newsletters: Spomenici Hrvatske Krajine,
CCXXVII, 175–179. Cf. Auersperg to Archduke Ernst, Sisak, 24 August 1593, Sisak u Obrani,
doc. 311, 499–500.
237. Erdödy (as in note 234): “selectissimis decem milibus equitum et peditum.”
238. Erdödy says twenty thousand; Eggenberg (as in note 237) says twenty thousand “spahis,
sayen and other peasants.”
239. Eggenberg says eight pieces on wheels were captured, Redern (as in note 236) gives the
caliber of five large guns firing at Sisak from across the river. The others, no doubt smaller,
were perhaps brought over the bridge.
240. Aparty Beg from Klis, Zimeri Memi Beg of Zvornik, Ibrahim Beg of Lika (Memi Beg’s
son), Safer Beg of Pakrac/Cernik (brother of Hasan Paşa), Mehmed Beg “from Albania” (the
son of one of Sultan Murad III’s sisters), the sancakbeg of Herzegovina (a son of “Achmet at
the Porte,” on whom see Pečevija, as cited above, note 6), and “Hramasan” or “Hramatan Beg”
of Orahovica in Slavonia.
241. Ambassador to the Senate, Prague, 6 July 1593, Sisak u Obrani, doc. 412, 635; Erdödy
(as in note 234) says Hasan Paşa had ten thousand men before Sisak.
242. Above, note 63. For diplomatic purposes, maximal estimates were preferred, as in Arch-
duke Matthias’s assertion that Hasan Paşa had “crossed the Kupa with nine sancakbegs and
fifty thousand armed men”: to the paşa of Buda, Vienna, 26 June 1593, Sisak u Obrani, doc.
120, 277–279.
243. Kruhek, “Rat za opstojnost Hrvatskog kraljestvana kupskoj granici,” 55; Šercer, “Vojna
oprema i naroužanje u vrijeme bojeva kod Siska,” 246.
244. Wikipedia Deutsch, “Melchior von Redern” (1,300 men); Redern (as in note 236), five
hundred mounted arquebusiers.
245. Tibor, “Sisačka bitka u mađarskoj historiograiji,” 221.
246. This reconstruction is from an 1894 essay by Gusztav Gömöry, summarized by Tibor,
“Sisačka bitka u mađarskoj historiograiji,” 211.
247. I follow the accounts of Kruhek and Šercer, as in note 235. A Venetian report says that
the “moschetti a cavallo” sent from Salzburg played the decisive role: ambassador to the
Senate, Prague, 29 June 1593, Sisak u Obrani, doc. 411, 634.
248. This detail too is from Gömöry, as in note 246.
249. Sources as in note 236.
250. Parker, The Military Revolution, see index under “firearms”; for the importance of
gunpowder weapons on the Austrian side during the “Long Turkish War” of 1593–1606, see
Kelenik, “The Military Revolution in Hungary,” 131–153.
251. Ágoston, Guns for the Sultan, 7–13, and chapter 2.
252. Peter Bartl, Der Westbalkan zwischen Spanischer Monarchie und Osmanischem Reich
(Wiesbaden: Harassowitz, 1974), 18, quoting from Emmerich Karácson and Ludwig von
Thallóczy, “Eine Staatschrift des bosnischen Mohammedaners Molla Hassan El-kafi, ‘Über die
306 Chapter 5

Art und Weise des Regierens,’” Illyrisch-Albanische Forschuingen 1 (1916): 537–563. Soran-
zo, L’Ottomano, 34, says that sipahis did not carry pistols.
253. Mažuran, Hrvati i Osmansko Carstvo, 163, “o čijem je ishodu ovisila sudbina Hrvats-
ke.”
254. Schulze, Landesdefension und Staatsbildung, 85–90, 180–183; Pörtner, Counter-Refor-
mation in Central Europe, 87–99.
255. Grünfelder, “Vojna Krajina i reformski procesi u ranom novom vijeku,” 102; Štefanec,
Država ili ne, 237–247, 365–370.
256. Above, notes 158, 159.
257. Above, note 3; Imber, The Ottoman Empire, 67; David Morgan, Medieval Persia,
1040–1797 (New York: Longmans, 1988), 132–133.
258. [Friedrich von Kreckwitz] to Rudolf II, Constantinople, 10 July 1593, and Venetian
ambassador to the Senate, Prague, 10 August 1593 (the quote): Sisak u Obrani, doc. 127d,
287–290, and doc. 417, 641–643.
259. Cf. the expectation of Grand Vezir Sijavuş Paşa that the Habsburgs would react to the
loss of Bihać and other defeats at the hands of Hasan Paşa: above, note 89.
260. Klaić, Povijest Hrvata, V, 499; Venetian ambassador to the Senate, Prague, 27 July
1593; Hasan Paşa (not to be confused with the late Hasan Paşa of Bosnia) to Archduke
Matthias, Buda, 11 August 1593: Sisak u Obrani, doc. 417, 637–640; doc. 129, 293.
261. Hasan Paşa of Buda to Archduke Matthias, Buda, 11 August 1593 (the man who had
been removed as paşa of Timosoara/Temesvár has now been made paşa of Bosnia); Archduke
Matthias to Hasan Paşa, 22 August 1593: Sisak u Obrani, doc. 130, 293–294; doc. 131,
295–297. For Sinan Paşa’s younger brother, Mustafa Paşa Ajaspaşic, see Biščević, Bosanski
namjesnici, no. 76.
262. Matthias to Hasan Paşa of Buda, Vienna, 26 June, 4 July, and 6 July 1593; Hasan Paşa to
Matthias, Pest, 30 June 1593; Rudolf II to Hasan Paşa, Prague, 10 July 1593; Venetian ambas-
sador to the Senate, Prague, 13 July 1593: Sisak u Obrani, doc. 120, 277–279; doc. 122,
280–282; doc. 123, 282–284; doc. 121, 279–280; doc. 124, 284–285; doc. 413, 636.
263. Hofkriegsrat to Rudolf II, Graz, 29 June 1593; letter patent of Archduke Ernst, Graz, 30
June 93; Hofkriegsrat to their colleague, Hans Friedrich von Trautmannsdorf, Graz, 3 July
1593; and Venetian ambassador to the Senate, 13 July 1593: Sisak u Obrani, docs. 317, 319,
323, and 417.
264. Rudolf II to Archduke Matthias, Prague, 9 August 1593; Venetian ambassador to the
Senate, 20 August 1593 and 7 September 1593; and petition from the Diet of Hungary, Vienna,
13 September 1593: Sisak u Obrani, doc. 333, 528–529; doc. 420, 646–647; and doc. 342,
536–537. Mažuran, Hrvati i Osmansko Carstvo, 165.
265. Venetian ambassador, Prague, 24 August 1593, 14 September 1593, and 21 September
1593: Sisak u Obrani, doc. 419, 644–645; doc. 421, 648–650; and doc. 425, 650–651.
266. Venetian ambassador, Prague, two letters of 21 September 1593, Sisak u Obrani, doc.
423, 650, and doc. 424, 650–651.
267. Venetian ambassador, Prague, second letter of 21 September 1593; ambassador Tomma-
so Contarini to the Senate, Prague, 12 October 1593, 9 November 1593: Sisak u Obrani, doc.
425, 650–651, doc. 430, 659–660, and doc. 431, 660–662. Imber, The Ottoman Empire, 67;
Mažuran, Hrvati i Osmansko Carstvo, 165.
268. Jan Paul Niederkorn, Die europäische Mächte und der “Lange Türkenkrieg” Kaiser
Rudolfs I (Vienna: Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1993), 9–10.
 Chapter Six

Two Wars and Three Borders,

1593–1618

The Long Turkish War of 1593–1606 had three main results 1: the Ottomans
conquered two major Habsburg fortresses, including Kanizsa, the anchor
fortress of the southwestern Hungarian frontier; the sultan recognized Rudolf
II as an emperor of equal dignity, no longer obliged to pay tribute; and István
Bocskai, an Ottoman vassal, was recognized as Prince of Transylvania, not
subject to Rudolf as king of Hungary. Fighting between Habsburg and Otto-
man forces officially ended in 1606, but not for the uskoks of Senj. Their
raids were ended only by the Gradisca War of 1615–1617. No territory
changed hands, but the venturini were removed from Senj to other fortresses
farther inland. There was now quiet all along the erstwhile war frontier—
until the Turkish siege of Vienna in 1683 touched off a new and final series
of Habsburg-Ottoman wars. 2
This chapter begins by looking at the moral and material resources that
allowed two mega-states to continue fighting for thirteen years. 3 For many
on both sides, religious sentiment imbued the war with a higher purpose 4:
some fought for Christianitas (Christendom), others for the umma (the Mus-
lim community). Yet religious leaders on both sides worried more about
internal threats to true faith than about infidels. Learned Sunni clerics re-
garded heretic Shi’ites as the gravest danger, while in Rome a reenergized
Counter-Reformation 5 papacy took a similar view of Lutherans and Calvin-
ists. One difference between the combatants in the Long Turkish War was
that the Catholic Habsburgs were more willing to battle both religious ene-
mies at once. Even though they needed the help of Protestant subjects to hold
307
308 Chapter 6

back the Ottomans, they vigorously pursued a campaign to reclaim their

lands for Catholicism. Thus while many Western-Christian soldiers had re-
ligious reasons to fight the infidel, others found religious reasons to fight the
Habsburgs.
A war of this duration would strain any state’s financial and military
resources—the “sinews of war.” 6 Ottoman officials had to contend with
serial mutinies in Anatolia, recurring shortages of supplies, and frequent
changes in the high command. Nonetheless, they and the treasury kept the
sultan’s war machine running. Huge armies mustered year after year in the
Danube basin, with troops recruited from Bosnia and Anatolia, sustained by
grain and treasure brought from Egypt. 7 Meanwhile, the Austrian and Bohe-
mian lands rallied to the Habsburg cause, but their combined strength was no
match for Ottoman power. Cash and troops provided by the Holy Roman
Empire, and by Mediterranean Catholic powers, made up the difference. In
the actual fighting, the ebb and flow of victories and defeats bore a discern-
ible relationship to opposing military strengths. The Habsburgs were better at
field battles, the Ottomans at siege craft.
There is no history of the Long Turkish War. 8 The brief overview offered
here focuses on what were arguably the strategic objectives of the two
governments. The Ottomans aimed at extending their dominion north and
west of Buda, knocking out the great fortresses that blocked access to Vien-
na. The Habsburgs tried to shift the theater of the war to the lower Danubian
principalities—Moldova and Wallachia as well as Transylvania. If this re-
gion were held by a prince or princes subject to Rudolf II—a crucial qualifi-
cation—the Ottomans would have lost the Danube supply corridor that sus-
tained their position in Belgrade and in Buda. In this respect, the Long
Turkish War was a futile undertaking for both sides. As of 1606, control of
the Danube basin remained divided, almost exactly as it had been before the
fighting began.
Because fighting was concentrated along the upper-middle and lower
Danube, Bosnia and Croatia were spared major engagements, and the border
here was largely unchanged by the war. What did change was the regional
balance of forces. With Bosnia’s fighting men again and again called on for
service in Hungary, western areas of the province were left exposed to raids
by hajduks from Slavonia and by uskoks from Croatia. On the Habsburg
side, as the Military Frontier moved toward the status of a separate adminis-
trative district controlled by the central government, the Croatian Sabor oc-
 Two Wars and Three Borders, 1593–1618 309

cupied itself with a small sector of the frontier centered on the newly cap-
tured fortress of Petrinja.
In Dalmatia, no one wanted the war that finally emerged from a sputtering
Austro-Venetian conflict. On several occasions, diplomats reached agree-
ments that promised to end uskok raids; each time, and for various reasons,
the raids continued. The Gradisca War resolved the hitherto intractable prob-
lem posed by a few hundred recalcitrant venturini, but it failed to achieve the
Venetian government’s larger objectives.

MORAL RESOURCES FOR A LONG WAR: RELIGION

A Muslim Holy War

In 1258, the last of the caliphs of Baghdad—revered by Sunni Muslims as

successors to the Prophet—was put to death by Iraq’s Mongol ruler. The
sultans of Egypt’s Mamluk dynasty (r. 1250–1517) were recognized as lord-
protectors of the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, and they sometimes acted
as heads of the worldwide umma, as in 1509, when a Mamluk war fleet
battled the infidel Portuguese off the coast of India. But not even the Mam-
luks laid claim to the title of caliph (a caliph had to be from Muhammad’s
tribe, the Quraish, and the Mamluks were by origin slave-soldiers). 9
The early Ottoman sultans presented themselves as ghazis, extending the
frontiers of the faith by war, but conscious development of a specifically
Islamic theory of their authority would await the reign of Selim I
(1512–1520), who seized the throne from his aging father in order to con-
front the Shi’ite Safavids. As he set out for Iran in 1514, Selim had his army
camp at a suburb of Istanbul where one of the Prophet’s Companions was
thought to be buried. Having conquered Egypt in 1517, he assumed the
Mamluk sultan’s role as lord-protector of the holy cities. For his triumphal
entry into Cairo, the sharif of Mecca sent the holy cloth that covered the
Ka’ba, an honor that had been accorded the caliphs of old. Also, the sacred
mantle believed to have been worn by Muhammad was now transferred from
Mecca to Topkapi palace. The sancak-i Şerif, the standard believed to have
been carried into battle by the Prophet, found a new home in the Grand
Mosque of Damascus. Under Sultan Suleyman I, scholars and officials, in-
cluding Grand Vezir Ibrahim Paşa, encouraged the sultan to assume leader-
ship of the umma. For example, he too sent a war fleet to India in 1538.
310 Chapter 6

Ebu’s-su’ud, grand mufti from 1545 to 1574, solemnly proclaimed that Sul-
tan Suleyman was caliph “by divine right.” 10
For more than a century, Ottoman governments regarded Shi’ite Iran as
their principal enemy. Ebu’s-su’ud, like other grand muftis, issued fetwas
that identified Shi’ites as heretics and thus justified Ottoman soldiers in
killing or capturing them. Grand muftis served at the sultan’s pleasure, and
their decrees were in effect acts of state. But other students of religious law
chimed in with treatises urging the sultan to strike more forcefully against the
worst enemies of the true faith. Reasons of state did not control the pens of
these independent scholars. Rather, recurring wars against Shi’ite Iran went
hand in hand with a growing identification with Sunni orthodoxy, especially
among Ottoman elites. Both fetwas and polemical tracts contended that war
against “apostate” Shi’ites was a higher religious duty than war against the
infidels. That such arguments appealed to the rank and file is not clear. In
parts of Anatolia where Sunnis and Shi’ites lived in proximity, there is scant
evidence of friction. The fault line lay rather between the stern rationalism of
Sunni scholars and the mysticism of popular Sufi orders that had both Sunni
and Shi’ite devotees. 11 Ottoman soldiers likely still believed that jihad
against infidel Christians was the more important religious duty.
In May 1594, the Venetian bailo reported surprising news from the arsen-
al. Two squadron captains, preparing to sail west, were suddenly diverted to
Egypt to accompany “the flag coming from Mecca” that was to be carried
into Hungary: “According to what they say, this is the standard their Prophet
Muhammad used to carry into battle; whenever it is unfurled, it brings joy
and victory.” 12 The sancak-i Şerif, brought to the Porte, made its first appear-
ance in Hungary in November 1594. In August 1595, Grand Vezir Sinan
Paşa had the holy standard with him as he marched west. At Mezőkeresztes
in October 1596, just before Mehmed III’s men turned apparent defeat into a
great victory, one of his advisers urged the sultan to stand fast: he held the
holy standard in his grasp and wore the Prophet’s mantle on his shoulders. As
Mehmed made his triumphal entry into Istanbul a month later, the holy cloth
from Mecca was carried before him, just as for Selim I in Cairo in 1517. 13
One need not think that Muslims in the sultan’s army fought only for relig-
ion. But neither should one underestimate what it meant for fighting men to
go to war accompanied by the holiest symbols of their faith. 14
 Two Wars and Three Borders, 1593–1618 311

Christian Holy War? A Theological Disagreement

Almost all Christians of this era believed that salvation depended on profess-
ing true doctrine; the pains of hell threatened not just those who fell into
heresy or idolatry, but also princes and town magistrates who failed to pro-
tect those in their charge from pernicious teaching. 15 This was one reason
(among others) for the bitter divisions that opened up across Europe in the
wake of Luther’s rebellion. In the 1540s, it seemed as if irenic theologians
might achieve a compromise on key doctrines. 16 The moment passed, and
thereafter religious tensions grew. The Council of Trent (1545–1563) reas-
serted major elements of Catholic belief and practice; meanwhile, highly
trained preachers of the new Jesuit order fanned out to reverse the gains
made by heretics. In Geneva, the disciples of John Calvin (d. 1564) formed
the leading edge of Protestantism’s advance; some Lutheran towns and terri-
tories now became Calvinist. Unlike Lutherans, who denounced only some
aspects of Catholicism, Calvinists condemned the old religion root and
branch. To guard their flocks from the seduction of false teaching, zealous
clergy of all three confessions developed programs of indoctrination, actively
supported by friendly governments. Yet each church also had its own internal
quarrels. For Catholics of a Politique temper, the most urgent task was to
achieve a modus vivendi among religious factions within the body politic;
doctrinal purity would come later. 17 Among Luther’s heirs (he died in 1546),
“Genuine Lutherans” excoriated the “Philippists,” 18 who in their view cra-
venly submitted to the demands of Catholic rulers and who also showed a
disquieting receptivity to certain Calvinist ideas. Calvinists were horrified by
erstwhile confreres who adopted Anti-Trinitarian views, a tendency that was
strong in areas of weak political authority, such as Poland and Transylvania.
In sum, while Latin Christians were better instructed than their forebears,
they were also divided as never before into warring theological camps. 19
Holy war was among the disputed questions. One problem for Protestants
was that Crusades were by definition sponsored by popes. 20 The Holy
League, the unlikely alliance that achieved victory at Lepanto, was organized
by Pope Pius V (r. 1566–1572). Clement VIII (r. 1592–1605) found in the
Long Turkish War an opportunity to reaffirm papal leadership. In 1594, the
alliances that shifted the war to the lower Danube—between Rudolf II and
the three Danubian princes—were negotiated by a Jesuit diplomat sent from
Rome. Other papal envoys, sometimes traveling in secret, made contact with
Orthodox prelates under Ottoman rule. Still others lobbied at Catholic courts
for military assistance for Hungary. Papal diplomats did not rely on the
312 Chapter 6

clichés of popular propaganda against the Turks; they stressed that the secu-
lar advance of Ottoman power would only stop if met by equal or superior
force. 21 Not all Catholic governments welcomed such approaches. Both Ven-
ice and Poland-Lithuania would have jeopardized important interests by join-
ing an anti-Ottoman alliance. Hence the Signoria held firmly to its truce with
the Porte, as did Poland-Lithuania, led by the Commonwealth’s grand chan-
cellor. 22 But France’s ambivalent reaction shows that the ancient idea of holy
war still had resonance. Savary de Brèves, Henri IV’s ambassador, hoped to
return from the Porte and make the case for France to resume its historic role
as leader of Christian armies against the infidel. 23 French noblemen brought
troops to Hungary, with permission from the king. If Henri IV himself made
undertakings to the pope that he ultimately did not keep, “it is hard not to see
in his promises a kernel of genuineness.” 24
Martin Luther had a deeper objection to the idea of a “holy” war: it
contradicted what was for him a vital distinction between “two kingdoms.”
The realm of the Gospel, dependent on divine grace, did not admit of coer-
cion; in the kingdom of this world, given over to man’s greed and lust for
power, God established rulers to rein in disorder. Whether the prince was
pagan or Christian, Christians obeyed God by obeying him. Luther accepted
the traditional view that the Turks were a scourge from God, but he thought
initially that they ought to be resisted “by penance, not by war.” He subse-
quently conceded that a purely defensive war was permissible. But if the
emperor undertakes such a campaign, Luther said, “his sword has nothing to
do with the faith; it belongs to the kingdom of this world.” 25
Sermons against the Turk, frequent during the Long Turkish War, thus
came in two flavors. All preachers insisted that poor Christian folk suffered a
wretched tyranny under Ottoman rule. But while Catholic sermons presented
Muslim Turks as enemies of God, aiming to extirpate the religion of Jesus
Christ, Lutheran homilies held back from urging believers to fight in the
name of Christ, especially in an offensive war. One finds the same view
among theologically sophisticated Lutheran laymen, as in David Ungnad’s
circular letter to the Austrian estates, which stressed a hopeful endurance: no
matter how bleak things looked, Christians must keep up the fight, holding
fast to the belief that God in his mercy would not allow the foe to triumph. 26
In 1595, one Lutheran theologian moved toward Catholic views by endorsing
a counter-attack against the Turks as “justified in the sight of God and the
world.” 27 Did this difference in beliefs hamper the Habsburg war effort?
More likely, it helped. One had to take the war to the enemy, as promoted by
 Two Wars and Three Borders, 1593–1618 313

the Crusade tradition. But guarding the frontier was the first necessity. For
the mainly Lutheran nobles who managed Austrian military affairs, the pa-
tient resolve inculcated by their faith was surely an asset.

Catholic-Lutheran Confrontation in the Austrian Duchies

Under Maximilian II (d. 1576), Catholics and Lutherans staked rival claims
to public spaces. If Maximilian maintained Catholic control of the main
urban churches, nobles named Lutheran pastors in villages they controlled. In
the capital city 28 of each Austrian Land or duchy, the Landhaus (where the
estates met) hosted Lutheran services. Direct confrontation was, however,
largely avoided. Theologians favored by the emperor still hoped Catholics
and Lutherans might settle their differences. Lutheran pastors tended to be
graduates of Tübingen and Wittenberg, strongholds of the “Philippist” doc-
trine of passive resistance. If a prince commanded his subjects to violate their
conscience, their Christian duty was to disobey, and if need be to suffer the
consequences. But disobedience must never extend to open rebellion against
duly constituted authority. 29 Under Rudolf II, those who refused to compro-
mise with error gained strength on both sides. One mark of renewed Catholic
confidence was the revival of rituals reviled by Protestants, such as bearing
the consecrated host through the streets on the feast of Corpus Christi. After a
hiatus of fifteen years, Rudolf II reinstituted Vienna’s procession in 1577. He
also outlawed Lutheran services in the Lower Austrian Landhaus and began
replacing Lutheran members of the city council with Catholics. Meanwhile,
Genuine Lutheran preachers, expelled from other territories, had found posts
in Lower Austria; one was Joshua Opitz, the official preacher of Lower
Austria’s estates. These men emulated Luther by frequently denouncing the
papal Antichrist, and they had no qualms about defying an emperor who
sponsored idolatry. In 1578, Opitz organized a violent disruption of the Cor-
pus Christi procession. After this symbolic rebellion, Rudolf showed the first
signs of mental instability—but not before ordering further efforts to curtail
Lutheran public worship in Vienna. 30
In Inner Austria, Archduke Karl had forced Graz to accept the establish-
ment of a Jesuit college (1572); it attracted some Protestant pupils, but not as
many as the Lutheran college in the Landhaus. In 1578, as the price of their
support for military reforms, the estates compelled him to accept the Pacifi-
cation of Bruck, extending the toleration that Lutheran nobles enjoyed to the
larger cities of his duchies. 31 For this concession to heresy he was for a time
excommunicated by the pope. Karl’s father-in-law, Archduke Albert of Ba-
314 Chapter 6

varia, then convened a conference in Munich, where Archdukes Karl and

Ernst promised to follow a strategy for the eventual restoration of Catholi-
cism: there would be no further concessions, and those that had been granted
would be interpreted strictly, with no tolerance for Protestant activities not
explicitly permitted. Archduke Karl thus ordered the suppression of Lutheran
worship where it was not authorized by the Pacification of Bruck—that is, in
towns in the archducal domain. But the frequency of such edicts suggests
they were not effective, and Karl did not have much better luck in promoting
Catholic nobles to administrative posts. 32
The real Counter-Reformation in Inner Austria began with Archduke Fer-
dinand II (b. 1578). After studies at the Jesuit University of Ingolstadt in
Bavaria, he was declared of age by Rudolf II in July 1596. Especially in light
of his reign as emperor (1619–1637), Ferdinand is sometimes presented as a
religious fanatic, a “silly Jesuited soul.” He is better understood as a devout
prince whose “desire to advance Catholicism was tempered by a deep legal-
ism that prevented him from deviating from what he understood as the con-
stitution.” 33 Ferdinand believed that his highest duty was to save the souls of
his subjects by repressing heresy. But since outright persecution did not
work, the proper tactic was to enforce the letter of the law, especially against
Lutheran preachers, those disturbers of the public peace. In December 1596,
the estates asked him to confirm the Pacification of Bruck before being
acclaimed as archduke. Ferdinand refused, insisting that they accept him
without condition as their rightful sovereign. Lest they be seen as rebels, the
estates complied. They presented a formal protest and chose to interpret the
archduke’s ensuing silence as a tacit acceptance of their demands. Two years
later Ferdinand made it clear that he had not accepted the Pacification and
thus saw no reason not to act against Lutheran preachers and teachers, nine-
teen of whom he now ordered to leave Graz. In response, the estates con-
tended that the Austrian duchies were “members” of the Holy Roman Empire
and were thus entitled to the religious guarantees of the 1555 Peace of Augs-
burg. Ferdinand replied that only the prince was a “member” of the empire,
with rights to determine the religion of his territory. Months of negotiation at
the imperial court in Prague failed to settle this issue. Meanwhile, in 1600,
Ferdinand decreed that all Lutheran burghers of Graz must either convert or
go into exile. About 150 men chose exile. The rest assembled in the city’s
main church and swore an oath to uphold the Catholic faith. The freedom of
religion that nobles still enjoyed seemed increasingly precarious. In 1603, a
large majority of magnates and nobles in all three provinces presented a
 Two Wars and Three Borders, 1593–1618 315

petition: if the archduke did not confirm their religious liberty, they would
emigrate, and they invited him to purchase their lands. Ferdinand called their
bluff. He had never expelled a nobleman for his beliefs, he said, and he
would not buy anyone’s land. 34
Lutheranism in Inner Austria had tactical weaknesses that facilitated Fer-
dinand’s re-Catholicization campaign. Long-standing friction between no-
bles and towns made it easier for Lutheran nobles to look aside as Lutheran
preachers were expelled from the towns. Also, Lutheranism here was “sub-
stantially Philippist,” meaning that preachers endorsed no more than passive
resistance to a lawful sovereign. 35 These conditions did not prevail through-
out the Austrian lands. In Upper Austria, towns and noble estates joined
together in compelling Habsburg authorities to respect religious concessions
extracted from Rudolf II in 1578. When Upper Austrian peasants revolted in
1595 against oppressive taxation, they began by attacking the parish houses
of Catholic priests. One of the leaders of a two-year uprising was Georg
Erasmus von Tschernembl, a Calvinist nobleman who would subsequently
have a long career as an organizer of anti-Habsburg rebellions. 36 Even in
Inner Austria the estates sometimes withstood the sovereign’s demands. In
September 1600, as an Ottoman siege army converged on Kanizsa, Ferdi-
nand summoned an emergency session to ask for a special subsidy. When a
spokesman for the nobility demanded assurances in the matter of religion
that Ferdinand declined to provide, the estates adjourned without voting on a
subsidy. A relief force was dispatched, not from nearby Styria but from more
distant Győr, and it arrived too late to break through the Ottoman siege. 37
True religion was indeed Ferdinand’s highest priority, and it came at a cost.

Eastern Orthodoxy

Both Lutherans and Catholics sought contact with Orthodox leaders in this
era, albeit with different objectives. In Wittenberg, Philip Melanchthon (d.
1560) hoped to obtain from the Greeks confirmation that Lutheran doctrine,
far from being the innovation that Catholics decried, was consonant with the
teachings of the early Church. A Greek scholar, Melanchthon corresponded
with officials of the patriarchate in Constantinople, two of whom visited
Wittenberg at different times. But a Greek translation of the Augsburg Con-
fession failed to reach the patriarch because the Greek churchman carrying it
from Wittenberg died en route. Melanchthon’s friend David Ungnad re-
opened communication in 1573 when he arrived at the Sublime Porte as
imperial ambassador. Stephan Gerlach, Ungnad’s Greek-speaking chaplain,
316 Chapter 6

presented the patriarch a copy of the Augustana Graeca sent by a colleague

of Gerlach’s in the theology faculty at Tübingen. The same man later pub-
lished a summary of points on which Lutheran and Orthodox thinkers
agreed. 38
Elsewhere in Orthodox Europe, papal diplomats sought to initiate discus-
sions leading to a union of the churches along the lines of the union briefly
achieved at the Council of Florence in 1439: Orthodox bishops would pro-
fess obedience to the pope and accept Catholic doctrine on disputed points
while retaining their distinctive liturgy and practices. For reasons of their
own, some Orthodox leaders welcomed contacts of this kind. Among the
Ruthenians 39 of Poland-Lithuania, the largest Orthodox community living
under Latin-Christian rule, many bishops, led by the metropolitan of Kiyiv
(Kiev), hoped for a union with Rome that would allow them to preserve their
worship and discipline, including a married clergy. Meanwhile, prominent
laymen hoped to strengthen Orthodoxy by persuading the patriarch of Con-
stantinople to relocate in Poland-Lithuania. Poland-Lithuania’s king pro-
moted the bishops’ plan by agreeing to accept them as ex officio members of
the Senate, on a par with Latin-rite bishops. Proposals brought to Rome by a
Ruthenian bishop were approved by Pope Clement VIII, and then at a synod
of bishops held at Brest in October 1596. 40
Most Orthodox Christians lived under Ottoman rule. Moreover, Orthodox
soldiers served the sultan in considerable numbers, especially in garrisons
and auxiliary units. Were Orthodox Greeks and Slavs part of a larger Chris-
tian world, or were they subjects of an empire whose laws promised them a
religious freedom not likely under Catholic rule? 41 In the years before and
after 1600, this was an open question. Many Orthodox prelates sent pleas for
help in freeing this or that area from the sultan’s tyranny—especially at times
when Ottoman power was under attack from the West. In the 1570s a Greek-
speaking archbishop in what is now Macedonia sent a messenger to Don
Juan of Austria, while Albanian-speaking villages under his jurisdiction
wrote to Venice. In the 1590s, “all the peoples of Thessaly, Epirus and
Macedonia” (all in northern Greece) wrote to Clement VIII, and an envoy
arrived in Rome claiming to represent “all the peoples of Albania and Mace-
donia.” Clan leaders in Herzegovina sent a representative to Rome in 1596,
and in 1602 an assembly of 250 Albanian notables sent one of their number
to Venice. These appeals described Ottoman rule as more oppressive than
ever, an allegation best left to Ottoman historians for evaluation. In fact, the
communication back and forth had few practical results. Venice had no inter-
 Two Wars and Three Borders, 1593–1618 317

est in expanding its military commitments in the East, and neither did Spain,
even if there was a viceroy of Naples who had to be corrected on this point.
After the abortive seizure of Klis in 1596 (discussed below), there were many
plots and conspiracies in the Ottoman Balkans, but few signs of active will-
ingness to rebel against the sultan. 42

MATERIAL RESOURCES FOR A LONG WAR: ARMAMENTS

AND FINANCE

Ottoman Military Advantages

In 1594, Sinan Paşa commanded the largest Ottoman army Hungary had seen
since the time of Suleyman the Lawgiver. But once the lower-Danube princi-
palities declared against the sultan, the Ottomans had to maintain two armies
along the Danube, one near Buda, the other near Bucharest. Thus they some-
times had numerical superiority over the Habsburg forces they faced, and
sometimes they did not. What is worthy of note is that they were able to keep
between sixty thousand and one hundred thousand men in the field year after
year. 43
The war was marked by insubordination in the Ottoman ranks and by
outright mutiny in Anatolia. When Sinan Paşa was ready to set out in 1594,
Janissaries at the Porte initially refused to go unless led by the sultan in
person. Once in Hungary, they halted their march until money for a promised
pay raise actually reached the camp. A few years later the sipahis would not
quit the capital until two conditions were met: a million ducats in wages and
gifts, and a decree by the grand mufti annulling an angry pronouncement by
the grand vezir (he said disobedient soldiers were “infidels” whose wives
would be infertile). 44 Meanwhile, in 1596, the first in a series of mutinies
broke out in Anatolia’s Karaman province. The rebels, known as çelali or
jelali, came from the Ottoman army, and they carried firearms. They were
eventually dealt a crushing blow, but for several years the Porte handled the
problem through negotiations. For example, one leader, Deli Hasan Paşa,
was bought off by offering him the governorship of Bosnia. According to
Ottoman chroniclers, the mutineers were men who had been dismissed from
service in Hungary. A modern historian, finding little to support this view,
points instead to an impoverished rural economy in south-central Anatolia.
Ottomanists do not see the çelali revolts as leading to a “decline” of the state;
there was instead a kind of decentralization in which provincial governors
318 Chapter 6

gained greater authority. 45 It was in any case not the empire Suleyman had
ruled. In his time, mutineers would not have been allowed to occupy heart-
land provinces for nearly a decade.
What matters here is the contemporary European perception of Ottoman
power. Like Busbecq in the 1550s, European observers in the 1590s were
struck by the frugality of Ottoman soldiers on the march. Even at a later
period, for which better documentation is available, they were content with
less than half the daily ration of meat that European fighting men de-
manded. 46 There was likely a difference in living standards between the two
worlds, but soldiers who are picky about their diet can be a problem for
commanders. In Sultan Mehmed III’s camp in 1596, a French diplomat saw
“vestiges” of the great and ancient Ottoman military discipline: “Though
libertine by nature, the Turks remain in camp with their weapons to hand as if
they were monks. Not one of them dares to take merchandise without paying
for it, or molest anyone, no matter who it is.” This author does not make the
contrast with European soldiers explicit, as Busbecq did, but he did not have
to; the organized chaos of a European army on the march was well known. 47
Proof of Ottoman discipline—or rather of European indiscipline—came at
Mezőkeresztes, near Eger. Well-entrenched Austrian and Transylvanian
troops used withering fire to hold off the Ottomans, then drove them back
across swampy ground, gaining possession of more than one hundred pieces
of artillery. Then, instead of pressing their advantage, Archduke Maximilian
II’s men abandoned themselves to plunder of the treasure they found in the
sultan’s camp, giving the Ottomans an opportunity for a decisive counter-
stroke. 48
The Ottomans were also better at conquering fortified sites. Not counting
smaller fortresses that often changed hands, the Ottomans won out in the
competition for positions that truly mattered: they gained Eger and Kanizsa
and reclaimed all three of their key positions that were briefly held by the
Habsburgs (Esztergom, Székesfehérvár, and Pest). The only Habsburg suc-
cess of this magnitude was retaking Győr; in other words, they lost two major
fortresses, not three. One advantage that Ottoman siege engineers enjoyed
was again the discipline of the troops. Since European soldiers of these
decades still disdained manual labor, siege trenches were dug by local peas-
ants, either hired or dragooned into service. Ottoman soldiers, led by the
Janissaries, dug their own trenches, sitting cross-legged as they worked. In a
later century, when Habsburg soldiers carried shovels, one commander noted
that Ottoman trenches were longer and deeper. 49
 Two Wars and Three Borders, 1593–1618 319

Habsburg Military Advantages

The Habsburg edge in firepower increased as time passed, at least in hand-

held weapons. 50 Beginning in the 1560s, there was across Europe a steady
tendency to increase the number of infantrymen with firearms and diminish
the number of pikemen; plans drawn up by the imperial diet in 1570 envi-
sioned that a “banner” of four hundred men would have only fifty pikemen.
Foot soldiers in the Long Turkish War typically carried muskets. Weighing
between four and ten kilograms, they were heavier than arquebuses and
required a “fork” or shooting rest; but they were easier to load, more accu-
rate, and had greater power to penetrate armor. A cavalryman typically had a
pistol as well as an arquebus (weighing one or two kilograms) carried in a
case attached to his saddle. 51 The Ottoman government made parallel efforts.
Already in the reign of Murad III (1574–1595), Janissaries carried Spanish-
style muskets, with stronger barrels that fired heavier shot. During the Long
Turkish War, units of musketeers were recruited. What had been an army of
“mounted archers in loose formations” thus became an army of “infantry
with firearms in deep formations.” But the Ottomans seem not to have kept
up with the general spread of firearms among Habsburg troops, especially
among the cavalry. 52 Superior firepower gave the Habsburgs an edge in
large-scale engagements, as at Mezőkeresztes.

Ottoman War Finance

Starting from the fourteenth century, European princes fought their wars with
borrowed money; in return for making payments to troops at the required
intervals, merchant-bankers were given control of specified state revenues to
pay themselves back over time. 53 The Ottoman Empire never became depen-
dent on the private economy, and freedom from the credit markets had its
advantages. One reason for the relative superiority of the Ottoman logistics
system was that while the Habsburgs expected suppliers to extend credit, the
Ottomans paid cash. In 1596, for example, a vezir traveled to Buda to orga-
nize logistical support for the siege of Eger; for victuals, boats for pontoon
bridges, and other supplies, he carried the equivalent of 720,000 ducats in
cash. 54 But credit also offered a lifeline in difficult times, and this margin of
security was not readily available to the Ottoman government. The Ottoman
state imposed forced loans on officials and wealthy subjects and borrowed
from the imperial kitchen and from the surplus funds of charitable founda-
320 Chapter 6

tions. But by comparison with Europe’s public-subscription loans, “the scale

of Ottoman borrowing was insignificant.” 55
A further problem was that the real income of the Ottoman state seems
not to have increased over time. Linda Darling calculates that revenue rose
by 217 percent between 1560 and 1660, while inflation rose by 225 per-
cent. 56 A conflict that lasted thirteen years could thus strain the resources
even of the Ottoman treasury. According to a 1605 report from the Venetian
bailo, Sultan Ahmed I and one of the chief treasurers spent two days poring
over the books; they found expected income equal to 3 million ducats as
against expenses totaling six million. Much of the deficit was due to a
marked discrepancy between the number of soldiers on the payroll and those
actually serving, a problem that could not safely be remedied in time of
war. 57 During the Long Turkish War, Ottoman commanders, like the Aus-
trians, raised money on their own account to keep up wages until cash arrived
from Istanbul. According to treasury records, these loans, for up to 3 million
akçe (60,000 ducats), were repaid punctually, without interest. 58
The interesting and as yet unanswered question about Ottoman war fi-
nance is the extent to which shortages were covered by loans to the “outer”
or state treasury from the “inner treasury,” the private treasury of the sultan.
Venetian baili tried their best to ferret out the secrets of this ultimate redoubt
of the sultan’s power, and one who is not familiar with Ottoman records
cannot tell how good their information was. The inner treasury was enriched
over the years by the sultan’s share of the booty of conquest and by the
annual tribute from Egypt, whose value in 1594 was estimated by the bailo at
700,000 scudi (about 600,000 ducats). 59
According to a contemporary French report from 1595, Sultan Murad II
had “amassed an infinite treasure, greater than all the other sultans com-
bined.” Sultans were in any case parsimonious about doling out specie from
their private treasury. Murad III reportedly complained that loans he author-
ized “had not been repaid.” 60 In 1593, Sinan Paşa requested a campaign loan
of 5 million ducats from the inner treasury, for repayment of which he
pledged all his personal property. Murad III sent him 1 million. When the
Janissaries refused to continue their march without more money, he approved
delivery of a further sum equal to the Egyptian tribute. 61 In 1594 Sinan sent
three successive appeals to the sultan, warning that his army was lost if help
did not come; “conquered by fear,” according to the bailo, Murad again sent
the equivalent of the Cairo tribute. The money was to travel day and night by
coach, escorted by sipahis. 62 The inner treasury made frequent loans in the
 Two Wars and Three Borders, 1593–1618 321

final years of the war. In 1604, it was apparently the only source of funding
for campaigns in Hungary. In April 1605, after “hundreds of thousands” had
already been taken from the inner treasury, the grand vezir dispatched a
galley squadron to Egypt to bring the tribute, along with gunpowder and
grain; when the money arrived, Sultan Ahmed I sent 200,000 ducats to István
Bocskai, his new ally in Transylvania. 63

Habsburg War Finance

From the start of Rudolf II’s reign in 1576, the Hungarian frontier was
heavily dependent on support from the Holy Roman Empire. Of the six
“captaincies” or border sectors, four, including Croatia, could scarcely have
been maintained without subsidies from the imperial diet. 64 But funds voted
in 1582 ran out in September 1587, and the idiosyncratic Rudolf II had
avoided the trouble of calling another diet. It was thus crucial for the Habs-
burg war effort that the 1594 Diet of Regensburg agreed to provide eighty
“Roman months” over the years 1594–1597. It seems that Zacharias Geizko-
fler, the imperial treasurer, was able to collect a bit less than 90 percent of the
sums voted; at this rate, the diet’s grant was worth 4,560,000 Rhine gulden.
In 1597, the diet approved sixty “Roman months” for 1598–1602, or about
3,420,000 gulden. 65 Religious friction was not altogether absent from these
discussions. After the 1597 meeting, Protestant estates claimed to be respon-
sible only for the forty Roman months they approved, not for the sixty
months voted by the Catholic majority. But this dispute was eventually re-
solved; the mutual respect that was a legacy of Ferdinand I’s time survived,
enough for Protestant princes and cities to support the war in Hungary. In all,
grants from the diet during the war amounted to about 12 million gulden. 66
Meanwhile, Geizkofler, at Rudolf’s suggestion, negotiated with major princi-
palities for additional grants over and above their quotas in sums voted by the
diet. Local authorities did not mind introducing new taxes to fund these
grants, because they continued levying them for their own purposes. The
territories thus provided a further 7 million to 9 million gulden. 67
The Austrian and Bohemian estates controlled local taxes and used part of
the money for their own purposes, such as paying down the debts of the
estates. For the period just before the Long Turkish War began, taxes voted
for the use of the central government are estimated to have yielded about
2,400,000 gulden per year. 68 Taxes approved during the war years surpassed
funding from the empire, although it is not clear by how much. The Habs-
burg Monarchy of this era did not have a budget. Vienna sent the diet an
322 Chapter 6

account of sums paid by the war paymaster’s office between 1592 and 1601,
but not all military payments passed through this office and the document
itself was intended to convince the German estates that the Habsburg lands
were doing their part. 69 One scholar finds that the six Austrian duchies pro-
vided nearly 14 million gulden during the war, and the five lands of the
Bohemian crown nearly 20 million. Another estimates 40 million gulden for
the Austrian and Bohemian lands together. 70
These sums do not greatly exceed what would have come in if taxes were
collected for thirteen years at the pre-war level of 2.4 million gulden. 71 In
other words, it may be that the religious policies of the Habsburg sovereigns
limited their ability to appeal for greater sacrifices, and not just in the case of
Kanizsa. 72 At the 1579 family conference in Munich, where plans were laid
for a Catholic restoration in the Austrian lands, Archduke Karl was assured
that if his Protestant estates proved recalcitrant, he could count on loans from
Bavaria and the papacy to tide him over. 73 Pope Clement VIII redeemed this
pledge during the Long Turkish War by sending money and men to Hungary
and by encouraging Catholic princes to do their part. War funding from
Catholic powers has been estimated at 7.5 million gulden, including 2.85
million from the papacy, 3.85 million from Spain, and smaller sums from
Italian princes, especially Grand Duke Ferdinand I of Tuscany (r.
1589–1609). 74 Yet it seems unlikely that what the Habsburgs gained by
appealing to Catholic solidarity abroad made up for what they lost at home
by riding roughshod over the religious liberties of their Protestant subjects.
Altogether, the Habsburgs raised a total of between 60 million and 70
million gulden. But the sums promised were rarely delivered on time. Subsi-
dies voted by the Austrian estates were invariably in arrears, and so were the
quotas subscribed by the German territories great and small that paid imperi-
al taxes.
Since troops demanded their wages, the gaps had to be covered by bor-
rowing; for example, wealthy imperial cities often agreed to “anticipate”
their imperial tax quotas—a good deed that collected interest. Before the war,
when grants from the diet ceased (from 1587 to 1594), defenses along the
Slavonian-Croatian frontier were kept up only because Styria proved willing
to incur substantial new debt. The provincial estates continued lending dur-
ing the war, as did Zacharias Geizkofler, borrowing in the name of the
imperial diet, while financial officials in Vienna and Prague borrowed in
Rudolf II’s name. There were large loans from wealthy men, like a Fugger in
Augsburg or a well-known Jewish merchant in Prague. But most creditors
 Two Wars and Three Borders, 1593–1618 323

were investors of the middling sort, lesser nobles and burghers. 75 Such mas-
sive dependence on the private credit market, especially in time of war, was
characteristic for European governments of this era. It was also a fundamen-
tal difference between the Habsburg Monarchy and the Ottoman Empire.

THE LONG TURKISH WAR

In Search of Guiding Hands and Grand Strategies

Given that two great states fought a long war, one naturally asks who the key
figures were on both sides and what objectives they pursued. For the Long
Turkish War, however, these obvious questions do not have clear answers.
On the Habsburg side, Archduke Matthias in Vienna governed Hungary in
Rudolf II’s name, and members of the Hofkriegsrat traveled back and forth
between Vienna and Prague; one was David Ungnad, president of the war
council until his retirement in 1603. Despite the emperor’s notoriously labile
disposition, 76 his authority was not challenged within the dynasty until April
1606, when Matthias, the oldest surviving brother, convened a secret family
conference in Vienna. 77 Moreover, Rudolf is also known to have approved
certain decisions by field commanders that proved of great import for the
outcome of the war. Yet he often secluded himself from human contact.
Diplomats accredited to the court, like the papal nuncio and the Spanish
ambassador, could not gain access to him for long periods. The two advisers
he trusted during the early years of the war were dismissed after Rudolf
experienced a mental crisis in 1600. Afterward he occasionally gave audi-
ence to various officials, but even they might not see him for weeks. 78
The Porte’s decision-making process was even more opaque. Apart from
his 1596 campaign, Sultan Mehmed III (r. 1595–1603) kept to the inner
quarters of Topkapi palace. For private meetings with high officials, like the
grand mufti, the sultan now spoke from behind a curtain. 79 Also, the office of
grand vezir changed hands fifteen times between 1593 and 1606. Yet two
men held the office three times, for a total of nearly four years each, and both
were shapers of state policy. Sinan Paşa (d. 1596) focused the war effort on
advancing the frontier north and west of Buda; Damat Ibrahim Paşa (d. 1601)
took important steps toward this goal by conquering Eger in 1596 and Kaniz-
sa in 1600. 80 The replacement of one grand vezir by another reflected com-
petition among factions within the imperial harem, the family quarters. Until
Mehmed III’s death, the leading faction was controlled by his mother, Safiye,
324 Chapter 6

Europe South of the Carpathians, ca. 1590

the valide sultana; she was, among other things, the mother-in-law of Damat
Ibrahim Paşa and (usually) an active promoter of his interests. 81
Meanwhile, princes on the lower Danube had their own objectives. North
of the Danube, in modern Romania, the Carpathian Mountains form an east-
ward-pointing arc. West of the arc, Transylvania nestled in the foothills.
Moldova was east of the arc and to the north; Wallachia lay south of the arc
and had the Danube as its southern border. Moldova and Wallachia, both cut
off from the Black Sea by an Ottoman province, were vassal states of the
sultan from the fifteenth century, Transylvania from 1528. Princes, called
vojvods, were elected by the estates, subject to approval by the Porte. Otto-
man rule weighed more heavily in the late sixteenth century, especially in
Moldova and Wallachia, where the tribute demanded for approbation of each
new vojvod increased exponentially. Transylvania enjoyed more leeway, es-
pecially under the familiar Szapolyai dynasty, which became extinct with the
death in 1571 of János Zsigmund. The Porte accepted István Báthory as
prince and then promoted his successful candidacy for the throne of Poland-
Lithuania in 1576 in order to block a Habsburg candidacy. Again with Otto-
man approval, Transylvania’s estates named a regency council for Zsigmund
Báthory, István’s four-year-old nephew. When Zsigmund was declared of
 Two Wars and Three Borders, 1593–1618 325

age in 1588, he at once joined an alliance of Christian princes against the

Turks. By contrast with Transylvania, Wallachia was considered weak be-
cause the Ottomans controlled its Danube fortresses. In 1593, however, a
Turkish-speaking merchant named Mihai Patraşcu, already prominent in
Wallachian politics, bribed his way past Ottoman objections and became
vojvod. In the war that soon began, Michael the Brave—to give him his
sobriquet—would prove to be the most effective commander. 82

Sinan Paşa’s War, 1594–1599

Ottoman court gossip made Sinan Paşa the author of the fighting in Hungary.
Because of his ambition to serve once more as commander-in-chief, it was
said, he had gone to war without taking time to prepare properly. 83 Nonethe-
less, Ottoman campaigns between 1594 and 1599 showed that the grand
vezir was right to think there was still a potential for expansion beyond Buda.
In 1594, Habsburg and imperial forces were off the mark quicker. The main
army, under Archduke Matthias, dug in around the Danube fortress-city of
Esztergom. Smaller forces elsewhere captured two important fortresses, and
later in the year Juraj Zrinski and his colleagues soundly defeated the Paşa of
Buda and his men near Székesfehérvár. But the arrival of Sinan Paşa with a
large army caused Matthias to raise the siege, even before forty thousand
Tatars from Crimea joined the Ottoman camp. Sinan Paşa moved west to
Győr, the Habsburg anchor fortress on the right bank of the Danube. To the
surprise of the besiegers, Győr surrendered after only twenty days of bom-
bardment; its captain was later tried and convicted of treason in Vienna. With
Ottoman troops now holding a strong position near Vienna, Sinan Paşa be-
lieved the sultan could withdraw from the war with honor if Rudolf accepted
the loss of Győr. 84 Instead, Rudolf attempted to shift the theater of fighting to
the lower Danube.
One offer of help from the East came uninvited to Prague. The Zapori-
zhian Cossacks formed a quasi-independent Cossack state on the lower
Dniepr, nominally subject to Poland-Lithuania and constantly at war with the
Tatars. In 1594 an envoy from their assembly volunteered the services of his
comrades against the Turks. Meanwhile, however, efforts by a papal diplo-
mat to recruit Cossacks were blocked by Poland’s anti-Habsburg grand chan-
cellor. 85 Rudolf made better connections with the Danubian vojvods, whose
courts were visited early in 1594 by the same papal diplomat en route to
Poland. In February 1594, Transylvania’s Zsigmund Báthory announced an
alliance with the emperor and the pope, but the estates refused to endorse it.
326 Chapter 6

In a state where Catholics were a minority, Ottoman overlordship was seen

as a necessary support for a constitution that tolerated multiple Christian
confessions. Zsigmund threatened to resign, and he finally got the estates to
declare war against the Porte when he entered Alba Iulia (Gyulafehérvár) at
the head of an army. 86
Moldova’s vojvod agreed to an alliance with Rudolf on August 1. In
Wallachia, Michael the Brave convened his boyars (the nobles) to decide
“how to deliver the country from pagan hands.” Following a vote by the
estates, he sent emissaries to Transylvania and Moldova, and the three voj-
vods agreed to coordinate their moves. Michael began the action: in Novem-
ber, his men ejected Ottoman troops garrisoned in Bucharest. 87
In January 1595, István Bocskai, Zsigmund Báthory’s maternal uncle,
accepted on his sovereign’s behalf a treaty by which Rudolf II recognized
Zsigmund Báthory as a princeps (prince), independent from Hungarian suze-
rainty. Meanwhile, Sinan Paşa led fifty thousand men toward Wallachia and
arranged for five hundred boats for bridge building to be ready at a Danube
crossing point. Zsigmund now persuaded Michael the Brave to accept him as
suzerain of Wallachia; in Moldova, the vojvod was replaced by a successor
who also swore fealty to Báthory. Sinan did not get as far as the Danube; in
February, he was ousted as grand vezir in favor of a longtime rival, Serdar
Ferhat Paşa. Ferhat took time to ensure his supplies; he had grain brought
from Egypt, and he used the five hundred boats for a pontoon bridge across
the Danube near Giurgiu, southwest of Bucharest. Wallachia and Moldova
were now given out to beglerbegs to be ruled directly as Ottoman provinces.
But the actual fighting began badly, a circumstance that promoted Sinan
Paşa’s return as grand vezir. In July he occupied Bucharest, and then Mi-
chael’s capital, Targovişte, about fifty miles northwest. But Michael re-
claimed both cities. As the Ottomans withdrew, he chose a battle site where
his army, though smaller, had the advantage of fighting from cover. At
Giurgiu, the Ottomans suffered perhaps their worst defeat of the war. When
Michael attacked, thousands died in the crush to get across the pontoon
bridge, and the sultan’s precious cannon were dumped in the Danube. News
from the upper-Danube front was no better. Esztergom had surrendered to a
Habsburg military entrepreneur following a siege in which 1,500 shells a day
rained down on the fortress. Downstream, troops from Tuscany and the Papal
States conquered another important fortress. 88
Upon Sinan’s death in April 1596, the treasury seized his property, worth
more than 9 million ducats. Damat Ibrahim Paşa, Safiye’s son-in-law, now
 Two Wars and Three Borders, 1593–1618 327

became grand vezir for the first time. Possibly because of the fluidity of
lower-Danubian politics, the divan did not make it a priority to reverse the
disgrace at Giurgiu. Instead, the decision was taken to attack Eger, about fifty
miles northeast of Buda; Eger was not an anchor fortress, but it protected
Habsburg communications between the upper Danube and Transylvania.
While one of the vezirs went to Buda to organize supplies, Damat Ibrahim
Paşa, aided by a respected preacher from Aya Sofya Mosque, persuaded
Sultan Mehmed III that he must break with recent tradition and lead the army
himself. They departed from the capital in June and camped before Eger in
late September; the fortress surrendered three weeks later. 89 Having failed to
reach Eger in time, Archduke Maximilian and Zsigmund Báthory drew their
men up in a wagon fort facing swampy ground at Mezőkeresztes, where the
Ottoman army was expected to pass as it returned to Buda. Disregarding
what captured prisoners said about Habsburg dispositions, Ottoman com-
manders sent only the vanguard. When the vanguard retreated, they ordered a
full-scale assault, into withering fire from field guns mounted on the wagons
and volley-fire from musketeers. After three days of fighting and devastating
losses, Ottoman troops broke ranks and fled. The Christians advanced to the
Ottoman camp, only to have their triumph turn to ashes, even as the men
danced in glee on the sultan’s treasure chests. With Tatars in pursuit as they
fled, the army lost as many as fifty thousand men. 90
Nonetheless, the Habsburgs recovered and even strengthened their posi-
tion along the upper Danube over the next two years. In 1597, Rudolf’s
troops captured a fortress about twenty-five miles north of Buda, but Győr’s
Ottoman garrison resisted a siege. The imperial diet voted to continue its
support for the war, albeit at a lower level. Early in 1598, Count Adolf von
Schwarzenberg, a veteran of Habsburg wars in the Low Countries, led a
successful assault on Győr. Except for Esztergom, the Habsburgs now con-
trolled all important positions on the Danube between Komárom and Buda.
The next step was Buda itself, although Archduke Matthias did not begin his
siege until the campaign season was far advanced. Meanwhile, Satirci Meh-
med Paşa, the serdar for 1598, had orders to concentrate on prying Transyl-
vania loose from Habsburg control. Upon reports that forty thousand Aus-
trians were digging in around Buda, he broke off his siege of an important
city held by the Transylvanians and headed for Szolnok on the Tisza, a
tributary of the Danube, where he expected to find supplies. But no grain
ships waited at Szolnok—a rare glitch in the Ottoman logistics system; angry
328 Chapter 6

Janissaries ripped down the serdar’s tent. Still, with the onset of winter,
Matthias abandoned his siege of Buda. 91
After a year of Habsburg successes, Satirci Mehmed Paşa was dismissed
as serdar and then executed. After two grand vezirs came and went in short
order, Damat Ibrahim Paşa, the conqueror of Eger, was appointed for a
second time in January 1599. He apparently had two sets of orders, one for
making peace if the Habsburgs accepted Ottoman terms, and the other for a
new offensive if they refused. In June, he opened talks with Habsburg repre-
sentatives near Esztergom, but the discussion foundered because each side
demanded the return of what the other considered its prize of honor; the
Habsburgs would not give back Esztergom, and the Ottomans would not give
back Eger. Damat Ibrahim Paşa then surprised his foe by taking his army
across the Danube and up the river Nitra to attack Nové Zámky (Érsekújvár),
in modern Slovakia. This was the anchor fortress of the “mining towns”
sector of the Habsburg frontier, built at great expense in the 1570s with funds
from Bohemia and Moravia. Habsburg commanders were probably ill pre-
pared for a siege this far north, but the new-style fortress nonetheless held out
against its attackers. 92

Michael the Brave (1596–1601)

A Danubian vojvod navigated among strong cross currents. Internally, Mi-

chael faced pressure from the boyars of his estates, who formed the backbone
of his army; like nobles elsewhere, they demanded punctilious observance of
all their traditional privileges, not to mention others newly discovered. Exter-
nally, his lands lay within reach of three powerful states with ambitions on
the lower Danube. Habsburg kings of Hungary looked for any chance to
reclaim Transylvania, always thought to be the richest part of Hungary. The
Ottomans did not have to rule this region directly, but they would not tolerate
a vojvod who refused to take orders from the Porte. To the north, Poland-
Lithuania hoped to create a buffer against Ottoman power by controlling
Moldova. Closer to home, there had also been occasions when a strong
vojvod ruled two of the three principalities. 93 These circumstances make the
constant shifting of alliances understandable, if not easy to follow.
Michael had the Ottoman sultan as his southern neighbor, and since the
Poles had recently intervened in Moldova to install Jerome Movila as vojvod,
he also had a dangerous neighbor to his north. Hence, in 1596, even as his
troops raided Ottoman land south of the Danube, Michael’s envoy was in
Istanbul, discussing terms for his submission to the sultan. In January 1597,
 Two Wars and Three Borders, 1593–1618 329

the Porte recognized him (for a second time) as vojvod of Wallachia. Still, his
troops continued their attacks, as far as the Black Sea. In 1598, for example,
Michael’s commander fooled the Ottomans by having his gun-carriages cov-
ered in the red cloth used for the carts that carried tribute-coin to the Porte.
Meanwhile, further raids south of the Danube sparked an anti-Ottoman upris-
ing in the onetime capital of the kingdom of Bulgaria. 94 A vassal who be-
haved this way would normally feel the sultan’s wrath. But as Michael surely
understood, the Porte had more important problems.
One was in Transylvania. Zsigmund Báthory had angered his estates by
restoring the privileges of the Szekler, a Magyar-speaking warrior commu-
nity reduced over time to peasant status; to appease the nobles, he revoked
his grant, only to incur the permanent hostility of the Szekler, still potent as a
pool of military manpower. In Rome, Pope Clement VIII, an early sponsor,
lost confidence in a prince who seemed no more predictable in his behavior
than Rudolf II. By January 1597, Zsigmund’s envoy, István Bocskai, was
again in Prague, this time to discuss handing Transylvania over to Rudolf II.
Zsigmund abdicated in December, and Habsburg commissioners soon ar-
rived in Alba Iulia to take over. But a Transylvania under direct Habsburg
rule was not acceptable at the Porte—hence the decision to target in the 1598
campaign a key city held by Transylvania. Although Satirci Mehmed Paşa
had to abandon the siege because of the threat to Buda, the Habsburgs lost
their position in Transylvania. Bocskai, ousted from the governing council in
a palace intrigue, persuaded Zsigmund Báthory to return from exile, where-
upon he assumed once more the reins of government. Since Zsigmund could
not expect support from either Prague or Istanbul, he opened negotiations
with Poland-Lithuania. In March 1599, he agreed to abdicate once more, this
time in favor of his cousin, Cardinal András Báthory, a friend and protégé of
Poland’s grand chancellor; Cardinal András was also acceptable to the Porte.
Meanwhile, Moldova’s Jerome Movila had launched a campaign to install
his brother as vojvod of Wallachia. 95
In June 1598, shortly before Zsigmund resumed power in Transylvania,
Michael the Brave signed an alliance with Rudolf II at a Romanian Orthodox
monastery in Targovişte: in return for Michael’s military support, Rudolf
was to provide monthly wages and munitions for five thousand men. Otto-
man officials reacted strongly to news of the treaty and were in correspon-
dence with dissident Wallachian boyars, but Michael turned back their incur-
sions into his territory three times. To ward off a possible threat from Poland,
Michael recognized Cardinal András Báthory as his suzerain, a step which
330 Chapter 6

also restored him once more to favor at the Porte. Behind the scenes, howev-
er, he worked in concert with the Habsburgs. In the fall of 1599, as Michael
marched across the Carpathians into Transylvania, Giorgio Basta, the captain
of Habsburg Košice, brought men from the West to join forces with him.
Near Sibiu in late October, Szekler troops fighting under Cardinal András’s
banner helped determine the outcome of the decisive battle by defecting to
Michael. Since András was killed a few days later, Transylvania’s estates
acclaimed Michael as vojvod. Yet the horizon was clouded. By restoring
once more the privileges of his allies, the Szekler, Michael made enemies
among the nobles. Also, he had to balance his own contrary declarations of
loyalty to Prague and Istanbul. Rudolf had intended for Michael to govern
Transylvania jointly with Giorgio Basta, but Michael had other ideas. While
the Porte sent word of its approval of Transylvania’s new vojvod, Rudolf II
sent him a military adviser, David Ungnad. 96
With the Porte’s blessing, Michael moved against Moldova in 1600. The
combatants were evenly matched, since Jerome Movila in Moldova had sup-
port from Poland, and his brother’s campaigns in Wallachia detained a good
part of Michael’s army. After several months of fighting, Movila took refuge
in Poland, and Michael was acclaimed as vojvod by Moldova’s estates. Now,
for the first time ever, all the three lower-Danube principalities had the same
ruler. But the moment of unity was brief. In Transylvania, dissident nobles
formed a rebel army, joined by Giorgio Basta and his troops. When Michael
crossed the mountains, his army suffered defeat near Alba Iulia. At about the
same time, Polish forces reinstalled Jerome Movila and his brother as voj-
vods of Moldova and Wallachia. Michael’s only hope was to gain acceptance
as a Habsburg client. He arrived in Prague in January 1601 and was granted
an audience on March 1. Rudolf had been willing to recognize Michael as his
governor for Transylvania, but not as an independent princeps, and this was
likely the tenor of their conversation. Meanwhile, Transylvania’s estates re-
jected the authority claimed by Giorgio Basta and recalled Zsigmund
Báthory as their ruler for the fourth time. Michael and Basta, unlikely allies,
made common cause long enough to defeat Zsigmund north of Cluj
(Kolozsvár) in August 1601. Two days later, on authority he presumably had
from Rudolf, Basta gave orders for Michael’s assassination. 97

Kanizsa (1600–1602)

Notwithstanding improvements in the 1570s, Habsburg military administra-

tion was beset by three structural flaws, all of which converged at the anchor
 Two Wars and Three Borders, 1593–1618 331

fortress of Kanizsa in Hungary’s southwestern corner. First and foremost,

because of the monarchy’s composite character, some issues were left hang-
ing between the competing claims of neighboring sub-states. At the Vienna
Hauptberatschlagung in 1577, representatives of the Austrian estates could
not agree whether Kanizsa should come under the aegis of Lower Austria,
which had responsibility for western Hungary, or of Styria, which had re-
sponsibility for Slavonia, just across the Drava from Kanizsa. In 1600, as the
Hofkriegsrat in Vienna sought funding for an expedition to resupply Kaniz-
sa, they encountered resistance from the Hofkammer, whose members be-
lieved that this fortress ought to be Styria’s responsibility, since it protected
the Drava and its tributary, the Mur. When Kanizsa’s commander sent one of
his captains to Vienna early in 1600 with an urgent plea for grain and muni-
tions, he spent four months waiting in vain for the Hofkriegsrat and the
Hofkammer to sort out their differences. 98 Second, Habsburg officials re-
sponsible for supply never had the funds to build large stocks. Even though
Kanizsa’s garrison of eight hundred men was known to have grain for only a
few months, storehouses near and far were not able to help. The quartermas-
ter for the imperial diet reported that until harvesttime, in late summer, he
could not find grain even by offering a large sum in cash. When some grain
was found in Styria, officials could not find boats to ferry it down the Drava.
(The Ottomans, by contrast, could mobilize as many as five hundred boats on
the lower Danube.) 99 Finally, as noted above, the crisis at Kanizsa came at a
high point of Archduke Ferdinand’s campaign to re-Catholicize his lands. In
August, for example, as Styria’s estates considered a request from Archduke
Matthias to send supplies to Kanizsa, Ferdinand ordered them to dismiss
their Lutheran employees. 100
Regional Ottoman commanders knew of Kanizsa’s difficulties. When
Grand Vezir Damat Ibrahim Paşa held a council of war in Belgrade in July
1600, Tirjaki Hasan Paşa, the sancakbeg of nearby Szigetvár, persuaded him
to make Kanizsa the target of the campaign. One of the vezirs was sent ahead
with twenty-five thousand men to besiege Babócsa, guarding the approach to
Kanizsa from the south; this fortress surrendered quickly, on September 4.
By September 9, Ibrahim Paşa was digging in around Kanizsa. Habsburg
estimates of the size of his force vary extravagantly, from forty thousand to
one hundred thousand; if one adds in the troops that had just conquered
Babócsa, the lower number seems unlikely. Kanizsa was the successor to
Szigetvár, elevated to the status of an anchor fortress after the fall of
Szigetvár in 1566. In a boastful letter to Henri IV some months later, Sultan
332 Chapter 6

Mehmed III compared the two great Ottoman victories. As at Szigetvár, he

said, an Ottoman army of one hundred thousand men filled swampy ground
around the fortress with clay and built wooden gun platforms as high as the
walls. There is no doubt that the sultan’s men did their usual good work
digging trenches and emplacing artillery. According to a September 22 report
from Kanizsa’s commander, the fortress was now bombarded from no fewer
than nine trenches approaching the wall. The garrison nonetheless drove
back an assault on September 25, only to lose a good part of their dwindling
stock when a powder tower blew up the following night. 101
Meanwhile, a relief army mobilized at Győr under the general command
of Philippe Emmanuel de Lorraine, duc de Mercoeur. He had been a leader
of the Catholic League, subdued by Henri IV during the last phase of
France’s religious wars. Although the king chose not to break off France’s
long-standing alliance with the Porte, he was not displeased to see some of
the realm’s great barons, like Mercoeur, transfer their military ambitions to
Hungary. 102 Mercoeur left Győr on September 16 and brought his army
within sight of Kanizsa by October 5. A Habsburg council of war concluded
that Ottoman siege lines could not be broken through; hence the only way to
get supplies into Kanizsa was by a frontal assault on a much larger Ottoman
force. Mercoeur’s men attacked here and there with some success, but Damat
Ibrahim Paşa, knowing the advantage of his position, refused to risk it by
offering battle. With his supplies dwindling and his numbers reduced by the
desertion of Hungarian and Croatian troops, Mercoeur ordered a withdrawal.
Soon afterward, on October 20, Kanizsa surrendered. As a reward for his
good counsel, Tirjaki Hasan Paşa was named sancakbeg of Kanizsa. 103
This defeat caused alarm at Catholic courts: Kanizsa was thought to be
critical for the defense of Inner Austria. At the behest of Clement VIII, the
Grand Duke of Tuscany sent two thousand infantry; in an unusual step,
Venice facilitated their journey by allowing them to cross its territory. The
pope himself sent troops, under his nephew, and Philip III of Spain sent
money to recruit a regiment of Landsknechte. In early August 1601, the army
mustered on the Mur in southern Styria. Archduke Ferdinand chose to ac-
company the expedition while entrusting overall command to Vincenzo II
Gonzaga, the Duke of Mantua. Concurrently, to prevent the Ottomans from
concentrating their forces, a second army under Mercoeur and Schwarzen-
berg laid siege to Székesfehérvár. Meanwhile, Damat Ibrahim Paşa died in
Hungary early in July. The next grand vezir, Yemişçi Hasan Paşa, initially
argued that it was too late in the season to begin a campaign, but he was
 Two Wars and Three Borders, 1593–1618 333

persuaded otherwise after protests by the grand mufti and others reached the
ears of the sultan. Yemişçi Hasan failed to break the Habsburg siege at
Székesfehérvár, which soon surrendered; he turned toward Kanizsa, not far
distant, where Tirjaki Hasan Paşa, with a garrison of three thousand, was
holding his own against Archduke Ferdinand. Snow began to fall on Novem-
ber 14, and Ferdinand was apprised of the approach of a large army under the
grand vezir. He ordered a withdrawal on November 15, leaving behind his
artillery and six thousand sick and wounded men who were promptly dis-
patched by the Ottomans. 104
Székesfehérvár did not make up for the loss of Kanizsa; moreover,
Yemişçi Hasan Paşa recaptured it in August 1602. He then had a bit of
welcome news from Transylvania, where a Calvinist noble of Szekler origin
was asking for Ottoman help against Giorgio Basta, the Habsburg governor.
Before the grand vezir could reach Transylvania, however, he got word that
Archduke Matthias was besieging Pest. Defeated by the besiegers, Yemişçi
Hasan Paşa turned back to the Porte, leaving Habsburgs in control of Pest. 105

István Bocskai, 1603–1605

In 1603, Iran’s Shah ‘Abbas I responded to an insult from the Ottoman

ambassador by having the man’s beard shaved off and sent to the sultan. In
the protocol of rival claimants to the title padishah, 106 this was tantamount to
a declaration of war. ‘Abbas moved on to occupy Tabriz and laid siege to
Yerevan. At this point Hungary ceased to be the most important theater of
conflict for the Porte. Meanwhile, in Anatolia, one Deli Hasan Paşa had
succeeded his brother as commander of the rebels and built the çelali into a
formidable fighting force. Ottoman commanders had the sensible idea of
killing two birds with one stone: they bribed Deli Hasan Paşa by offering him
the governorship of Bosnia, on condition that he take his men to Hungary and
expel the Habsburgs from Pest; in fact, in an effort to capture a crucial
Danube island opposite Pest, the erstwhile rebels were decimated by Habs-
burg firepower, though Deli Hasan himself survived. 107
In Transylvania, the Calvinist-Szekler rebellion proved short-lived. When
the Porte sent assistance in the form of Tatar cavalry, they outdid Basta’s
mercenaries in robbing and despoiling the population. 108 Still, the brief upris-
ing indicated potential trouble among Magyar-speaking Calvinists: would the
Habsburgs attempt forcible conversions here, as in the Austrian lands? This
question soon became acute. Hungary’s royal towns were aggrieved by a
new law governing the wine trade, enacted by the 1603 Diet of Posonia. In
334 Chapter 6

their petition to Vienna, urban officials, hoping to identify the dynasty’s

interests with their own, referred to royal towns as the “property” (peculium)
of the crown. Sensing an opportunity, secretaries for Archduke Matthias
incorporated this wording in a revision of the diet’s statute. Giacomo Belgio-
so, Basta’s successor, then provided a demonstration of what it meant for
towns to be crown property: in January 1604, he expelled Lutheran preachers
from Košice, the capital and anchor fortress of the Upper-Hungarian frontier.
The diet protested this infringement of urban liberties, but Archduke Mat-
thias took a hard line: the time had finally come, he said, to enforce long-
standing laws against heresy. Belgioso’s hajduk mercenaries, mostly Calvin-
ist, now revolted and defeated loyalist troops. Major towns, including
Košice, opened their gates to the rebels. 109
This realignment of forces would prove a “fatal blow” to the Habsburgs.
The Ottoman Empire, with its vast resources, was able to sustain major
fighting on two fronts. Thus in 1604, as a serdar was named for a campaign
against Shah ‘Abbas, the grand vezir, Lala Mehmed Paşa, was named serdar
for Hungary. His army was funded entirely from the sultan’s private treasury.
The Habsburg princes had debts instead of private treasuries, and when a
crisis arose on the distant Lower Danube, they lacked the capacity for a
timely response. Thus as troops that had been posted in Transylvania and
Upper Hungary fell back to Posonia in western Hungary, Lala Mehmed Paşa
advanced up the Danube. One by one, he reclaimed for the sultan most of the
main Habsburg conquests of the previous few years, including Pest. 110
István Bocskai had hitherto straddled Hungary’s political divisions. He
was intimately familiar with the Habsburg court, having been a page in the
entourage of Emperor Maximilian II. Precisely because of his ties to the
dynasty, Transylvania’s estates charged him with treason in 1600 and de-
prived him of his lands in the principality; in hopes of getting this decision
reversed, Bocskai then spent two years at Rudolf’s court in Prague before
returning to the estates he still possessed in Upper Hungary. Yet as Zsigmund
Báthory’s uncle and political mentor, he had also been party to the young
prince’s renunciation of allegiance to the Habsburgs. Finally, although not
known for strong religious opinions, he was, like most of his social peers, a
Calvinist. In 1604, as protest against Matthias’s religious policy developed,
Bocskai opened contact with officials at the Porte about a possible return of
Transylvania to Ottoman overlordship. When these discussions became
known to Belgioso, Bocskai’s only choice was to cast his lot with the
rebels. 111
 Two Wars and Three Borders, 1593–1618 335

In January 1605, Rudolf II summoned a diet to meet in Posonia, but only

five of Hungary’s many counties sent delegates. In February, at a rump diet
east of Buda, Bocskai was elected princeps of Hungary; subsequent diets,
more fully attended, elected him as both princeps of Transylvania and pala-
tine of Hungary, an office the Habsburgs had left vacant for forty years. One
of his first official acts was to emancipate his hajduk fighting men from their
noble landlords, giving them full political rights as free men. In February
1605, he reaffirmed the principle of religious freedom in Hungary for all
Christian confessions. Lala Mehmed Paşa recognized him as king of Hun-
gary and then moved on to besiege and conquer Esztergom. Later that year,
Rudolf II convened Archduke Matthias, Archduke Ferdinand, and Archduke
Maximilian for a family conference in Prague. They did not settle their
differences because Rudolf remained hopeful of reversing the losses of the
last two years, while Matthias saw peace as the only means of preserving the
monarchy’s remaining possessions. Matthias was given authority to nego-
tiate with Bocskai, and lengthy discussions in Vienna led to a treaty signed in
June 1606. Bocskai, already gravely ill, renounced whatever ambition he
may have had to reign as king in Hungary. In return, Matthias recognized
Bocskai as the independent princeps of Transylvania and agreed to respect
Hungary’s traditional liberties: the office of palatine would be restored, high
officials would be natives of the kingdom, and there would be no “German”
garrisons in the fortresses. 112

Zsitvatorok, 1606

In 1604/1605 the Porte suffered reverses on the Persian front—Tabriz was

lost, then Tbilisi—even as the continuing çelali rebellion in Anatolia reached
a new peak; in other words, it was time to end the war in Hungary. Ottoman
protocol did not recognize the concept of negotiation; a treaty was not an
agreement between equals but rather a settlement dictated from on high by
the padishah and announced at his Sublime Porte. For whatever combination
of reasons, the Ottoman government recognized that this war would have to
be ended differently. Discussions would take place not in Istanbul but on a
Danube island opposite Esztergom, with three parties involved: a representa-
tive of the Porte, a representative of Rudolf II, and, as mediator, a representa-
tive of the sultan’s new ally, István Bocskai. Talks broke down in September,
but Bocskai’s man suggested that the parties meet again in October on Zsit-
vatorok, a Danube island opposite Komárom. By November 11, they reached
agreement. Each side would retain the towns and fortresses it possessed; each
336 Chapter 6

side would have the right to build new fortresses in its territory; cross-border
raids were prohibited; and a mutually acceptable procedure for settling bor-
der disputes, often discussed in the past, was finally to be put in place. For
the two sovereigns, the most important question was one of prestige. By this
treaty, Sultan Ahmed I recognized Rudolf II as Caesar (emperor), a title that
Latin-language Ottoman documents had hitherto used only for the sultan. In
other words, Rudolf was no longer a mere “king of Vienna.” Rudolf in turn
was to send to Istanbul a onetime payment of 200,000 Hungarian florins on
the understanding that his obligation to pay annual tribute for his lands in
Hungary would thereby cease. 113
There were of course difficulties of implementation, starting with the fact
that the Latin and Turkish treaty texts did not match on all points. Officials at
the Porte did not agree that the 200,000 florin payment was to be once and
for all, and they also deleted from their version of the text the clause that
recognized Rudolf II as Caesar. At the same time, Rudolf II made an effort
to keep part of the 200,000 florins for his own purposes, and his distrust of
Matthias’s handling of the negotiations fed into the “brothers’ quarrel” that
broke out in this same year. Not until 1612 did both sides agree on exactly
the same language. Nonetheless, the Treaty of Zsitvatorok, unlike all previ-
ous Habsburg-Ottoman agreements, finally brought peace to the Hungarian-
Croatian border. Kleinkrieg did not cease altogether, but for nearly sixty
years it did not mushroom into a larger conflict. Instead, border commanders
on both sides developed a commonality of interests; for example, Habsburg
authorities were sometimes asked for help in collecting Ottoman taxes. 114
The strategic picture changed as well because the war with Iran preoccupied
the Porte until the 1630s. In 1618, as Ferdinand II faced rebellion in Bohe-
mia, the sultan even offered to send troops, an offer that was politely de-
clined. 115
What did the Long Turkish War mean for the larger history of southeast-
ern Europe? Some decades ago, historians commonly spoke of an Ottoman
“decline” setting in after the reign of Sultan Suleyman (d. 1566). Ottomanists
have since cast doubt on this idea. Their arguments have force, particularly in
light of the capacity of this vast and complex empire to respond to new
exigencies: “The war had shown that the Austrians were now superior to the
Ottomans in weapons and tactics. Nonetheless, in their ability to continue the
war and, in its last two years, to win a series of victories, the Ottomans had
shown an extraordinary resilience.” 116 The Ottomans also came out ahead in
the game of fortress capturing—the Habsburgs made no permanent gains
 Two Wars and Three Borders, 1593–1618 337

equivalent to Eger or Kanizsa—but the strategic significance of this result

was limited because the Habsburgs held Eger and Kanizsa in check by build-
ing or refortifying nearby fortresses. 117
For the Habsburg Monarchy, the war had mixed implications. Aided by
confederates from the Holy Roman Empire and from Mediterranean Catholic
lands, Habsburg forces had finally succeeded in containing (more or less) the
once-unstoppable armies of the sultan. In political terms, the Holy Roman
Emperor’s claim to be primus inter pares among the crowned heads of Eu-
rope was no longer clouded by the fact that the Sublime Porte treated him as
a mere “king of Vienna.” Finally, the fact that the war had ended in a
standoff—not a defeat for Christendom—indirectly redounded to the credit
of both the Habsburg dynasty and the Catholic Counter-Reformation. On the
other hand, Hungary’s Calvinists had demonstrated the possibility of suc-
cessful resistance to a campaign of forced re-Catholicization. In 1608/1609,
when quarreling among the Habsburg brothers led Rudolf II to cede some of
his lands to Archduke Matthias, the estates stood firm in obtaining wide-
ranging concessions of religious liberty, first in Hungary and then in Upper
and Lower Austria. In 1618, when Emperor Ferdinand II was to be acclaimed
as king of Bohemia, the kingdom’s religious dissenters launched a major
revolt—leading to the first battle of the Thirty Years’ War. 118

THE GRADISCA WAR: VENICE, AUSTRIA, AND THE USKOKS

The war of 1615–1617, though not inevitable, reflected the fact that Venice
and Vienna had long pursued contrary strategies vis-à-vis the Sublime Porte.
For the republic, war with the Ottomans was always a distraction from the
goal of maintaining good relations with the empire on whose goodwill Vene-
tian trade depended. Vienna repeatedly sought treaties of peace, but always
with the objective of gaining time to strengthen Habsburg forces for an
inevitable day of reckoning. In Dalmatia, the conflict between these two
policies became more and more visible.
As of 1591, Venetian Dalmatia was said to have seventy-eight thousand
people, indicating some recovery since the end of the Cyprus War. Zadar,
with its offshore islands, now had a population of eighteen thousand, as
against fourteen thousand in 1576. 119 The trade link with Bosnia, by way of
Split, was helpful, even if Ottoman officials did not always have fresh horses
available at the stop on the Sarajevo route, and Venice could not prevent
smugglers from sending Ottoman goods to Italy without paying duty. In Split
338 Chapter 6

itself, some townsmen grew rich from trade, and the population was expected
to grow. 120 Yet Dalmatia was still confined within the narrow limits imposed
by recent Ottoman conquests. If relations with Lika and Klis were generally
peaceful, some sancakbegs had an evil reputation. Mustafa Beg of Klis was
especially hard to deal with because of his kinship with Sultan Murad III.
Another sancakbeg of Klis crossed over and burned one of Šibenik’s vil-
lages. 121 Governor-General Federigo Nani was able to rebuild it only by
exploiting the peculiarities of west Balkan politics. As he was about to have
two uskok leaders beheaded, a çavuş arrived from Banja Luka with a request
to spare them; kinsmen of theirs apparently had influence at the Bosnian
court. After Nani commuted the sentences of the two men to galley service,
the paşa of Bosnia overruled the sancakbeg of Klis and allowed the village to
be rebuilt. 122
The real question for Venetian authorities was how far their rural subjects
could be trusted. In the countryside, increased demands from urban landlords
were a source of discontent; under Dalmatian law, landowners could have
lease terms changed by a court without notifying their tenants. 123 At the same
time, events of the Long Turkish War rejuvenated pro-uskok sentiment. Near
Trogir, the twelve villages beyond the mountains, still paying tribute to the
sultan, were now said to owe allegiance to the uskoks, to whom they also
paid tribute. Altogether, Venetian and Ottoman subjects paid a reported
12,000 thaler a year in “uskok taxes.” When uskoks came their way, stradioti
assigned to Trogir “greeted them” instead of doing battle. 124 In the 1580s,
men of three Šibenik villages were given arquebuses and trained in their use,
but they now used them for “evil purposes”: like the uskoks, they launched
plunder expeditions into Ottoman territory while advertising themselves as
men from Senj. One rector suggested making country folk who lived within
Šibenik relocate outside the walls, for there was danger they would let in the
uskoks, the “patroni del contado.” 125
According to the governor-general for 1596, there were two kinds of
uskoks. Those from Senj always came by way of the Velebit channel and did
not bother Venetian subjects except for supplies. The other sort—Turkish
Morlacchi, criminals from Dalmatia, and some Croats—hid out all along the
coast. The island of Hvar, where one band always divided its booty, ought to
be called “New Senj.” 126
Within the cities, aristocratic families still nurtured the dream of restoring
Hungarian rule. In Split, patricians led by Ivan Alberti worked out a plan to
seize Klis. They had co-conspirators within the Ottoman garrison ready to
 Two Wars and Three Borders, 1593–1618 339

open the gates. Another collaborator—an Orthodox priest—promised that

local Vlachs would join them. Rudolf II wrote Alberti a letter endorsing the
enterprise. In February 1596, the general of Croatia, 127 Juraj Lenković, sent
men to scout out a landing site along the Dalmatian coast for reinforcements
from Rijeka. On Palm Sunday, April 7, Klis was captured according to plan
by forty men from Split and eighty uskoks. The Ottomans reacted quickly.
Some 2,500 men from the sancak of Klis began digging in around Klis and
were joined by 8,000 more from Bosnia. Benedetto del Moro, the Venetian
governor-general, aided the Ottomans in moving supplies. Knowing that pro-
visions in Klis were short, the besiegers planned to starve out the defenders.
Lenković landed near Trogir in late May. He did not form a caravan, possibly
because packhorses were in short supply. Leaving three hundred soldiers to
guard the baggage, he set out for Klis with seven hundred men. The promised
Vlach uprising did not materialize, but some two thousand joined him en
route, mostly Venetian subjects. He fought through the Ottoman camp and
got some troops into the fortress, only to see a now larger garrison face an
impossible problem of supply. Lenković and most of the defenders escaped,
but the fortress surrendered on May 31. Back on the coast, when Lenković
asked for help in launching another attempt, del Moro refused. 128
Notwithstanding the sentiments of many patrician families, Dalmatia’s
coastal cities were still firmly under Venetian control, with support from the
urban popolo; even in Split, the plot against Klis was “vehemently criticized”
among the popolo. 129 But beyond city walls the uskoks of Senj came and
went as they pleased. To goad Habsburg sovereigns into acting against the
uskoks, Venice blockaded one or another of the monarchy’s Adriatic ports.
While this strategy inhibited the flow of provisions to Senj, it also led the
uskoks to begin raiding to the west, into Venetian Istria. 130
Beneath the contest of wills among Habsburgs, uskoks, and Venetians,
there were also internal struggles between rival points of view. In Venice,
patricians of a cautious temper, accepting the republic’s status as a second-
class power, looked for a minimalist solution to the uskok problem. But more
adventurous souls saw in uskok raids a casus belli, a justification for chal-
lenging Habsburg hegemony in Italy. 131 In Senj, the distinction between
garrison soldiers on the payroll and unpaid venturini corresponded (to some
extent) to a disagreement between those who were willing to accept limits on
their raids and those who were not. Finally, Graz and Vienna did not see eye
to eye. For Archduke Ferdinand, the uskoks were useful in forcing the Otto-
mans to focus on defense, and they also kept Venice (a potential enemy)
340 Chapter 6

busy. For Archduke Matthias, the raiders were a sheer nuisance: Venice was
not his enemy, and Ottoman complaints about the uskoks made it harder to
keep the peace in Hungary. Thus, while tensions were high, war was not
unavoidable.

Uskok Raids, 1597–1613

On Palm Sunday 1597, the “general excursion” from Senj had “something of
the character of a crusade.” Instead of heading for Ottoman territory, the
raiders sailed for the Venetian port of Pula in Istria, where they robbed
merchant ships of 400,000 scudi in goods. Many of these men had fought at
Klis in 1596, and this was payback for Venetian assistance to Ottoman be-
siegers. In Wendy Bracewell’s judgment, “their act of vengeance opened a
cycle of revenge and retaliation which would become virtually unbreak-
able.” 132
Uskoks had two sorts of officers: the elected vojvods, confirmed by the
captain of Senj, and the self-appointed bark commanders, or harambasas. 133
In February 1598, General Lenković got many of the vojvods and haramba-
sas to sign an oath not to attack Venetian subjects. Soon thereafter, the
captain of Senj authorized a raid into Ottoman Lika, east of Šibenik, to
replenish the city’s depleted supply of livestock; he also wrote Zuane Bem-
bo, the Venetian Captain of the Gulf, to inform him of their plans. In his
report to the Senate, Bembo indicated that he had come to distrust Lenković,
but he did not mention a letter from Senj. In any case, Bembo’s troops
awaited the uskoks as they returned to their barks with eight thousand head
of cattle. Leaving their booty behind, the uskoks escaped during the night; to
make good their losses, they attacked mercenaries and plundered ships on the
Venetian island of Krk. Nonetheless, these men took their oath seriously; for
the rest of that year, they raided only in Ottoman territory. 134 Early in 1599,
uskoks struck two cities in Venetian Istria after the Venetian fleet attacked an
island that provided grain and wine to Senj. It was noticeable, however, that
many of the paid men did not join the expedition into Istria. More so than the
venturini, they were of a mind not to attack Venice so long as Venice did not
obstruct their raids against the Ottomans. 135
Meanwhile, the ongoing Venetian blockade was effective enough to make
Graz respond. In January, Count Giuseppe Rabatta arrived in Senj, along
with a new captain and 1,500 troops. A native of Udine, Rabatta had served
Archduke Ferdinand as councilor and ambassador, and his coming signaled a
new order. He found only three hundred uskoks—the rest had already left.
 Two Wars and Three Borders, 1593–1618 341

Rabatta placed two hundred venturini under the command of a vojvod he

trusted, Ivan Vlatković, and transferred them to Otočac, where they were
promised wages. He prohibited the remaining uskoks from sailing up the
Velebit channel past Karlobag into Ottoman waters. Finally, to satisfy an
envoy from Venice, now in Senj, he seized three uskoks who had been
Venetian subjects; two were executed, and the third was killed trying to
escape. These executions angered leading figures in Croatia, such as Daniel
Frankol, who commanded the cavalry at Karlovac. But Rabatta’s greatest
problem was that the Habsburg government would not commit resources to
this distant outpost. At his departure for Senj, Rabatta had not been able to
pry money loose from the Hofkriegsrat in Graz. After paying the wages of
the Senj garrison and the men at Otočac from his own funds for five months,
Rabatta’s purse ran dry, and his promises that pay was coming rang hollow.
The turning point came when Rabatta sent a detachment of uskoks to the
front in Hungary under another vojvod, Juriša Hayduk. When Frankol
blocked their passage, the men turned back, and Rabatta made the mistake of
arresting Hayduk for insubordination. Angry uskoks forced him to release
Hayduk, then assaulted Rabatta himself in the citadel, where the few men
willing to defend him could not prevent the grisly murder of Archduke Ferdi-
nand’s plenipotentiary. According to Paolo Sarpi, a leader of the anti-Habs-
burg party in Venice, Hayduk later boasted that he and his men had killed
Rabatta. 136
For the next few years, captains of Senj—including the above-mentioned
Frankol—restricted the uskoks to raiding into Ottoman territory, along the
Velebit channel. 137 After an uskok attack by sea against Herceg Novi, the
Ottomans began arming small vessels, making Venetian authorities nervous.
In December 1604, Venetian ships failed to block the raiders headed for the
Velebit channel. Following a lucrative raid around Skradin, the attackers
found the Venetians waiting in force near their landing site; that night, they
hauled their barks overland and escaped. 138
Meanwhile, the sale of goods the raiders brought back was becoming
more profitable, at least in one respect. For galley fleets of the western
Mediterranean—based in Spain, Malta, the Papal States, and Florence—the
most valuable oarsmen were slaves who had already withstood the rigors of
service at the oars. A Spanish naval adviser thus recommended buying slaves
from the uskoks: “As the majority of the hundreds of Turks sold [at Senj] are
from the seaside areas, they are better oarsmen than slaves captured from
inland areas.” According to Sarpi, merchants from Puglia came to market in
342 Chapter 6

Senj looking for female as well as male slaves, “making sure they have not
been baptized.” 139
As the Venetian blockade continued, the Long Turkish War wound down,
and there were signs that these intrepid warriors against the infidel had worn
out their welcome in the Habsburg Adriatic. 140 In 1606, a party of uskoks,
acting against the orders of vojvod Vlatković, set out for Istria, where they
plundered a Venetian ship off Rovinj; as the raiders returned, they were fired
on from the walls of Senj and took refuge in a deserted monastery. Habsburg
and Venetian authorities now renewed the terms of the agreement made in
Rabatta’s time. Veit Khisel, the general of Croatia, came to Senj in person
and had four rebellious uskoks impaled. Yet once Khisel departed, no one
could stop small parties of uskoks from raiding Venetian targets. The Peace
of Zsitvatorok brought strict orders from Vienna that raiding must cease
altogether, but no money. According to a papal nuncio who visited Rijeka in
1607, the garrison in Senj had not been paid for four years. When Vlatković
and Hayduk came to speak with Khisel in Rijeka, he refused to see them. The
uskoks then seized the citadel of Senj, whereupon Khisel marched to Senj
with one thousand Austrian infantry and four hundred cavalry and placed the
two vojvods under arrest. But Vlatković and Hayduk broke out of prison, and
protests from the Croatian Sabor about “German” troops in Senj made Khis-
el’s position difficult. Pardoned a few months later, Vlatković was named
commander of a newly arrived group of Vlach fighting men posted to a
fortress near Senj; they now joined parties of uskoks in conducting raids not
approved by authorities in Senj.
For several years there was a semblance of peace. 141 It probably helped
that some uskoks took up offers from one or another Italian prince, despite
Archduke Ferdinand’s ban on serving foreign rulers. Moreover, Graz was
coming round to Vienna’s point of view. Ivan Vlatković prevented his men
from attacking Venetian territory, but he would not accept a ban on raids
against the infidel. He was arrested in 1611 on charges of misappropriating
military funds and then executed in 1612, even though he protested that the
sum involved was only nine florins. Also in 1612, Venetian and Habsburg
negotiators in Vienna reached an interim settlement: Ferdinand would stop
piracy altogether, expel wrongdoers from Senj, and put a German garrison
there; Venice would release prisoners and raise the blockade. In Senj, one
thousand fighting men swore a solemn oath not to attack Venice. But some of
them also relocated in Omiš, a small and hitherto deserted maritime fortress
in Venetian territory, south and east of Split. According to Sarpi, this was the
 Two Wars and Three Borders, 1593–1618 343

occasion for attacks from the Ottoman side against Omiš, Otočac, and Karlo-
bag. In retaliation, Habsburg authorities permitted the uskoks to carry out
raids into Lika and Herzegovina early in 1613. Filippo Pasquaglio, the
governor-general of Dalmatia, reported that they had not bothered Venetian
subjects except for supplies, for which they paid cash. Their behavior, unusu-
ally correct, made it seem that Venice was collaborating with the attackers.
The only way to preserve Venice’s credibility at the Porte was to strike
back. 142 The raiding party returning from Herzegovina was attacked by Ven-
ice’s Albanians, who killed sixty men including the vojvod, whose severed
head they took as a trophy. Some five hundred uskoks who survived the
attack swore vengeance. Three days later, they captured a Venetian galley
bound for the island of Pag. After beheading the crew one by one, they took
the commander, Cristoforo Venier, to a point near Senj where he too was
beheaded; his head was to be exchanged for the vojvod’s. Pasquaglio at once
resumed the blockade of Habsburg ports; at Senj, Ottoman cavalry assisted
Venetian ships by blocking roads leading to the city. The captain of Senj
recovered and returned Venier’s head and impaled several participants in the
attack, but not their leaders; he also left the galley’s guns where they now
were, newly mounted on the walls of Senj. Even without these last details,
furnished by Pasquaglio, the brutal assault on Venier’s galley raised to a new
level a long series of uskok insults to the republic’s riputazione. If the Sig-
noria chose to interpret it as such, Venice had a casus belli.
Uskok piracy was only one aspect of a broad contemporary trend: small
bands of men could make a living from voyages of plunder, their swift barks
outrunning the war galleys sent after them. From Salé, in western Morocco, a
group of European renegades raided as far north as England. Barbary cor-
sairs, based in Algiers and Tunis, kept Spain’s well-managed war galley fleet
fully engaged. Ottoman pirates, sailing from Albania, terrorized the coasts of
Naples. Far to the east, Cossack barks ranged from the northern shore of the
Black Sea as far south as the Ottoman capital. 143 If one focuses on the central
Mediterranean—both sides of the Italian peninsula—another pattern
emerges: five navies conducted regular attacks into the Ottoman-controlled
eastern Mediterranean. The Spanish viceroyalties of Naples and Sicily had
large fleets. The Knights of Malta, the Florence-based Knights of St. Ste-
phen, and the Papal States had only a few ships each, but they were thought
to be superior to Spain’s war galleys. These Catholic powers also conducted
what might be called an informal war against Venice; they did not mind
attacking now and then the ships of a supposedly Catholic state that openly
344 Chapter 6

allied with the infidel, and occasionally they set out to do so. 144 This back-
ground may have encouraged Archduke Ferdinand to think that uskok attacks
on Venetian ships, while not desirable, might nonetheless be seen as serving
a purpose. It certainly prompted some in Venice to think that the mentality of
the Catholic Counter-Reformation was not compatible with the republic’s
interests.

Veneto-Austrian Relations to 1615

As lords of Adriatic ports, including Trieste and Rijeka, the Austrians natu-
rally resented the monopolistic trading system enforced by Venice’s war
galleys: outgoing merchandise had to be shipped to Venice after paying tolls
at Zadar. At discussions in Friuli in 1562/1563, rival Italian jurists debated
the legal issues. The Habsburg spokesman defended the principle of the
freedom of the seas, while his counterpart contended that Venice’s dominio
del mar was sanctioned by prescription, the custom of many centuries. 145
There were also lingering territorial disputes. Austrian officials remembered
that the maritime fortress of Marano, now helping to guard Venice’s eastern
border, had been seized from the Habsburgs in 1542. 146 For their part, Vene-
tians remembered that other positions on their eastern frontier had been lost
in the long war against Emperor Maximilian I, especially the fortress-town of
Gradisca on the lower Isonzo/Soča. This old story gained new relevance in
1603, when the last French stronghold south of the Alps was ceded to Savoy,
currently an ally of Spain. Thus if the Habsburgs were to attack into Friuli,
there would be no allies in Italy to come to Venice’s aid. Meanwhile, in
1593, Venice began construction of a massive new fortress alla moderna at
Palmanova, just west of the lower Isonzo. Venetian authorities described it as
intended to ward off an Ottoman invasion, but, as Habsburg officials
guessed, it was directed as much if not more against Austria. 147
During the Long Turkish War, there were no serious negotiations on the
uskok problem until 1605, when a papal envoy presided over talks in Prague.
Venice was willing to put up a sum of money to pay for arrears at Senj as
well as for resettlement of the venturini, but the Habsburgs now demanded
500,000 ducats, not just 300,000. 148 Discussions in Vienna in 1612 had a
better outcome, possibly because the execution of Ivan Vlatković, a highly
respected vojvod, showed that Archduke Ferdinand was serious about ending
the raids. A pact signed at the end of 1612 provided that Venice would raise
its blockade and release prisoners, while Ferdinand expelled “evildoers”
from Senj and installed a “German” garrison. Much to the disappointment of
 Two Wars and Three Borders, 1593–1618 345

Habsburg officials, the issue of Venice’s dominio del mar was deferred.
Senj’s captain received strict orders to ban raids against Ottomans, Vene-
tians, or anyone else. Many uskoks apparently accepted this state of affairs,
although they grumbled about not being able to live on the pay they were
promised. In return, Pasquaglio, the Venetian governor-general, allowed us-
kok barks to sail out for the collection of uskok taxes. 149 This agreement
might have forestalled war had it not been for the sequence of events that
culminated in the murder of Venier.

The Gradisca War, 1615–1617

The Venetian blockade continued in 1614 as uskok raids east and west re-
sumed. The Porte sent a çavuş to declare that the sultan would send warships
into the Adriatic if Venice did not deal with the uskoks once and for all.
From Graz, Archduke Ferdinand wrote Emperor Matthias that he would
willingly go to war against Venice had he the resources to do so. But since
Matthias still had no interest in a war with the republic, he refused his
cousin’s appeal for help, thus leaving the initiative to Venice. In the Senate,
many were coming to the view that war was the only way to put an end to
uskok violence. A small group, led by Nicolò Contarini and Friar Paolo
Sarpi, saw war as the means to a larger purpose—that is, breaking Habsburg
power in Italy. England’s ambassador to Venice promoted the idea of a
coalition with the leading Protestant powers, England and the Dutch Repub-
lic, and also with France. Sarpi and others, convinced that Catholic states, led
by the Habsburgs, must sooner or later be confronted head-on, hoped for
something like a Protestant Reformation in Venice itself. In August 1615 the
Senate voted for war by a narrow majority, indicating that most senators had
limited objectives in mind. To forestall Habsburg attacks at vulnerable points
on the eastern frontier, the Senate ordered Venice’s commander, Pompeo
Giustiniani, to concentrate on reclaiming Gradisca. 150
Giustiniani began digging in around Gradisca in December. Though Fer-
dinand was disappointed that Matthias would not support a major campaign,
he had to agree with one of the reasons for the emperor’s reluctance: King
Philip III did not want war in Italy, and Ferdinand’s prospects of succeeding
Matthias as emperor depended on Spain’s goodwill. Ferdinand’s command-
ers, not having enough men to break the siege at Gradisca, tried to draw the
enemy off by conducting a Kleinkrieg in Istria. Meanwhile, Gradisca’s garri-
son repelled repeated assaults, leading Venice to seek reinforcements from
abroad. The Grey Leagues, a Protestant territory allied to the Swiss Confed-
346 Chapter 6

eration, refused to join in the fighting, having no wish to provoke their

neighbor to the south, Spanish Milan. An envoy sent to The Hague had better
luck. Since the Dutch Republic was not currently at war with Spain, 151 its
professional fighting men lacked employment. A prince from the German
branch of the house of Nassau agreed to command an expeditionary force.
One contingent reached Venice in late 1616, another in May 1617 after
Habsburg troops had gotten supplies into Gradisca. The Dutch crossed the
Isonzo into Habsburg territory south of Gradisca, only to halt and refuse to
advance until their pay arrived. Meanwhile, Habsburg forces broke through
into Gradisca for a second time. The Venetian commander was now recalled;
it was time for negotiations. 152
Habsburg governments in both Madrid and Vienna were eager to end this
local quarrel before it degenerated into war on a European scale, between
Catholic and Protestant powers. 153 By the Treaty of Madrid (September
1617), Gradisca remained in Habsburg hands, but the dominio del mar was
not mentioned. All uskoks were to be removed from Senj, paid soldiers and
venturini alike. Ferdinand, now taking over from an ailing Matthias, accepted
the treaty without demur. Austrian and Venetian commissioners worked out
the terms in 1618: Senj would have a full garrison of “Germans,” the uskoks
would relocate to border fortresses like Otočac, and their barks were to be
taken to Rijeka and burned. But wages for the men at Otočac were not paid
as promised, and uskoks here and there resumed their raids, some in the
service of the Spanish viceroy of Naples. Thus even though agreements of
1617/1618 ended eight decades of uskok operations from Senj, “no single
moment marked the end of the uskok era.” 154

BOSNIA AND CROATIA DURING AND AFTER THE LONG

TURKISH WAR

Bosnia at War

Troops from Bosnia figured prominently in the Hungarian wars, as did many
of the sixteen paşas who served between 1593 and 1606. 155 In 1594, Bos-
nia’s governor-general helped conquer the fortress of Tata. In 1595, as the
Ottomans fell back from Esztergom, he commanded the rear guard. In 1597,
Tata was captured for a second time by Idriz Paşa’s Bosnians. Hasan Paşa
Tirjaki, a native of Bosnia, was the next governor-general, until he was
named sancakbeg of Szigetvár in 1598. In terms of military prestige, this
 Two Wars and Three Borders, 1593–1618 347

demotion in rank may have been a promotion because of Szigetvár’s critical

position on the front line; it was Tirjaki who suggested Kanizsa as the target
in 1600 and then defended it successfully in 1601. At the fortress of Papa in
1599, Bosnia’s Derviş Paşa was instrumental in persuading the Walloon
garrison to defect. For the Ottoman offensive in 1605, Bosnia’s Hadim Hu-
srev Paşa had charge of bringing supplies forward to the arms depot at
Mohács, including twenty-five siege cannon, thirty thousand cannon balls,
and some six hundred tons of powder. 156
Almost of necessity, the focus on Hungary had adverse consequences for
Bosnia’s defenses against Croatia. 157 In 1594, Hasan Paşa’s immediate suc-
cessor still hoped to break down Habsburg resistance along the Kupa. But
after his men captured Sisak, he was summoned east to Osijek to join in
Sinan Paşa’s grand campaign. Sisak was soon recaptured, and Petrinja too
became a Habsburg fortress, as discussed below. For the defense of Bosnia,
the sancakbeg of Bihać may have been seen as a stand-in for the often absent
paşa, 158 but a sancakbeg did not have the same authority. The only time the
Porte is known to have approved an attack into Croatia was in 1596, when
the paşa had orders to reconquer Petrinja; he got no farther than Novigrad on
the Una, where he found Habsburg troops drawn up in an advantageous
position and agreed to pull back his own forces. The upshot was that hajduk
raiders from Slavonia made forays across the Una into Bosnia, especially, it
seems, in the western zone known as the Bosanska Krajina, extending rough-
ly from the Una to the Vrbas. Bosnia’s rural inhabitants thus faced a dilemma
long familiar in Habsburg territory: they could vacate their lands or take up
arms to defend themselves. On occasion, resentment of the authorities who
failed to protect their subjects broke into the open. When Deli Hasan Paşa
was named paşa of Bosnia in 1602 and went directly to the war front in
Hungary, hajduks under his authority ravaged the countryside around Saraje-
vo, arousing discontent. When Deli Hasan Paşa himself came to Banja Luka
in 1603, his hajduks behaved in the same way, provoking a rebellion led by a
man whom the locals wanted to put forward as their paşa. Deli Hasan Paşa
decisively defeated the rebels, but in 1604 he was transferred to Temesvár.

Civil Society in Bosnia

In the Ottoman system, judges and tax collectors reported to their respective
superiors at the Porte, not to the paşa or sancakbeg. The town governor was
usually the dizdar of the local fortress, appointed by the paşa or sancakbeg,
but a dizdar often served for many years. In other words, local officials
348 Chapter 6

conducted business as usual whether the paşa of the day was resident or
not. 159 The Bosnian census of 1604, completed in a time of war, shows the
efficiency of Ottoman administration. 160 For each town or district, it gave the
number of Muslim and non-Muslim households, indicating the revenue to be
expected. The Habsburg government, which also needed information on the
taxpaying capacity of its subjects, operated on different principles. In the
Austrian lands, taxation was based on a register of Gülten or land rents, with
urban population figures appended. The registers were kept and updated not
by central-government officials, but by the estates of each province. 161
For Bosnia as a whole, the census recorded 65,391 households. If one
assumes five persons per household, this would mean a population of
326,955—and probably somewhat more, because single men, not attached to
a household, were not counted. Bosnia was highly urbanized for this part of
Europe (about 20 percent of the people lived in cities), and urbanization went
hand in hand with Islamicization. Of the 47,801 households, 72.5 percent
were Muslim. The steady advance of Islam was especially noticeable in
Sarajevo, the former capital. In east-central Europe, the taxation district of
Sarajevo, with nearly eleven thousand households, had a population that was
matched or exceeded only by Prague. The city was almost entirely Muslim;
only 197 households were non-Muslim. 162 An urban center of this size, in-
cluding Ottoman notables with a taste for European luxury goods, helps
explain why Venice wanted a trade link between Split and Sarajevo. 163 Other
populous tax districts were also overwhelmingly Muslim, not just in cities of
Ottoman origin like Sarajevo and Banja Luka, but in older mining towns. 164
In central and eastern Bosnia, there were several tax districts with more
than a thousand households where non-Muslims made up a majority or a
large fraction of the population. 165 Among Christians, the Orthodox enjoyed
official recognition. The patriarchate of Peć, reestablished by Mehmed Paşa
Sokolović, had jurisdiction over Orthodox clergy in Bosnia. In 1530, the
faithful were permitted to erect a new stone church in Sarajevo, which no
doubt became a place of worship for Catholics as well. During the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries, nine Orthodox monasteries were built in Bos-
nia. 166 Catholics could not build churches or monasteries, but fourteen of the
thirty-nine pre-Ottoman Franciscan cloisters survived into the seventeenth
century. In a few towns where Catholic merchants and artisans were well
represented, local authorities overlooked the normal strictures against infi-
dels worshipping in public. The bells of Catholic churches were allowed to
ring out, and the faithful carried crosses in processions through the streets.
 Two Wars and Three Borders, 1593–1618 349

The existence of a potential fifth column in Bosnia did not go unnoticed by

Habsburg officials. Bosnian Catholic merchants began turning up on the
roster of Habsburg spies during the Long Turkish War; since they traveled
through Ottoman lands in the course of business, they were useful in making
contact with local leaders in hopes of stirring up rebellion against the sul-
tan. 167 On the other hand, there was also a movement of Catholic peasants
from Habsburg lands into Ottoman Bosnia. The seventeenth century was a
period of “intense internal migration” in this region, no doubt facilitated by
the peace of 1606. The process is poorly documented, but by about 1700, in-
migration equaled the flow of people leaving Bosnia. Bosnians moved north
of the Sava, sometimes to Habsburg territory, while people from the Dalma-
tian mountains migrated north into Bosnia. 168 Good land vacated by the
fighting was slowly reoccupied, as families took advantage of favorable
terms in what had been enemy country.

Vlach Settlement

Among tax districts with a non-Muslim majority, twenty-two are identified

by the editor of the census as “all” or “mostly” Vlach. 169 This was important
information for Ottoman officials, because Vlach fighting men enjoyed tax
privileges. In fact, their exemption from many forms of taxation leads schol-
ars to caution against reading “Vlach” as an ethnic term. Non-Vlachs, per-
haps herdsmen by trade, often assimilated to the Vlach way of life, either
because they lived in proximity to Vlach settlers or in order to obtain a
preferential tax status. Some Vlachs were Muslim, and their epic deeds
echoed in Turkish-language poetry of the seventeenth century. 170 Still others
were Catholic, but the great majority were Orthodox Christians, and new
Orthodox monasteries were built in some areas where they settled. Although
modern terminology is not appropriate to this period, one may say that Or-
thodox Vlachs were in the process of becoming Serbs. Of the tax districts
with a mainly Vlach population, nine were in the Bosanska Krajina, especial-
ly along the Una. In the wake of constant fighting back and forth, the Una
basin had become a no-man’s land so that what had been major fortress
towns now sheltered only a few people. The once-flourishing city of Bihać
had only 338 households, Krupa 45. The sparse population of western Bosnia
is also suggested by a Venetian report. Split now had a trade connection to
Banja Luka as well as to Sarajevo. But whereas the Sarajevo caravan had a
day of rest at a town along the way, there was no suitable stopping place for
350 Chapter 6

the longer trek to Banja Luka; hence the latter caravan traveled only in
summer, when grass for the horses was abundant. 171
Damat Ibrahim Paşa, who had a reputation for good governance, is said to
have attracted many Vlachs to the Ottoman standard during his tenure as
serdar, and some will have put down roots in Bosnia. Paşas and sancakbegs
had an interest in reclaiming deserted villages, and so did the Ottoman not-
ables who held leases on the land. But the process by which groups of Vlachs
relocated to Bosnia took many forms and did not always meet with official
approval. For example, at the start of the seventeenth century, many Vlachs
migrated to Bosnia from the sancaks of Klis and Lika, mainly to escape two
violent and ambitious provincial governors. Volunteer colonization of this
kind was not welcome, because the provincial government was now paring
back Vlach privileges in order to increase revenue. The migrants demanded
to be recognized as enjoying at once the tax benefits claimed by longtime
Vlach settlers. The upshot was “centuries of confrontation” with Bosnian
officials. Newcomers who quarreled with the government still did what was
expected of Vlachs—they guarded the frontier. Across the border, the Habs-
burg frontier was manned by Vlach settlers who had migrated from Ottoman
lands. The two mega-states thus drew on the same pool of manpower. In
terms of military organization, however, the Bosanska Krajina was a poor
cousin to Slavonia’s Vojna Krajina (Military Frontier). 172

Croatia at War: The Karlovac Generalate and the Kupa Frontier

The military reforms of the 1570s entrusted the Slavonian and Croatian bor-
ders to “generals” named by the Archduke of Inner Austria. From around
1609 the two zones were known as the “generalates” of Varaždin and Karlo-
vac, in reference to their headquarters-fortresses. As before, Styria had finan-
cial responsibility for the Varaždin generalate, which included frontier cap-
taincies at Koprivnica, Križevci, and Ivanić. Carniola and Carinthia shared
the burden for the Karlovac generalate, which also had several captaincies.
Commanders of the generalates came from the Austrian military aristocracy,
and they often had kinsmen in similar positions. Along the Kupa—the “ban’s
border”—the Croatian Sabor’s troops were led by co-bans. 173
The Austrian duchies could still be threatened by an Ottoman thrust up
the right bank of the Sava, as in 1594, when Sisak was easily captured by
Bosnian troops. 174 By July 1594, Archduke Maximilian, as ruler of Inner
Austria, mobilized sixteen thousand men to besiege Sisak. Meanwhile, an
explosion in the powder tower at Petrinja created an opportunity. As Croatian
 Two Wars and Three Borders, 1593–1618 351

troops surrounded Petrinja, General Juraj Lenković cut off access routes for a
possible relief force by capturing two other fortresses. During the night of
August 9/10, Ottoman troops abandoned Petrinja as well as Sisak. Archduke
Maximilian at once asked for advice on where a new fortress might best be
built to defend the Kupa. Meeting within sight of the newly won Ottoman
fortress, the Sabor urged that Petrinja be rebuilt, if possible in the modern
style, as at Karlovac. But success was short-lived: Petrinja’s Ottoman com-
mander returned in October with enough men to retake his fortress. In 1595,
as Archduke Ferdinand assumed the reins of government in Inner Austria, he
had General Ruprecht von Eggenberg bring troops from all three duchies to
Petrinja, which surrendered in September after a monthlong siege. Ferdinand
ordered the ban to keep two hundred of his troops in Petrinja, and the Sabor
set up a rotation schedule by which districts were obliged to keep additional
men there during the winter. 175
What would prove to be the final test came in 1596. In July, with encour-
agement from Archduke Ferdinand, the two generals and Ban Drašković
brought some nine thousand men to the Una for an attack on the fortress of
Kostajnica, built on an island close to the right or eastern bank. After defeat-
ing a relief force commanded by Bosnia’s paşa, they ferried their siege guns
across and bombarded Kostajnica from the right bank, though only for a few
days. Their return to Petrinja may have been prompted by news that Serdar
Hafis Ahmed Paşa was marching toward Kostajnica at the head of a larger
force, along with a new paşa for Bosnia, Hoedaverdi Paşa. The Ottomans
crossed the Una, and on September 10 some twenty thousand to thirty thou-
sand men began digging in around Petrinja on both sides of the Kupa. By
September 19 the two generals and the ban had a relief army of six thousand
men at Brest, a bit farther up the Kupa. They chose to attack downstream,
where Hoedaverdi Paşa had a contingent of roughly the same size. After
bitter fighting, the Bosnians fled across the Kupa, in which, as in 1593, many
of the men drowned. Shaken by this news, Hafis Ahmed Paşa pulled back
toward Kostajnica during the night. 176 Had Hoedaverdi Paşa’s successors
continued fighting on this front, Petrinja could have changed hands again. As
things turned out, however, Bosnian troops were repeatedly sent to Hungary,
giving Habsburg authorities a decade to rebuild Petrinja and consolidate the
line of the Kupa.
Meanwhile, the Sabor did what it could to maintain the honorable fiction
that Croatia, responsible for the ban’s border, was still a self-supporting
province of the Habsburg Monarchy and not a mere Austrian dependency. 177
352 Chapter 6

In 1595, when Petar Erdödy finally received permission to lay down his
office as ban, Rudolf II, as king of Hungary, named Ivan Drašković and the
bishop of Zagreb as temporary replacements. Fearing that he might give
General Eggenberg a permanent appointment as ban and thus compromise
Croatia’s autonomy, the Sabor lobbied successfully to make the temporary
appointments permanent.
Money for the ban’s border had to come from the dika, now amounting to
nine Hungarian florins per year, a large sum for peasant families. As always,
the Sabor argued with the Hungarian Chamber of Accounts in Posonia over
how revenue from the dika in Slavonia was to be spent. In 1596, the Hofkam-
mer in Vienna backed the Sabor: the money was to be spent for hiring
soldiers, as ordered by the two bans. According to the Sabor, there should be
enough money for the bans to raise three hundred infantry and fifty light
horse, and for the Sabor itself to pay for three hundred infantry—all to be
stationed at fortresses along or near the Kupa. A further question was wheth-
er tax laws could be relaxed to encourage resettlement of Turopolje, the
fertile district west of the Kupa, now protected by Petrinja. The Chamber of
Accounts, backed by the Hungarian Diet, insisted that there be no exemp-
tions. The Sabor’s resolutions are vague about details, but it seems that
exceptions were allowed for peasants who came after a certain date or settled
in certain districts. 178

Croatia at War: The Varaždin Generalate and Vlach Settlement

in Slavonia

Petrinja and Kostajnica were separated by mountainous country that made

the transport of siege guns difficult. No such obstacle confronted an army
marching east or west across Slavonia’s fertile plain between the Sava and
the Drava, as when Ottoman forces extended the sultan’s border west during
the first half of the sixteenth century. But as Habsburg forces became better
organized, they turned the force of Kleinkrieg toward the East in the second
half of the century. The sancak of Čazma, the westernmost Ottoman outpost,
was not large enough to support the army that a sancakbeg normally com-
manded. The capital was thus moved to Pakrac, about forty-five miles south-
east. After the Habsburg conquest of Moslavina in 1591, a town south and
east of Pakrac was made the capital. 179 The sancak of Požega was larger and
better defended than Pakrac, but it too showed vulnerability. 180 The Ottoman
government seems to have been aware of the problem. According to a mili-
tary pay list for 1586, the two sancaks of Pakrac and Požega were to have
 Two Wars and Three Borders, 1593–1618 353

3,030 men on duty in twenty-one fortresses; the paşaluk of Bosnia, with a

much longer frontier to defend, was to have 3,700 men in twenty fortresses.
Around Požega, fighting during and just after the Ottoman conquest left a
great swath of vacant land, some of which was resettled by Vlach military
colonists. During the Long Turkish War, as Habsburg commanders sent raid-
ers into this area, they hoped to detach Vlach fighting men from the sultan’s
service. 181
Meanwhile, in Ottoman lands, the erosion of Vlach tax privileges was a
source of hardship. In October 1595, “Bishop Vasilii” traveled from Ottoman
territory to the Habsburg border fortress of Križevci. His message was that
the Turks had become unbearable: they were treating their Orthodox subjects
as if they were spies and informers. Archduke Ferdinand immediately gave
the general of Varaždin approval to resettle any Vlachs who came over. Just
now, the occupation of Klis by a mixed company of Dalmatian and Croatian
volunteers (April 1596), brief though it was, touched off tremors of hope in
the Ottoman Balkans; if the sultan’s men could be ejected from this iconic
citadel, what else was possible? In July, as the two Habsburg generals set out
for Kostajnica, they were met by an emissary carrying a letter from “Rados-
lav the Archpriest [protopopa].” Radoslav wrote on behalf of village elders
and military officers he named; they had heard that “his grace, the Arch-
duke,” was coming to the Una, and they offered to join his fight “against the
foul Turk and the cursed Muhammad.” Ferdinand sent word back that Vlach
fighting men would have privileged status under his rule. 182 But the cam-
paign on the Una came to naught. In the next few years there was some
Vlach resettlement into Croatia proper, organized by great families like the
Frankopans, but not much. Migration would be more significant north of the
Sava, in Slavonia, where large tracts of fertile land had lain idle for
decades. 183
The weakness of Požega’s defenses was clear. 184 Twice in the summer of
1596, hajduk irregulars captured and briefly held the capital city. In Novem-
ber, General Lenković crossed the Sava for a plunder expedition in the
Požega countryside, in which two hundred villages were said to have been
burned. In February 1597, Ferdinand issued a decree to the effect that Vlachs
transferring to his lands would be free of both taxes and labor service (robot)
so long as they served as fighting men. A first large group of Vlachs now
crossed over and were assigned land by General Herberstein. In June 1597,
Vlach leaders proposed that more people would come if Herberstein camped
near Virovitica; when he did, 1,700 came over. In 1598, Ferdinand approved
354 Chapter 6

Herberstein’s plan to attack Pakrac and Velika; he did not in fact lay siege to
either fortress, but on his return he brought five hundred more Vlachs. By
1610, some 1,200 men had relocated to Habsburg Slavonia, most between
1597 and 1600; since families were large, Karl Kaser estimates a total of ten
thousand migrants.
Along the eastern limits of Habsburg Slavonia, they formed or re-formed
villages, often using the names of settlements that had long been deserted:
forty-one villages in the captaincy of Križevci, nine in the captaincy of Ko-
privnica, and eight in the captaincy of Ivanić. If they served in fortresses, the
men received the same pay as others of the same rank. If not, they kept
weapons and tools in good repair: they had to muster at designated places
when so ordered and provide labor for the building or rebuilding of fortress-
es. Among the Vlachs were some Greek Catholics, in union with Rome; in
1611, their leader signed a statement acknowledging the authority of the
archbishop of Zagreb. The great majority were Orthodox, and their contribu-
tions supported the construction of two new monasteries. The fact that their
priests would have still been under the authority of the patriarch of Peć—
there was no Orthodox hierarchy on Habsburg soil—was apparently not seen
as a difficulty. But resettlement caused other problems. Over time, Vlachs in
Ottoman lands had become farmers as well as herders, but in crossing the
border they did not bring seed corn and they desperately needed help during
the first winter. The Croatian Sabor threw up its collective hands—they had
not a penny left over. The only possible source of funds was the estates in
Graz, and Styria’s gentlemen-deputies would not go beyond the garrison
wages they already paid for border fortresses. Working together, Herberstein
and the archduke extracted from Styria an allotment of 3,000 gulden for grain
during the winter of 1597/1598. There were, however, further needs. Like
any warrior society, the Vlachs had a hierarchy among themselves, and rank
demanded recognition in the form of distinctive garb. Herberstein contracted
for a delivery of cloth for Vlach officers and, without telling them, charged it
to Styria’s estates.

The Vojna Krajina in Slavonia

In Habsburg history, “military frontier” has a range of meanings. Taken

loosely, it simply means the monarchy claimed direct responsibility for de-
fending its border against the Ottomans. In this sense, one may say that there
was a military frontier from the 1520s, when Ferdinand I took over key
fortresses from their noble lords—even though he lacked the resources to
 Two Wars and Three Borders, 1593–1618 355

defend them. From the 1570s, there was a military frontier in a more robust
sense: the provincial estates and the imperial diet assured a regular flow of
funds, permitting commanders and military architects to do their work in
hardening the border. The Military Frontier in the fullest sense emerged
during and after the Long Turkish War as a continuous strip of land along the
border that was placed directly under the authority of the sovereign and was
thus removed from the jurisdiction of the provincial estates and from the
control of noble landlords. This step-by-step process was codified in decrees
issued by Ferdinand II between 1597 and 1630, known as the “Vlach Laws”
or Statuta Vlachorum. 185
Already in 1595, the Sabor protested the government’s practice of allow-
ing newcomers to settle on His Majesty’s land without having to pay the
taxes incumbent on peasant households. 186 Moreover, Ferdinand’s decree of
February 1597 said nothing about the traditional rights of landlords. In Sla-
vonia, few problems arose, because many of the areas now occupied by
Vlachs had passed to the control of Hungary’s royal fisc, either by escheat, as
families died out in the male line, or because nobles had ceded to the crown
land they could not hope to make profitable. But the bishop of Zagreb, with
lands on both sides of the Sava, vigorously asserted his claims. In 1599, he
complained to Rudolf II that Ferdinand was disregarding the rights of land-
lords, and he specifically asked that Herberstein be prohibited from settling
Vlachs on vacant land belonging to the bishopric. Ferdinand persuaded his
imperial nephew that Vlachs could not be treated as tenants of the bishop
because they were promised freedom from robot and other obligations in
return for fighting against the Ottomans. In 1601, Juraj Zrinski claimed juris-
diction over Vlachs who had settled on vacant family land near Gvozdansko,
but Ferdinand rejected his request. In 1604, the Hungarian Diet called for a
regulation requiring Vlachs to pay landlord fees and church tithes but got no
response. In 1612, a Hungarian court decreed that property in Slavonia (near
Moslavina) should be restored to its pre-war owners, the Erdödys; but since
the land in question was infertile and unoccupied, the decision had no practi-
cal effect. Because of recurring complaints of this kind, Ferdinand appointed
a commission that met in 1623, only to postpone its deliberations for five
years. Finally, in 1630, Hungary’s high court decreed that Vlachs must pay
taxes to the fisc and that in military affairs they were under the orders of the
ban of Croatia. But in the last of his Statuta Vlachorum, a few months later,
Ferdinand ignored the court’s ruling. As previously, Vlachs were to enjoy
356 Chapter 6

freedom from taxation and feudal dues and were under the orders of the
commanders of the two generalates.
Since the 1520s, Habsburg princes, Austrian estates, and Croatian nobles
had wrangled among themselves about how to defend the border, with each
party maintaining rights the others could not ignore. The solution finally
adopted vindicated the rights of the sovereign. If Croatia’s Sabor still con-
trolled Petrinja, the “ban’s border” was of secondary importance, because the
real Military Frontier now lay to the east. From northern and western Hun-
gary south to the Drava, and then across the Sava to the Adriatic, the fortified
edge of Habsburg territory formed a continuous zone. Despite aristocratic
objections, the military colonists who defended it were not subject to the
estates, and they enjoyed freedom from obligations normally incumbent on
the peasantry. Since the wages of these men were paid by the Austrian and
Bohemian estates, the provinces of the hereditary lands were still involved in
military affairs, but without a controlling role. This Military Frontier was the
solution to a long-intractable problem. It kept the border secure for two
centuries.
The Treaty of Madrid brought calm to Dalmatia, where stone markers had
for some time divided Venetian from Ottoman territory. 187 The Treaty of
Zsitvatorok left a no-man’s land between Habsburg and Ottoman provinces,
not a clear boundary, but it nonetheless brought peace to the Bosnian-Croa-
tian frontier. For most of the seventeenth century, none of the three mega-
states had any interest in rousing new conflict in this remote border region.
During the decades of peace, it seems that Croatians, Bosnians, and Dalma-
tians each developed a stronger sense of sharing in a wider political identity,
as “Imperials,” “Turks,” or “Venetians.” 188 But they no longer went to war.

NOTES

1. As codified in the Treaty of Zsitvatorok (1606).

2. In the Treaties of Karlovac (1699) and Passarowitz (1718), the Ottomans retained most
of Bosnia and Serbia, but the Habsburgs reclaimed Hungary and Croatia within the boundaries
of 1520. Dalmatia was divided between Venice and the Habsburgs.
3. Hungarian scholars describe it as a “Fifteen Year War,” starting from Hasan Paşa’s
attacks into Croatia in 1591.
4. Cf. Olivier Chaline, La bataille de la Montagne Blanche (8 novembre 1620). Un mys-
tique chez les guerriers (Paris: Noësis, 2000).
5. As scholars now agree, the Catholic revival was both a “Catholic Reformation” and a
“Counter-Reformation.”
6. The original formulation, pecunia nervus belli (“money is the sinew of war”), came
from Tacitus.
 Two Wars and Three Borders, 1593–1618 357

7. Caroline Finkel, The Administration of Warfare: The Ottoman Military Campaigns in

Hungary, 1593–1606 = Beihefte zur Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes, 14
(Vienna: A. Hölder, 1988).
8. Alfred Loebl, Zur Geschichte des Türkenkrieges, 1593–1606 (2 vols.), Prager Studien
aus dem Gebiet der Geschichte, vols. 6, 10 (Prague, 1899, 1904), sometimes cited as if it were
a history of the war, covers the years 1591–1592. The most helpful studies are Finkel (above,
note 7), and Niederkorn, Die europäische Mächte und der “Lange Türkenkrieg” Kaiser Ru-
dolfs II.
9. Battle of Diu: Sanjay Subrahmanyam, The Portuguese Empire in Asia 1500–1700 (Lon-
don: Longman Group, 1995), 67. Casale, “Tordesillas and the Ottoman Caliphate.”
10. Eyüp was the suburb where Abu Ayyub was believed to be buried. Casale, “Tordesillas
and the Ottoman Caliphate,” 505–509; Imber, The Ottoman Empire, 116–118, and 125–126
(the quote). On Ebu’s-su’ud, see Colin Imber, Ebu’s-su’ud: The Islamic Legal Tradition (Stan-
ford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997); Leslie P. Peirce, The Imperial Harem: Women and
Sovereignty in the Ottoman Empire (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 160–162.
11. Elke Eberhard, Osmanische Polemik gegen die Safawiden im 16en Jahrhundert nach
arabischen Handschriften = Islamkundliche Untersuchungen, 3 (Freiburg im Breisgau: Klaus
Schwarz Verlag, 1970), 6–33, 50–54, 155–161; Hammer-Purgstall, Geschichte des osmanis-
chen Reiches, II, 620–621.
12. Marco Venier to the Senate, Istanbul, 4 May 1594, ASV-DAC, Filza 39, 239–242v.
13. Hammer-Purgstall, Geschichte des osmanischen Reiches, II, 585–589, 604–605, 615,
620–621; Peirce, Imperial Harem, 171.
14. A Christian counterpart might be the Holy Lance, believed to have pierced the side of
Christ on the cross. “Holy lances” were preserved for many centuries in Rome, Vienna, and
Paris. In the celebrated equestrian portrait by Titian, Emperor Charles V carries a replica of the
Vienna holy lance, which had for centuries been part of the imperial regalia.
15. When confronted by the demands of Hungary’s largely Protestant estates, Archduke
Matthias was at a loss: “My God, what should I do? If I don’t give them what they want, I will
lose my lands and subjects. If I agree, I’ll be damned”: Wilson, The Thirty Years War,
110–112. Protestant towns routinely suppressed Catholic worship, in the belief that God’s
wrath would strike any city that tolerated idolatry.
16. Hequet, The Regensburg Colloquy of 1541.
17. France had three warring factions: the Catholic League, the Huguenots (Calvinists), and
the mainly Catholic Politiques, who joined the Huguenots in supporting the accession of a
Protestant king, Henri IV (r. 1589–1610): Mack P. Holt, The French Wars of Religion,
1562–1629 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).
18. Named for Philip Melanchthon (d. 1560), Luther’s second-in-command at Wittenberg,
who acquiesced in a local variant of Charles V’s Augsburg Interim of 1548.
19. The best survey of doctrine and practice is Diarmuid MacCulloch, Reformation: Eu-
rope’s House Divided, 1490–1700 (London: Penguin, 2003). My Europe’s Reformations,
1450–1650 (2nd ed., Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006) includes discussion of politi-
cal and social issues.
20. Setton, The Papacy and the Levant; Housley, The Later Crusades.
21. Niederkorn, “Argumentationsstrategien für Bündnisse gegen die Osmanen in Gesand-
tenberichten.”
22. Niederkorn, Die europäische Mächte und der “Lange Türkenkrieg,” 257–315, 470–489.
23. François Savary de Brèves to Henri IV, Istanbul, 1602, Manuscrits français, 16444,
283–286. Henri IV ruled from 1594 to 1610, and Savary was ambassador in Istanbul from 1591
to 1604.
358 Chapter 6

24. Niederkorn, Die europäische Mächte und der “Lange Türkenkrieg,” 140–182 (the
quote, 175).
25. Johannes Ehmann, Luther, Türken, und Islam. Eine Untersuchung zum Türken- und
Islambild Luthers (1515–1546) (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlaghaus, 2008), 268–290 (the
quotes, 271, 278–279).
26. See Schulze, Reich und Türkengefahr im späten 16en Jahrhundert, 33–50; Christine M.
Gigler, “Geistliche Kriegsrüsting. Die Tüerkenpredigten des Gurker Bischofs Urban Sagestet-
ter (1566/7),” in Kurz et al., Das Osmanische Reich und die Habsburgermonarchie, 213–227.
For Ungnad’s circular letter, see chapter 4, note 328. Ungnad, a Wittenberg graduate, had been
a friend and correspondent of Philip Melanchthon.
27. The treatise quoted by Schulze (Reich und Türkengefahr, 47–48) is Lucas Osiander II,
Christlicher notwendiger bericht welcher gestalt sich die Christen darein schicken sollen damit
sie dem Tuercken ein beharrlichen abbruch thun [A necessary report to Christians on how they
must conduct themselves to stop the Turk for good].
28. Except for Tirol, strongly Catholic since the 1530s.
29. Louthan, The Quest for Compromise, 300–301; Rudolf Leeb, “Der Streit um den wahren
Glauben—Reformation und Gegenreformation in Österreich,” in Rudolf Leeb et al., eds., Ges-
chichte des Christentums in Österreich (Vienna: Überroth, 2003), 145–280, here 224–226,
252–257.
30. Wilson, The Thirty Years War, 34; Leeb, “Der Streit um den wahren Glauben,”
228–230, 251; Pörtner, The Counter-Reformation in Central Europe, 47–56.
31. Chapter 5, note 154.
32. Pörtner, The Counter-Reformation in Central Europe, 71–104. Archduke Karl was ex-
communicated by Pope Gregory XIII (r. 1572–1585).
33. Wilson, The Thirty Years War, 70–73 (the quote, 70). The most recent biography is
Johann Franzl, Ferdinand II. Kaiser im Zweispalt der Zeit (Graz: Styria, 1998).
34. Pörtner, The Counter-Reformation in Central Europe, 112–130; Franzl, Ferdinand II,
40–69.
35. Pörtner, The Counter-Reformation in Central Europe, 37–40; Leeb, “Der Streit um den
wahren Glauben,” 227.
36. Leeb, “Der Streit um den wahren Glauben,” 224, 253–256; Winkelbauer,
Österreichische Geschichte, I, 56–60.
37. Franzl, Ferdinand II, 83–88.
38. Gerlach’s colleague was Jacob Andreae. Ernst Benz, Wittenberg und Byzanz. Zur Be-
gegnung und Auseinandersetzung der Reformation und der östlich-orthodoxen Kirche (Mar-
burg: Elwat-Gräfe und Unzer, 1949), 1–3, 94–96; Wayne James Jorgenson, The Augustana
Graeca and the Correspondence between the Tübingen Lutherans and Patriarch Jeremia (Ann
Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1979).
39. A term embracing people who would now be called Ukrainian and Belorussian.
40. Serhii Plokhy, The Cossacks and Religion in Early Modern Ukraine (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2001), 72–86. The Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church is today the largest of 23
Uniate churches affiliated with Rome. The king was Zygmunt III Vasa (r. 1587–1632).
41. For Catholic-Orthodox tension in the Greek-speaking overseas dominions of Venice, see
Molly Greene, Catholic Pirates and Greek Merchants: A Maritime History of the Mediterra-
nean (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010), 58–65.
42. Ohrid was the seat of the Greek-speaking archbishop. Bartl, Der Westbalkan zwischen
Spanischer Monarchie und Osmanischem Reich, 52–53, 99–103; A. E. Vacalopoulos, History
of Macedonia, 1354–1833, tr. Peter Megann (Thessalonika: Institute of Balkan Studies, 1973),
192–203; Niederkorn, Die europäische Mächte und der “Lange Türkenkrieg,” 34–35,
 Two Wars and Three Borders, 1593–1618 359

287–288; Luis M. Linde, Don Pedro Girón, duque de Osuna. La hegemonía Española in
Europa a comienzo del siglo XVII (Madrid: Encuentro, 2005); Zdenko Zlatko, Our Kingdom
Come: The Counter-Reformation, the Republic of Dubrovnik, and the Liberation of the Balkan
Slavs (Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, 1992).
43. Hammer-Purgstall, Geschichte des osmanischen Reiches, II, 585–589; Wilson, The
Thirty Years War, 98.
44. Marco Venier to the Senate, Istanbul, 3 April, 19 May 1594, ASV-DAC, Filza 39,
113–118v, 260–267; Hammer-Purgstall, Geschichte des osmanischen Reiches, II, 600–601.
45. White, The Climate of Rebellion in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire; Karen Barkey,
Bandits and Bureaucrats: The Ottoman Route to Centralization (Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univer-
sity Press, 1994); Biščević, Bosanski namjesnici, no. 87.
46. Finkel, The Administration of Warfare, 173; Ogier Gjiselin van Boesbeek, Vier brieven
over het gezantschap naar Turkije, Latin text annotated by R. M. Zweder van Martels, Dutch
translation by Michel Goldsteen (Hilversum: Verloren, 1994), 176.
47. An unsigned “Discours” on Mehmed II’s departure from the capital, 15 June 1596,
Bibliothèque National de France, Salle des Manuscrits, “Cinq Cents de Colbert,” 35, 540–544v.
Busbecq/Boesbeek, as in note 46.
48. Hammer-Purgstall, Geschichte des osmanischen Reiches, II, 615; Imber, The Ottoman
Empire, 68–69.
49. Mark L. Stein, Guarding the Frontier: Ottoman Border Garrisons in Europe (London: I.
B. Tauris, 2007), 35–39.
50. Although they continued using bronze for ordnance (Europeans had found ways of
making cast iron more durable), the Ottomans deployed as many different kinds of cannon as
European armies did. Ágoston, Guns for the Sultan, 195–198.
51. Kelenik, “The Military Revolution in Hungary,” 123–135; Hammer-Purgstall, Ges-
chichte des osmanischen Reiches, II, 605–607; Riccardo Caimmi, La Guerra del Friuli
1615–1618, altrimento nota come Guerra di Gradisca o degli Uscocchi (Gorizia: Editrice
Goriziana, 2007), 77–78.
52. Ágoston, Guns for the Sultan, 89–91; Finkel, The Administration of Warfare, 37–44;
Uyar and Erickson, Military History of the Ottomans, 79 (the quote). According to Lazaro
Soranzo, L’Ottomano (Ferrara: Vittorio Baldini, 1598), sipahis did not carry pistols.
53. For an overview, see James D. Tracy, “Taxation and State Debt,” in Hamish Scott, ed.,
Oxford Handbook of Early Modern European History (2 vols., Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2015), II, 512–537.
54. Hammer-Purgstall, Geschichte des osmanischen Reiches, II, 609–611, cf. 624–625.
55. Darling, Revenue-Raising and Legitimacy, 46; Hammer-Purgstall, Geschichte des osma-
nischen Reiches, II, 612; Finkel, The Administration of Warfare, 68–69, 261–264, 260 (the
quote).
56. Darling, Revenue-Raising and Legitimacy, 237–240.
57. Ottaviano Bon to the Senate, Istanbul, 30 March 1605, ASV-DAC, Filza 61, f. 54–60v.
58. Finkel, The Administration of Warfare, 68–69, 261–264, 260.
59. Marco Venier to the Senate, Istanbul, 13 March, 4 June 1594, ASV-DAC, Filza 39, f.
16–19v, 349–354v. For the “outer” and “inner” treasuries, see J. Vernet, “Khazine,” Encyclo-
paedia of Islam, IV, 1183–1186. Finkel, The Administration of Warfare, 239–240: Ottoman
sources do not always distinguish between the state treasury and the sultan’s private treasury.
60. “Discours des choses advenues à la mort de Sultan Amorat,” “Cinq Cents de Colbert,”
35, 535–537v; Venier to the Senate, 19 May 1594, ASV-DAC, Filza 39, f. 260–267v.
61. Hammer-Purgstall, Geschichte des osmanischen Reiches, II, 589; cf. II, 609–611: at his
death in 1596, Sinan’s wealth, confiscated by the state, amounted to nearly 9 million ducats.
360 Chapter 6

62. Venier to the Senate, Istanbul, 19 May, 4 June 1594, ASV-DAC, Filza 39, f. 260–267v,
349–354v.
63. Finkel, The Administration of Warfare, 239–240; Ottaviano Bon to the Senate, Istanbul,
30 April, 23 July 1605, ASV-DAC, Filza 61, f. 135–136v, 267–272v.
64. Pálffy, “An ‘Old Empire’ on the Periphery of the Old Empire,” 265.
65. Loserth, Innerösterreich und die militärischen Massnahmen, 74–80, 103–109, 132–138;
Pálffy, “An ‘Old Empire’ on the Periphery of the Old Empire,” 268; Niederkorn, Die
europäische Mächte und der “Lange Türkenkrieg,” 56–60.
66. Niederkorn, Die europäische Mächte und der “Lange Türkenkrieg,” 55; Brady, German
Histories, 354.
67. István Kenyeres, “Die Kriegesausgaben der Habsburgermonarchie von der Mitte des
16en bis zum ersten Drittel des 17en Jahrhunderts,” in Peter Rauscher, ed., Kriegsführung und
Staastsfinanzen, Die Habsburgermonarchie und das Heilige Römische Reich vom
Dreissigjähringen Krieg bus zum Ende des habsbürgischen Kaisertums (Münster: Aschendorff,
2010), 41–80, here 73–75; Niederkorn, Die europäische Mächte und der “Lange Türkenkrieg,”
56–60.
68. Wilson, The Thirty Years War, 294–295; Pálffy, “The ‘Old Empire’ on the Periphery of
the Old Empire,” 261.
69. Loebl, Zur Geschichte des Türkenkrieges, II, 13; Kenyeres, “Die Kriegesausgaben der
Habsburgermonarchie,” 70–72, 43–48 (expenses of 23 million gulden); military expenses were
paid not just by the Kriegszahlmeister, but also by the Hofzahlmeister, the court paymaster.
70. Niederkorn, Die europäische Mächte und der “Lange Türkenkrieg,” 59; Winkelbauer,
Österreichische Geschichte, I, 481–482.
71. That is, 31.2 million gulden.
72. Above, note 37. The fullest discussion of relations between Austrian sovereigns and
their estates focuses on Upper and Lower Austria: Arno Strohmeyer, Konfessionskonflikt und
Herrschaftsordnung. Widerstandssrecht bei den recht bei den österreichischen Ständen
(1550–1650) (Mainz: Philipp von Zabern, 2006).
73. Leeb, “Der Streit um den wahren Glauben,” 248.
74. Niederkorn, Die europäische Mächte und der “Lange Türkenkrieg,” 71–102, 215–253,
398–411, 499.
75. Loserth, Innerösterreich und die militärischen Massnahmen, 137–138; Loebl, Zur Ges-
chichte des Türkenkrieges, I, 36, II, 15–25; Kenyeres, “Die Kriegesausgaben der Habsburger-
monarchie,” 73–75; Winkelbauer, Österreichische Geschichte, I, 515–516; Wilson, The Thirty
Years War, 105, 294–295. The Jewish merchant was Mordecai Meisel.
76. For the delicate problem posed by a ruler who was or might be non compos mentis, see
H. C. Erik Midelfort, Mad Princes of Renaissance Germany (Charlottesville: University of
Virginia Press, 1994), especially chapter 5.
77. Franzl, Ferdinand II, 106–107; for the ensuing “brothers’ quarrel,” see Herbert Haupt,
“From Quarreling Brothers to a Nation at War with Itself,” in Fučikova et al., Rudolf II and
Prague, 238–252. Matthias became king of Hungary (1608) and of Bohemia (1609) while
Rudolf remained emperor until his death in 1612.
78. Midelfort, Mad Princes of Renaissance Germany, chapter 5; Niederkorn, Die
europäische Mächte und der “Lange Türkenkrieg,” 68.
79. For the rest of this paragraph, save as noted, see Peirce, Imperial Harem, 91–98,
127–128, 175–176, 241–243.
80. “List of Ottoman Grand Viziers,” Wikipedia.
81. Hammer-Purgstall, Geschichte des osmanischen Reiches, II, 609–611, calls Safiye the
“soul” of the Ottoman government.
 Two Wars and Three Borders, 1593–1618 361

82. The Black Sea province was Silistria. For this paragraph, see Ioan-Aurel Pop, “Romania
in the 14th–16th Centuries: From the ‘Christian Republic’ to the ‘Restoration of Dacia,’” in
Ioan-Aurel Pop and Ioan Bolovan, eds., History of Romania: Compendium (Cluj-Napoca:
Romanian Cultural Institute, 2006), 209–314, here 275–277, 287, 305–306; Gábor Barta, “First
Period of the Transylvanian Principality (1526–1606),” in Béla Köpeczi, László Makkai,
András Móczy, and Zoltán Szas, eds., History of Transylvania, tr. Bennett Kopvrig (Highland
Lakes, NJ: Social Science Monographs, 2010), 637–645, 655, 743; Niederkorn, Die
europäische Mächte und der “Lange Türkenkrieg,” 41–43, 46–47.
83. Marco Venier to the Senate, Istanbul, 2 June 1594, ASV-DAC, Filza 39, f. 327–333.
Early in his career, Sinan Paşa (1506–1596) achieved important Ottoman victories in Yemen
(1571) and at Tunis (1574).
84. Finkel, The Administration of Warfare, 12; Hammer-Purgstall, Geschichte des osmanis-
chen Reiches, II, 585–589; Imber, The Ottoman Empire, 67; Niederkorn, Die europäische
Mächte und der “Lange Türkenkrieg,” 120; Winkelbauer, Österreichische Geschichte, I, 142.
The commander who surrendered Győr was Count Ferdinand zu Hardeck, or Hardegg.
85. Niederkorn, Die europäische Mächte und der “Lange Türkenkrieg,” 477–478. For the
Zaporizhian assembly or Sich, see Plokhy, The Cossacks and Religion, 21–31; for the papal
diplomat, Alexander Kormulović, see Bartl, Der Westbalkan zwischen Spanischer Monarchie,
47–50.
86. Barta, “First Period of the Transylvanian Principality,” 746–747. The grand chancellor
was Jan Zamoysky.
87. Pop, “Romania in the 14th–16th Centuries,” 229, 306–307.
88. Hammer-Purgstall, Geschichte des osmanischen Reiches, II, 602–607; Imber, The Otto-
man Empire, 68; Maschke, Kreuz und Halbmond, 297–298; Pop, “Romania in the 14th–16th
Centuries,” 307–308; Barta, “First Period of the Transylvanian Principality,” 748–751. The
conqueror of Esztergom was Karl von Mansfeld.
89. Hammer-Purgstall, Geschichte des osmanischen Reiches, II, 609–614; Finkel, Adminis-
tration of Warfare, 15, 175.
90. Hammer-Purgstall, Geschichte des osmanischen Reiches, II, 615; Imber, The Ottoman
Empire, 68–69; Uyar and Erickson, Military History of the Ottomans, 77–78.
91. Hammer-Purgstall, Geschichte des osmanischen Reiches, II, 624–628; Finkel, The Ad-
ministration of Warfare, 15–16; Imber, The Ottoman Empire, 69; Niederkorn, Die europäische
Mächte und der “Lange Türkenkrieg,” 14. The city besieged for a time was Oradea/
Nagyvárad, chief city of the so-called Partium, the seven Hungarian counties then annexed to
Transylvania.
92. Finkel, The Administration of Warfare, 16–17; Imber, The Ottoman Empire, 69, 72;
Hammer-Purgstall, Geschichte des osmanischen Reiches, II, 631–632; Pálffy, “Origins and
Development of the Border Defense System,” 46, 53.
93. Also, a Romanian-speaking peasantry made up a majority of the population in all three
territories. Later Romanian nationalists looked back to Michael the Brave’s brief rule in all
three as the beginning of national unity. Cf. the Romanian movie, Mihai Viteazul (1970),
released by Columbia Pictures as The Last Crusade.
94. Hammer-Purgstall, Geschichte des osmanischen Reiches, II, 613–614, 645; Finkel, The
Administration of Warfare, 16–17; Niederkorn, Die europäische Mächte und der “Lange
Türkenkrieg,” 14–16; Pop, “Romania in the 14th–16th Centuries,” 309–310; Bulgaria’s capital
until 1393 was (Veliko) Tarnovo; for the uprising, see “First Tarnovo Uprising,” Wikipedia.
95. Finkel, The Administration of Warfare, 17; Barta, “First Period of the Transylvanian
Principality,” 751–752; Niederkorn, Die europäische Mächte und der “Lange Türkenkrieg,”
15; Pop, “Romania in the 14th–16th Centuries,” 309–310.
362 Chapter 6

96. Barta, “First Period of the Transylvanian Principality,” 751–754; Niederkorn, Die
europäische Mächte und der “Lange Türkenkrieg,” 15; Pop, “Romania in the 14th–16th Cen-
turies,” 309–311; Wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Şelimbă.
97. Barta, “First Period of the Transylvanian Principality,” 752–754; Niederkorn, Die
europäische Mächte und der “Lange Türkenkrieg,” 16; Pop, “Romania in the 14th–16th Cen-
turies,” 311–312. “Battle of Mirăslău” and “Battle of Guruslău,” Wikipedia.
98. Chapter 5, note 146; Günther Cerwinka, “Die Eroberung der Festung Kanizsa durch die
Türken im Jahre 1600,” in Novotny and Sutter, Innerösterreich 1564–1619, 414–415, 423.
99. Cerwinka, “Die Eroberung der Festung Kanizsa,” 417–421; on the five hundred boats,
see Hammer-Purgstall, Geschichte des osmanischen Reiches, II, as cited above, note 89.
100. Cerwinka, “Die Eroberung der Festung Kanizsa,” 416; above, note 37.
101. Cerwinka, “Die Eroberung der Festung Kanizsa,” 416–418, 425, 427–428; Mehmed III
to Henri IV, September 1601, “Cinq Cents de Colbert,” 482, 2nd doc., f. 10–12v.
102. Niederkorn, Die europäische Mächte und der “Lange Türkenkrieg,” 162–165; Holt,
France’s Wars of Religion, 145–163.
103. Cerwinka, “Die Eroberung der Festung Kanizsa,” 424–438; Hammer-Purgstall, Ges-
chichte des osmanischen Reiches, II, 633–635.
104. Hammer-Purgstall, Geschichte des osmanischen Reiches, II, 646–649; Imber, The Otto-
man Empire, 69–70.
105. Hammer-Purgstall, Geschichte des osmanischen Reiches, II, 653–654; Imber, The Otto-
man Empire, 70, 73. The Calvinist noble was Mózes Székely.
106. Hodgson, The Venture of Islam, vol. 3, 102–103; and references to padishah in Kathryn
Babayan, Monarchs, Mystics, and Messiahs: Cultural Landscapes of Early Modern Iran (Cam-
bridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002).
107. William J. Griswold, The Great Anatolian Rebellion, 1000–1020/1591–1611 (Berlin: K.
Schwarz Verlag, 1983), 39–46; Imber, The Ottoman Empire, 73.
108. “Mózes Székely,” Wikipedia.
109. Martyn Rady, “Bocskai, Rebellion, and Resistance in Early Modern Hungary,” 8–12,
http://www.academia.edu/3037539/Bocskai_Rebellion_and_Resistance_in_Early_Modern_
Hungary.
110. Finkel, The Administration of Warfare, 19–20 (the quote), 239–240; Maschke, Der
Kreuz und der Halbmond, 315.
111. Rady, “Bocskai, Rebellion, and Resistance,” 2–7.
112. Rady, “Bocskai, Rebellion, and Resistance,” 16; Franzl, Ferdinand II, 106–111; Masch-
ke, Der Kreuz und der Halbmond, 315.
113. Finkel, The Administration of Warfare, 177; Maschke, Der Kreuz und der Halbmond,
317–318. The sultan was Osman II.
114. Imber, The Ottoman Empire, 71–72; Maschke, Der Kreuz und der Halbmond, 317–318.
For the “brothers’ quarrel,” see Wilson, The Thirty Years War, 106–115; Pálffy, “The Origins
and Development of the Border Defence System,” 56–57; Stein, Guarding the Frontier, 25–26.
115. Wilson, The Thirty Years War, 103–106.
116. Imber, The Ottoman Empire, 72.
117. Finkel, The Administration of Warfare, 20; Pálffy, “The Origins and Development of the
Border Defence System,” 56–57; Wilson, The Thirty Years War, 103.
118. Niederkorn, Die europäische Mächte und der “Lange Türkenkrieg,” 499–502; Wilson,
The Thirty Years War, 101–102; and the references to Tschernembl in Strohmeyer, Konfes-
sionskonflikt und Herrschaftsordnung.
 Two Wars and Three Borders, 1593–1618 363

119. CRV V, doc. 1, 9–36, here 23–24, report of Ferigo Nani as procurator-general of Dalma-
tia, 10 December 1591; CRV IV, doc. 9, 157–185, here 179, report of Andrea Giustiniani and
Otavian Valier as syndics for Dalmatia, 1576.
120. CRV V, no. 9, 117–121, report of Daniele Molin, rector of Split, 11 October 1594, and
no. 16, 175–216, here 193–194, report of Cristoforo Valier as governor-general of Dalmatia,
1596.
121. CRV V, doc. 6, 81–92, here 88–89, report of Antonio de Ca Pesaro as rector of Šibenik,
22 December 1593; and doc. 10, 121–140, here 138, report of Benedetto del Moro as governor-
general of Dalmatia, s.d. [1596].
122. Nani’s report, CRV V, doc. 1, 9–36, here 16.
123. Bracewell, The Uskoks of Senj, 220–221, 379.
124. Nani’s report, CRV V, doc. 1, 9–36, here 32; CRV V, doc. 23, 273–297, here 281, report
of Nicolò Donado as governor-general of Dalmatia, 2 December 1599.
125. CRV V, doc. 3, 45–60, here 48, report of Almoro Tiepolo as proveditore of the Gulf, 31
January 1593; Ca Pesaro’s report, CRV V, doc. 6, 88–89; and CRV V, doc. 18, 221–230, here
223, report of Vettor Solfin, rector of Šibenik, 2 December 1597.
126. Valier’s report, CXRV V, doc. 16, 175–216, here 211–212.
127. In reference to their respective anchor fortresses, the Slavonian and Croatian sectors of
the frontier were now known as the generalates of Varaždin and Karlovac; Lenković was the
general of Karlovac and thus of Croatia. See below.
128. Klaić, Povijest Hrvata, V, 522–526; CRV V, no. 10, 121–140, here 124–128, Del
Moro’s report [1596]. Del Moro faults Lenković for leaving his supplies behind. For the
shortage of packhorses in this area, see chapter 5, note 79.
129. Gaetano Cozzi, Michael Knapton, and Giovanni Scarabello, La Repubblica di Venezia
nel’età moderna (2 vols., Turin: UTET, 1992), II, 382.
130. Bracewell, The Uskoks of Senj, 274–275.
131. That is, the Spanish-Habsburg hegemony. Spain ruled the kingdom of Naples and the
duchy of Milan, and the Republic of Genoa and the Medici of Florence were firm allies. For
Venice’s problems with the Austrian Habsburgs on the lower Soča/Isonzo, see below.
132. Bracewell, The Uskoks of Senj, 238.
133. For this distinction, see Bracewell, The Uskoks of Senj, 131–139.
134. Bracewell, The Uskoks of Senj, 239–242; CRV V, doc. 20, 237–259, here 244–246,
report of Zuane Bembo as “proveditor of the sea in the Gulf,” 11 September 1598. Cf. CRV V,
doc. 23, 273–297, here 279–280, report of Nicolò Donado as proveditor-general of the sea, 2
December 1599: the uskoks “sono osservatissimi della parola.”
135. Bracewell, The Uskoks of Senj, 243; Mario Dassovich, Fiume, Segna, e le vicende del
Quarnero Interno dal periodo medievale al 1717 (Udine: Del Bianco, 2007), 232–235.
136. Bracewell, The Uskoks of Senj, 244–250; Šmitran, Gli Uscocchi, 71–73; Paolo Sarpi,
“Aggionta all’Istoria degli Uscocchi di Minuccio Minucci,” in Paolo Sarpi, La Repubblica di
Venezia, la Casa di Austria, e gli Uscocchi, ed. Gaetano Cozzi and Luisa Cozzi (Bari: Laterna,
1965), 7–70, here 8–9.
137. Bracewell, The Uskoks of Senj, 253; Sarpi, “Aggionta all’Istoria degli Uscocchi,” 10–12.
138. Bracewell, The Uskoks of Senj, 257–259.
139. Philip Williams, Empire and Holy War in the Mediterranean (London and New York: I.
B. Tauris, 2014), chapters 3 and 5, and p. 113 (the quote, from a memo by a Knight of Malta,
dated 1605); Sarpi, “Aggionta all’Istoria degli Uscocchi,” 13–14 (entry for 1604).
140. For this paragraph, see Bracewell, The Uskoks of Senj, 259–272; Sarpi, “Aggionta
all’Istoria degli Uscocchi,” 15–23.
364 Chapter 6

141. For this paragraph, see Bracewell, The Uskoks of Senj, 272–285; Sarpi, “Aggionta
all’Istoria degli Uscocchi,” 31–58.
142. For this paragraph, see Bracewell, The Uskoks of Senj, 286–288; Caimmi, La Guerra del
Friuli, 113–114.
143. Frank Lambert, Barbary Wars: American Independence and the Atlantic World (New
York: Hill & Wang, 2005), 52; Adrian Tinniswood, Pirates of Barbary: Corsairs, Conquests
and Captives in the 17th Century (New York: Riverhead Press, 2010); Tenenti, Piracy and the
Decline of Venice; Viktor Brekhunenko, Morski Vijny Ukrainskkyh Kozakiv (Kyiv, 2007).
144. Caimmi, La Guerra del Friuli, 33; Williams, Empire and Holy War, 52; Linde, Don
Pedro de Girón, duque de Osuña, chapter 4.
145. Gaetano Cozzi and Luisa Cozzi, “Nota Storica,” in Sarpi, La Repubblica di Venezia, la
Casa di Austria, 419–454, here 433–434. For background, see Pederin, Mletačka uprava.
146. For the Venetian seizure of Marano, see Pelissier to Francis I, Venice, 18 January 1542,
Charrière, I, 528–529.
147. Caimmi, La Guerra di Friuli, 99; Cozzi, Knapton, and Scarabello, La Repubblica di
Venezia, II, 68–69; Niederkorn, Die europäische Mächte und der “Lange Türkenkrieg,”
342–347. Saluzzo was the last French outpost.
148. Sarpi, “Aggionta alla’ Istoria degli Uscocchi,” 15–19.
149. Bracewell, The Uskoks of Senj, 285–286; Sarpi, “Aggionta alla’ Istoria degli Uscocchi,”
39–58.
150. Caimmi, La Guerra del Friuli, 14–15; Cozzi, Knapton, and Scarabello, La Repubblica
di Venezia, 100; Cozzi and Cozzi, “Nota Storica,” 426–434. Sarpi belonged to the Servite
order; the English ambassador was Dudley Carleton.
151. The Twelve Years’ Truce (1609–1621) was observed on both sides.
152. Caimmi, La Guerra del Friuli, 114–164. Cf. Franzl, Ferdinand II, 150–151. This was
the view of Matthias’s chief adviser, Cardinal Melchior Khlesl. The commander of the Dutch
force was Johann Ernst von Nassau-Siegen.
153. The alignment of forces in this conflict has been interpreted as bringing a general
European war perceptibly nearer, but Peter Wilson disagrees, The Thirty Years War, 257, citing
Geoffrey Parker, The Thirty Years War (London, 1984), 38–43.
154. Bracewell, The Uskoks of Senj, 289–292; Caimmi, La Guerra del Friuli, 32–33.
155. Biščević, Bosanski namjesnici, nos. 76–97, with corrections as to sequence and dates
from the list given in http://www.worldstatesmen.org/Bosnia.html.
156. Biščević, Bosanski namjesnici, nos. 77, 78 (Hasan Paşa Tirjaki was also called Ghazi
Hasan Paşa Tiro), 79, 90, 96. For the Papa garrison, see Caroline Finkel, “French [Walloon]
Mercenaries in the Habsburg Ottoman War of 1593–1606: The Desertion of the Papa Garrison
to the Ottomans in 1600,” Bulletin of the SOAS 55, no. 3 (1992): 451–471.
157. For this paragraph, save as noted, see Biščević, Bosanski namjesnici, 76, 82, 87, and
Finkel, The Administration of Warfare, 36.
158. Biščević, Bosanski namjesnici, 79: when Petrinja was conquered in 1595, its defender
was the sancakbeg of Bihać.
159. Holjevac and Moačanin, Hrvatsko-Slavonska Vojna Krajina i Hrvati pod Vlašču Os-
manskoga, 137.
160. Adem Handžić, ed., Opširni popis Bosanskog Sandžaka iz 1604. Godine (3 vols., Saraje-
vo: Bošnjački Institut Zürich, 2000).
161. Mensi, Geschichte der direkten Steuern in Steiermark, I, 129–139.
162. Handžić, Opširni popis Bosanskog Sandžaka, I, xlviii–li. Prague around 1600 is thought
to have had between fifty thousand and sixty thousand people: Jiŕi Pešek, “Prague between
1550 and 1650,” in Fučikova et al., Rudolf II and Prague, 252–269.
 Two Wars and Three Borders, 1593–1618 365

163. Chapter 5, notes 80–83. Older mining towns included Visoko and Olovo.
164. Holjevac and Moačanin, Hrvatsko-Slavonska Vojna Krajina pod Vlašču Osmanskoga,
134; Džaja, Konfessionalität und Nationalität, 38; Handžić, Opširni popis Bosanskog
Sandžaka, I, xxxiii–xxxvi (see figures for the nahijas of Visoko, Brod, and Olovo).
165. Handžić, Opširni popis Bosanskog Sandžaka, I, xxxiii–xxxvi (see figures for the nahijas
of Dobor, Jeleč, Ras, Vrače, Birče, Osat, Tešanj, and Kobaš.
166. Handžić, Opširni popis Bosanskog Sandžaka, I, xlvi.
167. Džaja, Konfessionalität und Nationalität, 161, 173–174.
168. Holjevac and Moačanin, Hrvatsko-Slavonska Vojna Krajina pod Vlašču Osmanskoga,
148 (the quote); Džaja, Konfessionalität und Nationalität, 44, 47.
169. For this paragraph, save as noted, see Handžić, Opširni popis Bosanskog Sandžaka, I,
xliv–xlv, xlviii–li.
170. Đenana Buturović and Lada Buturović, “Bosnian Frontiersmen from Krajina in Memory
and Continuity of Tradition,” Bosnian Studies 1 (2007): 38–67, here 43–48.
171. CRV V, doc. 9, 117–121, report of Daniele Molin as rector of Split, 11 October 1594.
The stopping place was Duvno.
172. Hammer-Purgstall, Geschichte des osmanischen Reiches, II, 632–633; Handžić, Opširni
popis Bosanskog Sandžaka, I, xliv–xlv; deserted villages were known as mezras. Holjevac and
Moačanin, Hrvatsko-Slavonska Vojna Krajina pod Vlašču Osmanskoga, 150 (the quote);
Moačanin, Turska Hrvatska, 97. For Mustafa Beg of Klis, see above, note 121.
173. Holjevac and Moačanin, Hrvatsko-Slavonska Vojna Krajina pod Vlašču Osmanskoga,
16–17; Kaser, Freier Bauer und Soldat, 142–144. Ruprecht von Eggenberg was general at
Karlovac, followed by Juraj Lenković, the son of Ivan Lenković (see chapter 4). The com-
mander at Varaždin (1594–1601) was Hans Sigismund von Herberstein. From 1597, the co-
bans were Ivan Drašković, a nephew of Juraj Drašković (see chapter 5), and Gaspar
Stankovečki, the bishop of Zagreb.
174. Above, note 158.
175. Mažuran, Hrvati i Osmansko Carstvo, 165–168; Milan Kruhek, “Rat za opstojnost
Hrvatskog kraljestvana na kupskoj granici,” 60–61; Spomenici Hrvatske Krajine, I, no. 132,
312–320, and no. 139, 334–338.
176. Klaić, Povijest Hrvata, V, 227–233.
177. Save as noted, for this paragraph and the next, see Mažuran, Hrvati i Osmansko Carstvo,
168–169; Spomenici Hrvatske Krajine, I, no. 142, 341–345, and no. 145, 347–351 (decisions of
the Sabor, 8 April, 23 May 1596), and no. 144, 346–347: Camera Aulica to the Hungarian
camera, Vienna, 20 April 1596.
178. Resolutions of the Sabor, Spomenici Hrvatske Krajine, I, no. 157, 375–379 (14 April
1598); no. 159, 379–383 (18 May 1598); no. 160, 383 (7 July 1598); no. 162, 384 (17 July
1598); no. 163, 385–388 (26 August 1598); and no. 173 (8 May 1600).
179. Selçuk Ural, “Pakrački Sandžak u drugoj polovici 16. Stoljeca,” Scrinia Slavonica 11
(2011): 612–678; http://hr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandžak_Začasna. The new capital of the sancak
was Cernik.
180. Chapter 5, note 168.
181. Mažuran, Hrvati I Osmansko Carstvo, 185–192; Moačanin, Turska Hrvatska, 142–143;
Holjevac and Moačanin, Hrvatsko-Slavonska Vojna Krajina od Vlašču Osmanskoga, 15.
182. Mažuran, Hrvati i Osmansko Carstvo, 168–170; Klaić, Povijest Hrvata, 528–529.
183. Kaser, Freier Bauer und Soldat, 140, 151–154.
184. For this paragraph and the next, see Kaser, Freier Bauer und Soldat, 95–105; Mažuran,
Hrvati i Osmansko Carstvo, 170–174.
366 Chapter 6

185. For a map of the Military Frontier (Militärgrenze) in the eighteenth century, after the
Habsburg reconquest of Hungary, see Kaser, Freier Bauer und Soldat, appendix, 2–3. Like
other monographs on the Military Frontier, this important book focuses on the period after
1630. The Military Frontier remained an administratively separate district until the Revolt of
1848.
186. For this paragraph, see Kaser, Freier Bauer und Soldat, 97–109; Mažuran, Hrvati i
Osmansko Carstvo, 175–179; Holjevac and Moačanin, Hrvatsko-Slavonska Vojna Krajina pod
Vlašču Osmanskoga, 21.
187. Ottaviano Bon to the Senate, Istanbul, 8 August 1605, ASV-DAC, Filza 61, f. 291–294.
188. Bracewell, The Uskoks of Senj, 300–304. The term Triplex Confinium did not come into
use until the time of the Treaty of Karlovac (1699).
 Conclusion

This book has presented four lines of argument. First, Bosnia had two roles
in the Ottoman system. For more than a century it was a staging ground for
expansion; this was the goad or stimulus to which Croatia and Inner Austria
responded. Bosnia controlled the region’s largest pool of military manpower,
especially after it became a paşaluk in 1580. But agreements with Venice and
military stalemate brought to the fore its alternate function as a conduit for
trade.
Second, Venetian strategy in Dalmatia illustrates the policy of a Latin-
Christian state for which the Ottomans were trading partners more than ene-
mies. Along the Adriatic coast, the Signoria’s goal was to protect sailing
routes to the east and port cities, in part by “caressing” Ottoman officials.
The countryside, not actively defended by Venice, became more and more
receptive to the passage of uskok raiders headed for Ottoman targets.
Third, Croatia was steadily reduced in size as superior Ottoman forces
pushed its frontiers back to the west for more than five decades. The Habs-
burg Monarchy and its Inner Austrian lands stabilized the border in western
Slavonia from the 1550s, but only from about 1580 in the rest of Croatia,
following military reforms of the 1570s. The two mega-states then fought to
a draw in a long and brutal war.
Finally, the arc of change in the military balance reflected fundamental
differences in how two systems of government mobilized their human and
material resources. In the Ottoman Empire, commands issued in the sultan’s
name were not subject to negotiation, and provincial governors followed a
time-tested strategy of conquest. The composite Habsburg state struggled to

367
368 Conclusion

focus the estates of its many territories on common goals. But consultation,
and more consultation, eventually built defenses that stalled the Ottoman
advance.

BOSNIA’S TWO ROLES IN THE OTTOMAN SYSTEM

Bosnia as a Platform for War

From 1463, akinci from Bosnia raided in and across Croatia, deep into Habs-
burg Austria and Venetian Friuli. These attacks, vacating huge tracts of coun-
tryside, lasted until the death of Sultan Mehmed II in 1484 (prologue).
Though fighting in Croatia continued, Austria and Friuli had a long respite.
Bayezid II (1484–1512) was not interested in war, and Selim II (1512–1520)
campaigned in the East. But Suleyman’s invasions of Hungary were echoed
by further expansion across the Balkans. Attacks on fortified towns required
authorization, 1 and ceased altogether if the Porte wanted calm in the West. 2
Operating within these limits, Ghazi Husrev Beg and his colleague from
Herzegovina gained control of the headwaters of the Krka by conquering
Knin and Skradin in 1522. In 1528 he captured Jajce, which had blocked
advance down the Vrbas to the Sava. In the wake of Suleyman’s campaigns
of 1529 and 1532, he crossed the Sava and drove west into Slavonia, where
he took Požega and Valpovo. His vojvods, rough men 3 but effective com-
manders, took Obrovac and Klis. Together, Ghazi Husrev Beg and his voj-
vods claimed enough territory to form new sancaks in Klis and Požega
(chapters 1 and 2).
First as governor of Bosnia in the 1540s, then as governor of Požega,
Ulama Beg brought the sultan’s frontier in Slavonia to about forty miles from
Styria. Bosnia’s capital was transferred to Banja Luka, closer to the war zone
(chapter 3). Fighting now shifted to the Una, where fortress-towns held by
the Zrinski family blocked an Ottoman advance. The key breakthrough came
when Sancakbeg Mustafa Beg Sokolović captured Krupa in 1565. He then
continued the pressure, notwithstanding the peace treaty of 1568; his raids
across the Kupa aimed at depopulating Turopolje, the last area of major
peasant settlement south of the Sava. Habsburg diplomacy got him removed,
only to see him replaced by a more vigorous member of the Sokolović clan,
Ferhat Beg. In 1576, there were said to be fifty attacks from Bosnia, includ-
ing Ferhat Beg’s capture of two forts west of the Una, Bužim and Cazin
(chapter 4).
 Conclusion 369

As the Habsburg military reforms began to take effect, Bosnian forces

suffered occasional defeats, especially in Slavonia. Still, after a setback in
1578, Ferhat Beg mobilized twenty-four thousand men and recaptured his
lost positions. In 1580 he attacked into Turopolje with five thousand men,
and his brother did the same in 1581. But Ferhat was recalled in 1587, and
the continuing war against Safavid Iran meant that it was now useful to keep
the empire’s Western frontier quiet. Conversely, victory over the shah
opened the door for yet another effective commander based in Banja Luka,
Hasan Paşa. Sisak, the main stronghold guarding the Kupa line, withstood
two attacks, but a new fortress at Petrinja provided an artillery platform for a
third assault. In June 1593, almost before the Habsburgs knew he was there,
Hasan Paşa was mustering a large force at Petrinja. Having every reason to
expect success, he instead led his elite troops to a disastrous defeat (chapter
5).

From War to Peace

Although Hasan Paşa’s immediate successor conquered Sisak, his recall to

the East to join Sinan Paşa’s army indicated a shift in Ottoman priorities. The
Danube was henceforth the main theater of action, so the Kupa and even the
Una had a lower priority. Habsburg hajduks took advantage of this opportu-
nity by raiding into western Bosnia, the Bosanska Krajina. As areas were
depopulated during the Long War, it seems they were resettled by Orthodox
Vlach military colonists. But Habsburg commanders offered better tax privi-
leges, and some “Ottoman” Vlachs went over to the Habsburg side. Once the
war wound down, Catholic peasants migrated the other way, seeking better
terms of land tenure in Bosnia. Decades of raiding had created real cross-
border enmity, and Bosnia’s Muslim character will have made it a strange
neighbor for Catholics of the Counter-Reformation era. But it was a neighbor
nonetheless, and no longer a platform for war (chapter 6).
Meanwhile, Sarajevo had become the most populous city of the western
Balkans, with large craft guilds catering to the taste of Ottoman elites. 4 The
luxury goods that craftsmen and their customers required were supplied by
Dubrovnik, or by Bosniaks and Sephardic Jews who sailed to Italy from
Gabela on the lower Neretva. Daniel Rodriguez, based in Gabela, proposed
refitting Split as a harbor for direct trade with Venice. His plan faced obsta-
cles, including a lack of infrastructure in Dalmatia and anti-Semitism in
Venice. The needed approvals eventually came, from Venice in 1588 and
from Bosnia’s paşa in 1591. At some point early in the seventeenth century,
370 Conclusion

the traditional patterns of Mediterranean trade would be altogether disrupted

by events in the distant Indian Ocean, where the Dutch and English East
India Companies gained control of the shipment of spices to Europe. But for
about three decades, the Venice–Split–Sarajevo connection was the prime
channel for Venetian trade to the Ottoman capital, replacing maritime routes
that were increasingly imperiled by piracy (chapter 5).

VENICE IN DALMATIA

State Interests and Local Interests

Venice’s overseas dominions did not have the quasi-autonomous status of

Habsburg provinces; for example, there was no counterpart in Dalmatia to
the Austrian and Croatian estates. But while Venice governed firmly in mat-
ters vital for la Serenissima, it governed lightly in other matters. The goal
was to keep the upper Adriatic—“the Gulf”—a secure antechamber for Ve-
netian trade, free from pirates, and free from Ottoman warships. Hence port
cities and their harbors were vital. For their protection, a parsimonious met-
ropolitan government allotted nearly 150,000 ducats for new fortifications. 5
The contado and its inhabitants were less important. Around 1500, when the
port cities still had large rural territories, Venetian rectors left fortification of
the countryside to Dalmatia’s landholding urban patricians. 6
Most of the republic’s overseas dominions, populated by Orthodox
Greeks, developed institutions that blended Eastern and Western traditions. 7
Dalmatia had some Orthodox inhabitants, 8 but its South-Slavic population
was largely Catholic. Accordingly, Dalmatia’s political institutions reflected
the common history of Latin Europe. In other words, authority was shared
among power-holders at different levels. Towns retained a degree of autono-
my in local affairs because the Venetians chose not to disturb existing ar-
rangements more than was necessary. 9 Even towns of modest size had active
militias, 10 which diminished the need for sending money or troops from
Italy. If a town had reasons to question a decision, as at Šibenik in 1523, the
Signoria could change its mind. 11 There were no powerful magnates en-
sconced in their rural strongholds, as in the Austrian lands. But the urban
patricians who built castles to protect their rural tenants also made up the
town councils, albeit subject now to the authority of a rector sent from
Venice. The popolo had its own assembly, which on occasion sent “ambassa-
dors” to the Senate in Venice. Venetian officials paid particular attention to
 Conclusion 371

the interests of the popolo, who looked to Venice as their protector against
patrician abuses. In difficult times, as after the seizure of Klis in 1596, the
loyalty of the popolo was invaluable. 12

Venetian and Ottoman Interests

Was Venice a part of Latin Christendom? In the Habsburg lands and at the
papal court, some had their doubts. In Venice itself, the proper question was
how to define the republic’s “interests”—a terminology that dates from this
period. The answer partly depended on one’s estimate of how much of a
threat Ottoman power posed for Venice. Bailo Marino Cavalli gave one view
in 1560:

They almost always win, for the Turks are in my judgment the best fighting
men to be found in today’s world, not just in their force but also in their
stratagems (arte). They are not, as some Christians believe, worthless men of
straw; rather they are always to be feared, and not to be confronted unless one
has a clear advantage, as the Spaniards and the Germans have learned many
times. The reason for all this is that, because of our sins, God gives ear to the
prayers of the Turks, for they pray daily for the victory of the Gran Signore
[the sultan], and for disunion among Christians. 13

Venetian reports of the late sixteenth century, no doubt spiced by wishful

thinking, are more likely to see intimations of an Ottoman decline. 14 For
example, in 1573 Bailo Marcantonio Barbaro thought the Ottomans too cor-
rupt to be truly dangerous. In the past, he said, the great men of the Ottoman
court had longed for war. Now they abhorred the very idea of combat; many
had given rich gifts to avoid service during the Cyprus War. 15
Another question was whether Venice and other Christian states had a
common interest in warding off Ottoman power, no matter how strong it was.
Here too Venetians were of different minds. If one bailo at the Porte did his
best to impede Habsburg diplomacy, another lent a hand to Ferdinand I’s
ambassador in difficult circumstances. 16 In the 1590s, Lazzaro Soranzo
spoke with Venetian diplomats (among others) to gather information for his
L’Ottomano, meant to aid Christian princes in their current war against the
Turk. But Soranzo’s labors were not pleasing to the authorities of his native
city; to find a publisher, he had to go beyond Venice’s reach. 17 The govern-
ment recognized Venice’s obligations to Christendom, but discreetly, by al-
lowing Habsburg ambassadors to examine letters from the East (avvisi) in the
presence of a member of the Council of Ten. 18 Open defiance of the Porte
372 Conclusion

was another matter. The disastrous conflict of 1463–1479 had been a war of
choice, 19 but for more than a century thereafter the republic did not go to war
with the sultan except when compelled to do so, as by Ottoman naval mobil-
ization in 1499 or by full-scale attacks on Corfu (1537) and Cyprus (1570).
Even if Marcantonio Barbaro’s disdain for the Ottomans was likely shared
by others, the Signoria acted in keeping with the prudent caution recom-
mended by Marino Cavalli.
There was of course a strong positive argument for maintaining good
relations with the sultan. Trade with the East grew more profitable for Vene-
tian merchant houses as the sixteenth century wore on, and some diplomats
pointed out that lucrative customs revenues gave the Ottomans a real interest
in maintaining peace with Venice—although such optimism was hard to
sustain after the Cyprus War. 20 Finally, Venice’s policy choice also ex-
pressed long-standing antipathy to the Habsburgs. The war with Emperor
Maximilian I left a memory of territory lost to Austria (chapter 1). After
Charles V’s victories in the 1520s, Venice was the only truly independent
major state in Italy, and thus naturally suspicious of Spanish hegemony in the
peninsula (chapter 2). On the two occasions when papal diplomats wrangled
Venice and Spain into a common alliance against the Turks, the experience
of collaboration engendered on both sides a bitterness that was not assuaged
even by the great victory at Lepanto (chapters 2 and 4). In fact, Spain had no
abiding interest in confronting the Ottomans in the eastern Mediterranean,
apart from defending the Adriatic coastline of Naples. Similarly, Venice was
not directly affected by the Barbary corsairs who represented a constant
threat to Spain and its Italian dominions. On balance, then, the interests of
Venice and the interests of a Christendom led by Spain were not the same. In
1594, with the Long Turkish War underway, the bailo’s dragoman was sum-
moned to answer reports that Venice was giving aid to the Habsburgs. The
dragoman gave assurances that Venice would remain firm in its alliance with
the Porte, “even if all the other princes of Christendom were united against
this [Ottoman] empire.” 21

Implications for Dalmatia

The entente with the Porte had implications for Dalmatia, which shared
borders with the Ottoman sancaks of Herzegovina, Klis, and Lika. First, “the
Gulf” must be kept free of Ottoman warships. The Venetians did not try to
prevent the building of war galleys by launching preemptive strikes on Otto-
man ports, as the uskoks did. 22 Instead, they used naval patrols in the Adriat-
 Conclusion 373

ic and diplomacy at the Porte. Second, port cities must at all costs be held,
especially the three that controlled capacious natural harbors. Kotor was
thought to be sufficiently well guarded by its impregnable fortress, but Zadar
required expensive modern fortifications, as did the channel leading to
Šibenik’s harbor. 23 Finally, officials in Dalmatia had standing instructions to
do everything possible to avoid provoking their Ottoman counterparts. In
effect, the protection of the countryside from Ottoman incursions was subor-
dinated to the larger goals of the metropolitan government. At the start of the
1537–1540 war, for example, a parsimonious Signoria refused to incur debt
for Dalmatia’s defense; a few years later, it refused to borrow money for a
campaign to reclaim Vrana and Nadin, and thus a large part of Zadar’s
contado. 24
This de facto neglect of rural Dalmatia had consequences. First, it facili-
tated the eastward extension of the sancak of Klis, from which the sancak of
Lika was later carved out. Second, it opened a door to the in-migration of
Ottoman Morlacchi, who often pastured their flocks on land vacated by
Venetian peasants. Finally, it gave rural Dalmatians a reason to agree with
those who represented the uskoks as fighters for Christendom, 25 rather than
with Venetian officials who represented them as using the name of Christen-
dom to cover their crimes. 26 Although published sources are not very forth-
coming on this point, it seems the raiders were abetted in their passage by
Venetian subjects as well as by Ottoman Morlacchi. In other words, it looks
as if the Venetian government paid a political price for not protecting its rural
subjects. 27 Since Venice controlled the sea-lanes while the uskoks had free
run in rural Dalmatia, the result was a standoff, resolved in the end by a war
that few people had wanted (chapter 6).

DEFEAT AND STABILIZATION IN CROATIA

Ferdinand I and Suleyman the Lawgiver

When Archduke Ferdinand claimed the crown of Hungary, he had no prom-

ises of support from his brother, Emperor Charles V, and little support from
Hungarian nobles, who mainly backed János Szapolyai, the vojvod of Tran-
sylvania. Szapolyai’s partisans had a clear edge in Slavonia, and in loyal
Croatia proper, Ferdinand could not meet the financial promises made by his
representatives. His troops did drive Szapolyai from Hungary, only to dis-
close Ferdinand’s true nemesis. After Mohács, Sultan Suleyman claimed all
374 Conclusion

of Hungary by right of conquest; he would accept Szapolyai as a vassal king

but not a Habsburg. During the massive invasions of 1529 and 1532, Ghazi
Husrev Beg advanced into Slavonia and Croatia proper, while other Ottoman
commanders made gains in Hungary. Katzianer’s march to Osijek—a long-
overdue response to recent losses—demonstrated with painful clarity the
limits of Habsburg offensive prowess.
Hans Ungnad, Katzianer’s successor as commander for the Slavonian/
Croatian frontier, personified a recognition that the Austrian lands could only
fight a defensive war. But would independent-minded magnates accept a
strategy that restricted their opportunities to gain land and glory? Ferdinand’s
appointment of the hitherto troublesome Nikola Zrinski as ban of Croatia
suggests that both sides now saw a need for collaboration. Things looked
most hopeful in Transylvania, where diplomats had arranged in 1538 a treaty
naming Ferdinand as heir to the childless Szapolyai. Yet shortly before Sza-
polyai’s death, his wife gave birth to a son, whom the sultan promised to
recognize as king of Hungary. As Ferdinand raised troops to assert his claim
to Buda, Suleyman made plans for another march into Hungary (chapter 2).

The Imperial Diet and the Inner Austrian Lands

Suleyman promised to confirm Szapolyai’s widow in possession of Buda.

Instead, he chose to regulate Hungary’s affairs more reliably by installing a
paşa. This turn of events, giving the Ottomans a major fortress 130 miles
from Vienna, changed the mood in Germany. The diet’s Protestant estates,
hitherto reluctant to vote funds for the Catholic Habsburgs, now joined in
backing an assault on Pest, though it failed for want of supplies (1542). Peace
talks began in 1545, and once a treaty was signed in 1547, Suleyman was
free to march against Iran. Meanwhile, the Austrian estates increased their
subsidy grants, but only slightly; in Germany, Charles V’s defeat of the
Schmalkaldic League (1547) limited the diet’s generosity. But relations with
German Protestant princes improved when Ferdinand struck a religious bar-
gain with Moritz of Saxony, his brother’s Lutheran adversary, an agreement
that was confirmed in the 1555 Peace of Augsburg (chapter 3).
In Croatia, Ferdinand relied on bargains with his great men. In return for
tax exemptions, the cathedral chapter of Zagreb built a new fortress on its
estates at Sisak, where the Kupa joins the Sava. Nikola Zrinski became Lord
of Međimurje, between the Drava and the Mur, which he undertook to reset-
tle. Once repopulated, Međimurje provided supplies for Szigetvár, the anchor
fortress for southwestern Hungary. In 1551 Transylvania’s estates, wary of
 Conclusion 375

Ottoman pressure, transferred their allegiance to Ferdinand. In response, the

Ottomans invaded and made Temesvár the capital of a second paşaluk in
Hungary. In Slavonia, although Ulama Beg took additional fortresses, Habs-
burg defenses were hardening. On the other hand, the relocation of the Zrins-
kis to Međimurje weakened the critical Una frontier (chapter 3).
Charles V’s abdication (January 1556) opened the way for Ferdinand’s
succession. When Suleyman demanded that Szigetvár be razed, the new
emperor consulted with the estates of his hereditary lands and with the impe-
rial diet. These procedures, though cumbersome, provided support for a for-
ward strategy in Hungary, testing Ottoman defenses. In Slavonia, facing the
sancaks of Požega and Čazma, Habsburg commanders began to push back.
South of the Velebit range, uskok raids kept the Ottomans off balance in the
sancaks of Lika and Klis. But along the Una, where Croatia shared a border
with Bosnia, the small castles held by local nobles were barely defensible.
This was where Ottoman successes continued, as at Novigrad (1560) and
Krupa (1565).

Szigetvár and Beyond

Maximilian II reaped the whirlwind sown by his father’s boldness when

Suleyman invaded Hungary one last time, in 1566. Chastened by the loss of
Szigetvár and Gyula, Maximilian insisted on observing the 1568 peace trea-
ty, even though its terms (as stated in the Turkish-language text) were not
acceptable; the revised text of the 1576 treaty, for which his diplomats strug-
gled long and hard, was little better (chapter 4). Meanwhile, the Inner Aus-
trian provinces, which had responsibility for the Slavonian and Croatian
sectors of the frontier, acquired a prince of their own in 1564. Archduke Karl
proved to be an energetic administrator, but Croatia’s Sabor was loath to take
orders from Graz, preferring to deal directly with Maximilian II as king of
Hungary. Neither the archduke nor the Sabor reined in the noble landholder
whose egregious abuse of his peasants provoked a major uprising in 1573.
The suppression of this revolt, with great brutality, probably made it easier
for the Sabor to mobilize peasant labor for new fortifications. Yet Grand
Vezir Mehmed Paşa Sokolović gave free rein to Bosnian governors of this
era (both were his cousins), and Ferhat Beg in particular made significant
gains. Bužim and Cazin, taken in 1576, gave the Ottomans bases beyond the
Una for attacks into the “populous island” of Turopolje (chapter 4).
376 Conclusion

Hauptberatschlagung and the Croatian Micro-State

In the waning months of Maximilian’s rule, opinion among those who

counted in the Habsburg Monarchy coalesced around the need for a broader-
than-ever consultation. Since an offensive war was still thought to be beyond
the monarchy’s capacity, the men who gathered for the Hauptberatschlagung
of 1577 had instructions to work out the basis for a stronger and better-
manned defensive line. The mainly Lutheran estates consented to higher
subsidies in return for religious concessions. There was also an emphasis on
increasing the number of men equipped with firearms, including new units of
mounted arquebusiers. Styria was thought to be well enough protected by
two lines of fortresses in Slavonia. Carniola was to be guarded by a new
Croatian anchor fortress at Karlovac. The Adriatic frontier was held by the
uskoks, whose raids continued to exceed official guidelines, in part because
Archduke Karl could not or would not find money to pay their salaries
(chapter 5).
In 1578 the Ottomans embarked on a war of opportunity against Iran.
With the sultan’s main army far from Europe, the Habsburgs had leisure for
carrying out plans for strengthening the frontier. The fact that Ottoman fo-
rays into Slavonia in the 1580s were regularly turned back suggests the
effectiveness of larger and better-paid garrisons. But in Croatia proper Ferhat
Beg scored a symbolic success by capturing the Zrinski silver mines in 1578.
More important, the line of the Kupa was still not adequately protected.
Since the Sabor claimed to represent an autonomous province, the Austrian
estates took the view that Croatia itself should at least pay for defending the
Kupa; in fact, key positions, notably Sisak, depended on grudging help from
Austrian garrisons at Karlovac and in Slavonia. The test of Croatia’s new
defenses came with Hasan Paşa of Bosnia (1591–1593), who had official
approval for his campaigns. In 1593, Habsburg firepower contributed to a
great victory at Sisak, but so did Hasan Paşa’s tactical error; he put his elite
troops across a steep-banked river, connected to the main camp by a single
bridge of boats (chapter 5).
During the Long Turkish War, Bosnia’s paşas fought in Hungary, and
Habsburg forces in Croatia were able to make Petrinja the center of a defen-
sible “ban’s country,” protecting the Kupa. But this military line soon be-
came an anachronism. Just to the east, Ferdinand II’s officials established in
the early decades of the seventeenth century a new defensive border manned
by Vlach military colonists. Many of them had previously served the Otto-
mans, and they now occupied a swath of land governed directly from Vienna
 Conclusion 377

as a separate administrative district, not controlled by or subject to provincial

authorities. This border zone—the Military Frontier properly so called—
protected the Habsburg lands for two centuries. It also marked a clear shift in
the balance of power between the sovereign and his estates (chapter 6).

GOVERNMENT BY COMMAND VS. GOVERNMENT

BY CONSULTATION

The Military Advantage of Rule by Decree

On the field of battle, the empire of Suleyman the Lawgiver never met its
equal. To the East, the Safavids could not match Ottoman firepower; they
employed scorched-earth tactics instead, and in every sixteenth-century war
they lost ground. 28 To the West, the Habsburgs could not match the size of
Ottoman armies, and they struggled to catch up in logistics. 29 Habsburg-
Austrian armies of this era rarely marched as far as three hundred miles to
reach their objectives. 30 By contrast, the Ottomans sent armies of well over
one hundred thousand as far west as Vienna, 950 miles from Istanbul, and as
far east as Tabriz, 1,150 miles from the capital. It no doubt helped that the
Ottoman treasury had resources to pay suppliers in cash instead of expecting
them to extend credit. 31
This striking difference was due in good part to a disparity of resources.
Until the 1550s, when the imperial diet began providing regular support for
the Hungarian frontier, the Habsburg Monarchy had to defend itself. In 1500
the Austrian and Bohemian 32 lands had a combined population of around 3.5
million; for the years 1520–1535 the population of the Ottoman Empire has
been estimated at 12 million. 33 In 1560, Ferdinand’s provinces yielded the
equivalent of 1,720,000 Venetian ducats on revenue. 34 In 1527/1528, Otto-
man account books show an annual income equivalent to 10,075,000 ducats,
including timar revenues collected locally by the sipahis. For 1560, about
3,660,000 ducats in cash was collected by the sultan’s fiscal officials, not
counting the timar incomes. 35 If European monarchs were always deep in
debt, the sultan’s treasury dispensed huge sums of cash. 36 When armies went
to war, chests of silver akçe accompanied them for the quarterly wages of
those who served for pay. In 1597, for example, a grand vezir on the march
to Hungary brought along 100 million silver akçe. 37
Yet population and wealth did not in and of themselves produce an em-
pire that continued to expand for nearly three centuries; state resources avail-
378 Conclusion

able for war also had to be mobilized and managed effectively. What is
perhaps most striking about Ottoman expansion is the strategic planning that
consistently guided it. Despite all the speculation in European diplomatic
correspondence about court cabals that bent the power of the Ottoman state
to their own ends, the evidence of the campaigns suggests that major policy
at the Porte was made by men who had good information and sound reasons
of state for their decisions.
As a rule, the conquest of a new province took place in two stages. First,
the target area was devastated by akinci raiders, burning villages and taking
slaves and cattle. The goal of their attacks was to spread terror and thus
depopulate the enemy’s countryside. Next, a sizeable army came to beat
down a weakened foe. Meanwhile, the akinci extended their raids farther
afield. 38 There was also, it seems, contingency planning for specific theaters
of conflict. Even after an interval of peace dictated by imperial priorities,
Ottoman commanders focused anew on objectives that their predecessors had
pursued. In the eastern Mediterranean over about a century, the Ottomans
picked off one by one the naval bases that supported Venetian sea power:
Negroponte (Euboea) in 1470, Modon in 1499, Corfu in 1537 (a failed at-
tempt), and Cyprus in 1570/1571. 39
Ottoman campaigns in Croatia show a similar pattern. In Bosnia, sancak-
begs and paşas pursued territorial objectives according to a hierarchy of
value. The fertile plain of Slavonia, between the Drava and Sava, was the
first priority. Ghazi Husrev Beg concentrated his attacks here in the 1530s,
and in the 1540s Ulama Beg had orders to conquer Slavonia “up to the
borders of Germany”—that is, Styria. 40 In the 1550s, Habsburgs stabilized a
Slavonian frontier about forty miles east of Styria. Hence Malkoč Beg fo-
cused on the Una, where fortress-towns of the Zrinski family blocked an
advance. Mehmed Paşa Sokolović (1568–1574) completed the conquest of
this region. 41 Ferhat Beg Sokolović (1574–1587) used new Ottoman bases
west of the Una to attack fortresses defending the Kupa, behind which lay
Turopolje, the last well-populated district of Croatia proper. In 1593, Hasan
Paşa met his death on the Kupa (chapter 5).
Western authors of this era commonly describe the sultan as a tyrant,
ruling his subjects by fear. 42 In fact, Ottoman government was not despotic.
In the high councils of state, jurists 43 upheld the principle that even the sultan
must be guided by the “objective rules” of established law. Yet the law itself
recognized “the absolute independence” of the sultan’s “supreme author-
ity.” 44 In the European provinces of the empire, local interests might here or
 Conclusion 379

there hinder prompt execution of commands from the Porte, but they almost
nowhere had a basis in Ottoman law for doing so. 45 This empire had nothing
comparable to the subsidiary governing institutions that were firmly an-
chored in Latin-Christian law and custom, giving them a recognized right to
refuse the sovereign’s requests or to question his orders. Ottoman cities and
towns did not have elected magistrates; typically, the fortress commander,
appointed by the sancakbeg or paşa, was also town governor. 46 Provinces
had representation only insofar as paşas or sancakbegs had secretaries at the
Porte to look out for their interests. 47 Like France’s kings, the sultan had a
vast bureaucracy; but whereas French royal officials of this era had property
rights to their offices, Ottoman officials “never constituted a corporate
group” or a “legally autonomous sodality.” 48
This system of government was ideally suited for military affairs. The
bulk of state revenue was directly assigned to sipahi cavalry in the form of
timars. 49 Sancakbegs and paşas were first and foremost the commanders of
regional forces. 50 They were expected to consult with their subordinates 51
but were not in any way responsible to civil officials or local notables. For
major campaigns they marched only on orders from the Porte, and they were
expected to achieve results. In 1525, Ghazi Husrev Beg, the sultan’s son-in-
law, was for a time removed from his post as sancakbeg of Bosnia because
he had failed to capture the fortress of Jajce. 52 There is debate on this point,
but the prevailing view among Ottomans seems to be that the top-down chain
of command worked in practice, not just in theory, despite regional idiosyn-
crasies. 53 The strategic decisions that guided Ottoman commanders will thus
have been imposed upon them by orders from the center. In the sixteenth
century, rule by decree was the keystone in the arch of Ottoman military
success.

Government by Consultation

The Habsburg Monarchy presents a striking contrast. Habsburg provinces

were just administrative divisions whose boundaries could be changed by
decree; like Ottoman sancaks, they were principalities or even kingdoms,
each demanding respect for its historic prerogatives. Ferdinand I’s chief rev-
enues were collected not by his officials but by the estates. Since these
subsidies never covered expenses, he also depended on his subjects for cred-
it. In military campaigns, Habsburg rulers depended on the collaboration of
their magnates, and in this respect they were not entirely different from the
sultans. 54 But no sultan doled out fortresses to the great men to repay his
380 Conclusion

debts, as Ferdinand routinely did. 55 The sultans never had to contend with
duplicate chains of command, which could delay for months the execution of
a simple military order. 56 As the Katzianer campaign of 1537 showed, over-
lapping lines of authority could lead to disaster. 57
When Suleyman demanded that Szigetvár be razed, Ferdinand resorted to
consultation, both to stall the Porte and to rally the estates behind his deci-
sion. Keeping Szigetvár—to harass the enemy’s Danube provinces—was a
sound decision, but it presumed that Suleyman was no longer interested in
war. Maximilian II found out differently in 1566, and the experience of
defeat colored his subsequent dealings with the Porte. At the same time, he
carried on his father’s habit of consulting the estates (chapter 4). Hence
Rudolf II and his fellow dynasts, faced with a still-deteriorating border, be-
gan the new reign with the most extensive consultation to date. Like all grand
plans, the Hauptberatschlagung of 1577 worked better on paper than in
practice, but it nonetheless marked a turning point—for example, in the
conscious effort to enhance the Habsburg advantage in handheld firearms. In
Slavonia and especially in Croatia, Ottoman incursions continued as before,
but they were often as not repelled with losses, culminating in the Habsburg
victory at Sisak in 1593 (chapter 5). In the long war that followed, the
Habsburgs lost two key fortresses but otherwise held their ground, and ex-
tracted from the Porte a recognition of the emperor’s diplomatic parity with
the sultan (chapter 6).
This argument is meant to apply within the chronological limits of the
book; it refers to a long sixteenth century, during which two mega-states with
strikingly different forms of government faced each other across a hostile
frontier. It would be more difficult to make a similar argument for the fif-
teenth century, when the composite Hungarian monarchy confronted Otto-
man sultans who did not yet comport themselves as padishahs. 58 Making the
same argument for the seventeenth century would be even more problematic.
In a development that was foreshadowed by Archduke Ferdinand’s ability to
establish a Military Frontier directly controlled by the central government,
the monarchy became stronger, and the provincial estates seem to have
reached a limit in their capacity to exert an influence on state policy. The
Habsburg Monarchy remained a composite state, insofar as money that paid
for frontier garrisons came from taxes raised and managed by the estates. On
the whole, however, Ferdinand II and his successors wielded an authority
that was more comparable to the sultan’s. 59
 Conclusion 381

During the sixteenth century, then, each of two very different forms of
government had advantages for mobilizing the manpower and resources of
its subjects. The Ottomans retained a clear edge in logistics, and a Habsburg
generalissimo of this period never had the authority of an Ottoman serdar.
On the other hand, if the consultative character of Habsburg government
often hindered the efficiency of military operations, it also yielded financial
dividends. The Ottoman Empire seems not to have enjoyed an increase in
real revenue from ca. 1550, but the Habsburg Monarchy did. 60 It may seem
paradoxical that an all-powerful sultan could not burden his subjects more
heavily, but Montesquieu grasped the underlying principle in his Spirit of the
Laws: “One may raise taxes higher in proportion as there is greater liberty.” 61
Accordingly, the Habsburgs were able to raise funds to implement most of
the changes called for in the Hauptberatschlagung of 1577. The use of credit
marks another key difference, because war expenses sooner or later out-
stripped state income, even for the Ottomans. As need arose, the Porte drew
from the sultan’s private treasury 62; the sultan did not call on his subjects for
loans. Habsburg rulers did so constantly, through low-interest loans brokered
by provincial estates, town governments, or treasury officials. In sum, if
Habsburg government by consultation took half a century to rally its lands
behind a coherent response to Ottoman pressure, it built in the end an infra-
structure that was better suited for a long confrontation.

NOTES

1. Chapter 2, note 63. Ghazi Husrev Beg’s request for permission to attack Senj was
apparently denied.
2. E.g., during Alvise Gritti’s diplomatic offensive, or Suleyman’s first campaign against
Iran (chapter 2).
3. Chapter 1, notes 40, 55.
4. On the guilds, see especially Zlatar, Zlatna Doba Sarajeva.
5. Chapter 4, note 132.
6. For rural castles built and defended by urban nobles, see chapter 1, note 88, and chapter
2, note 130.
7. E.g., B. Slot, Archipelagus Turbatus. Les Cyclades entre colonisation latine et ottomane
ca. 1500–1772 (2 vols., Istanbul: Nederlands Historisch-Archaeologisch Instituut, 1982).
8. During the early centuries of its existence, Venice depended on close ties to the Byzan-
tine Empire, to a degree that Venetian writers were not keen to recognize: Elisabeth Crouzet-
Pavan, Venice Triumphant: The Horizons of a Myth, tr. Lydia G. Cochrane (Baltimore, MD:
Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002), 6–7.
9. The best general discussion is Pederin, Mletačka uprava.
10. E.g., chapter 1, notes 90–92.
11. Chapter 1, note 113.
382 Conclusion

12. Chapter 6, note 129.

13. Relazioni, III, 271–298, here 280.
14. Preto, Venezia e i Turchi.
15. Barbaro’s report, 1753, Relazioni, IX, 299–346, here 307–310; cf. the report of Bailo
Antonio Tiepolo, 1576, Relazioni, VI, 128–192, here 174: the Ottomans will not likely make
war against the Holy Roman Empire because of the disastrous losses suffered by their army
returning from Szigetvár in 1566.
16. Chapter 3, notes 71, 72. Cf. chapter 2, note 105.
17. L’Ottomano was published in Ferrara by Vittorio Baldini (1598).
18. Chapter 2, note 115; chapter 3, note 73.
19. See the prologue.
20. Chapter 4, notes 122–130.
21. Marco Venier to the Senate, 26 March 1594, ASV-DAC, Filza 39, 76–83v.
22. Chapter 2, note 65.
23. The agreement for trade with Bosnia through Split (chapter 5) was motivated in part by a
recognition that Split, virtually under the guns of Ottoman Klis, could not be protected other-
wise.
24. Chapter 2, notes 129, 131.
25. See the references to Ivan Vlatković in Bracewell, The Uskoks of Senj. For a different
view, Eric Dursteler, “Revolt and Religion in Early Modern Dalmatia,” paper read at the
Sixteenth Century Studies Conference, New Orleans, October 2014. I thank Prof. Dursteler for
a copy of his paper.
26. See especially Sarpi’s works, referred to in chapter 6.
27. Chapter 4, note 185.
28. Allouche, Origins and Development of the Ottoman-Safavid Conflict; Walther Hinz,
Irans Aufstieg zum Nationalstaat im Fünfzehnten Jahrhundert (Leipzig: Walter de Gruyter,
1936); and Michael M. Mazzaoui, The Origins of the Safavids: Ši’ism, Sufism, and the Gulat
(Wiesbaden: F. Steiner, 1972).
29. Ágoston, Guns for the Sultan, 12; Murphey, Ottoman Warfare, 1500–1700, chapter 5.
For development of the commissariat in the Inner Austrian lands, see Štefanec, Država ili ne,
237–247.
30. In 1567 troops marched from Austria to Szatmár. The impressive eighty-thousand-man
war flotilla that moved 240 miles down the Danube from Regensburg to meet an anticipated
Ottoman siege of Vienna (1532) was funded by the imperial diet and by Charles V: Tracy,
Emperor Charles V, chapter 7. Prior to the Habsburg era, Matthias Corvinus led some sixty
thousand men in conquering the Bosnian fortress of Jajce, 350 miles south of Budapest, in
1464: Engel, The Realm of St. Stephen, chapter 18.
31. Chapter 6, note 54.
32. In 1527 he was elected king by Bohemia’s estates, in succession to his brother-in-law,
Louis II Jagiello.
33. Winkelbauer, Österreichische Geschichte, I, 13–14; İnalcik, An Economic and Social
History of the Ottoman Empire, 28–29.
34. Winkelbauer, Österreichische Geschichte, I, 488–490 (2,150,000 Rhine gulden). For a
gulden–ducat ratio of 4 to 5, see Ferdinand to Ban Hieronim Łaski, 13 July 1540, HSS II, 298,
Letter 196.
35. İnalcik, Economic and Social History of the Ottoman Empire, 82 (537,900,000 silver
akçe); Darling, Revenue Raising and Legitimacy, 239: 183,000,000 akçe in cash income for
1560. In Venetian sources of mid-sixteenth-century decades, prior to the devaluation of the
1580s, the reported ducat–akçe ratio is 1 to 50.
 Conclusion 383

36. For an example, see chapter 5, note 15.

37. Hammer-Purgstall, Geschichte des osmanischen Reiches, II, 624–625.
38. İnalcik, “Ottoman Methods of Conquest.”
39. Pryor, Geography, Technology and War; Brummett, Ottoman Seapower, chapter 1.
40. Chapter 3, note 50.
41. Chapters 3 and 4.
42. Fichtner, Emperor Maximilian II, 199, is entirely correct: European writers of this peri-
od “exaggerated the sultan’s control over his subjects, as a way of underscoring the superiority
of Christian freedom.”
43. The two chief military judges, one for Anatolia and one for Rumelia, were members of
the sultan’s divan.
44. “Two opposing principles were in struggle”: the “absolute independence of supreme
authority,” represented by the sultan, and “objective rules,” which placed limits and guided the
ruler: Halil İnalcik, “Decision-Making in the Ottoman State,” in Caesar Farah, ed., Decision-
Making and Change in the Ottoman Empire (Kirksville, MO: Thomas Jefferson University
State Press, 1993), 9–18 (the quotes, 15).
45. For an interesting exception (Montenegro), see Roberts, Realm of the Black Mountain.
46. Moačanin, Turska Hrvatska, 139.
47. [Michael Černović] to Ferdinand, Edirne, 5 January 1557, HHST I 13 Konvolut 1, f. 1–2
(a conversation with the “procurator” of the sancakbeg of Bosnia); Ungnad to Maximilian II,
Constantinople, 5 May 1575, HHST I 31 Konvolut 4, f. 13–14 (a conversation with Achmat,
the secretary of the paşa of Buda).
48. İnalcik, “Decision-Making in the Ottoman Empire,” 10. One of the ways by which the
various corps of French officials acted in a corporate capacity was by brokering loans to the
crown: Mark Potter, Corps and Clienteles: Public Finance and Political Change in France,
1688–1715 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003).
49. See the figures cited above, note 35.
50. Judges (kadis) and customs collectors (emins) were appointed by the Porte, not by the
governors.
51. E.g., Busbecq to Ferdinand, Buda, 12 December 1554, HHST I 11 Konvolut 1, f.
201–204, describing the paşa of Buda as sensitive to the “murmur” of his “military prefects”
[sancakbegs?].
52. Chapter 1, note 71.
53. Faroghi, The Ottoman Empire and the World around It, 44–49. For a contrary view, see
Palmira Brummett, “Subordination and Its Discontents: The Ottoman Campaign, 1578–1580,”
in Farah, Decision-Making and Change in the Ottoman Empire, 101–110.
54. For an example of how the Ottomans made good use of a locally dominant figure, see
chapter 6, note 107.
55. E.g., the transfer of lands in Čakovec to Nikola Zrinski (chapter 3, note 211).
56. E.g., chapter 2, note 172.
57. Chapter 2.
58. For the concept of padishah, see Babayan, Monarchs, Mystics, and Messiahs, and Black,
The History of Islamic Political Thought.
59. Ferdinand II’s creation of a Military Frontier independent of the estates (chapter 6)
already indicated a strong monarchy. For the seventeenth century, see Winkelbauer,
Österreichische Geschichte, vol. II.
60. Chapter 5, note 150; chapter 6, note 56.
61. Quoted by Martin Daunton, “The Politics of British Taxation from the Glorious Revolu-
tion to the Great War,” in Bartolomé Yun-Casalilla, Patrick K. O’Brien, and Francisco Comin-
384 Conclusion

Comin, The Rise of Fiscal States: A Global History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2012), 111–144, here 111. In the seventeenth century, England and the Dutch Republic had
Europe’s highest tax burdens.
62. Chapter 6, notes 60–63.
 Glossary

PERSONS

‘Abbas I: Shah of Iran, r. 1587–1629, the greatest ruler of the Safavid

dynasty.
Ahmed I: Ottoman sultan, r. 1603–1617.
Ahmed Beg Hercegović (Hersekzade Ahmed Paşa), d. 1517: A scion of
Bosnia’s Vukčić family who served five times as grand vezir.
Aias Beg of Bosnia: The sancakbeg from 1470 to 1475.
Alapy, Gaspar: As vice-ban of Croatia, he helped put down the peasant
rebellion of 1573.
Albert of Austria: A younger brother of Rudolf II, governor of the Habs-
burg Netherlands.
(Duke) Albert of Bavaria, d. 1579: A bother-in-law of Ferdinand I, an
uncle of Archduke Karl, and a staunch proponent of the Catholic
Counter-Reformation.
Alexander VI: Rodrigo Borgia was pope from 1491 to 1503.
‘Ali Beg: A younger brother of Ferhat Beg Sololović, he was sancakbeg
of Klis and then of Pakrac.
‘Ali Paşa Semiz: He served twice as paşa of Buda, and was grand vezir
from 1561 to 1565.
Auersperg: A leading magnate family in Carniola, prominent in Habsburg
military service.
Badoer, Andrea, d. 1575: Venetian ambassador to the Porte, 1573–1574.

385
386 Glossary

Bakócz, Tamás, d. 1521: Archbishop of Esztergom, a leading political

figure in Hungary.
Barbaro, Marcantonio: Venetian bailo in Istanbul, 1570–1574.
Barbarossa, Hayreddin, d. 1546: Ruler of Algiers, then admiral of the
Ottoman fleet.
Basta, Giorgio, d. 1607: Habsburg commander who ordered the death of
Michael the Brave.
Báthory, Cardinal András: A cousin of Zsigmund Báthory.
Báthory, István, d. 1534: Helped defeat peasant rebels, 1514; later a parti-
san of Szapolyai.
Báthory, István, d. 1586: Vojvod of Transylvania, 1571–1576, then king
of Poland-Lithuania.
Báthory, Zsigmund, d. 1613: He was several times vojvod of Transylva-
nia.
Batthyány: A magnate family with lands in western Hungary, including
Slavonia.
(Şehzade) Bayezid, d. 1561: He died in exile after rebelling against his
father, Sultan Suleyman.
(Sultan) Bayezid II, r. 1481–1512: He was overthrown by his son, Selim
I.
Bembo, Zuane: A commander of Venice’s Adriatic fleet in the late 1590s.
Berislavić: Although the despotate of Serbia had ceased to exist, the title
was from 1502 held by the Berislavić, including Stjepan B. (d. 1535),
who had lands on the Una.
Berislavić, Petar, d. 1520: Bishop of Vesprém, ban of Croatia,
1513–1520.
Bocskai, István, d. 1607: Recognized as Prince of Transylvania by the
Treaty of Zsitvatorok.
Both, Andreas: A Hungarian magnate, ban of Croatia, 1508–1513.
Branković, George, d. 1456: The last ruler of an independent despotate of
Serbia.
Capistrano, Giovanni: Celebrated Franciscan preacher, recruited men to
defend Belgrade, 1456.
Cavalli, Marino: Venetian bailo in Istanbul, 1557–1559.
Cem (Jem), d. 1495: A half-brother of Sultan Bayezid II who lived in
exile in Europe.
Charles IX: A king of France (1561–1574) who died at the age of twenty-
four.
 Glossary 387

(Pope) Clement VIII: Ippolito Aldobrandini ruled as pope from 1592 to

1605.
Contarini: A leading Venetian patrician clan whose members held many
state offices; Paolo C. was bailo in Istanbul, 1580–1583; Nicolò C.
was commander in the Gradisca War, 1617.
Correr, Nicolò: Venetian rector of Split, 1580–1582.
Corvinus, János: Illegitimate son of King Matthias, ban of Croatia
1501–1504.
Corvinus, Matthias: King of Hungary and Croatia, 1458–1490.
Dal Burgo, Andrea: Papal diplomat at the court of Hungary’s King Louis
II Jagiello.
Damat Ibrahim Paşa, d. 1601: Ottoman grand vezir and serdar during the
Long Turkish War.
Daničić, Juraj: A respected leader of the uskoks in Senj, sentenced to
death in 1611.
Deli Hasan Paşa: A leader of the çelali rebels who in 1604 was named
paşa of Bosnia.
Deli Pop: A Zagreb priest and militia commander who was captured and
converted to Islam.
Derffy, Wolfgang: A captain of the fortress of Szigetvár in the 1550s.
Diedo, Antonio: One of two Venetian syndics assigned to report on Dal-
matia, 1553.
Dietrichstein, Adam von, d. 1590: A leading adviser of Emperor Rudolf
II.
Donà, Leonardo, d. 1612: A Venetian patrician dedicated to public ser-
vice; leader of the giovani.
Doria, Andrea: A Genoese admiral and condottiere who commanded
Charles V’s fleet.
Dózsa, György: Leader of the Hungarian peasant revolt in 1514.
Dragut Reis, d. 1565: A celebrated corsair who rose to be admiral of the
Ottoman fleet.
Drašković: A Croatian magnate family; Juraj D. was bishop of Zagreb
and ban of Croatia from 1567 to 1578; Ivan D. was ban from 1595 to
1608.
Dušan, Stefan: Medieval Serbia’s most powerful king, r. 1331–1355.
Ebu’s-su’ud: A leading Ottoman jurist, grand mufti from 1545 to his
death in 1574.
388 Glossary

Eggenberg, Ruprecht von: General of Croatia, Habsburg commander at

Sisak, 1593.
Erdödy: A magnate family with lands in Slavonia; Simon E. (bishop of
Zagreb) was ban of Croatia from 1530 to 1534; Petár E. from 1557 to
1567; and Tamás E. from 1583 to 1595.
(Archduke) Ernst, d. 1596: Rudolf II’s younger brother, regent in Austria
and Hungary.
Fels, Leonhard von: Commander of the Habsburg frontier in Hungary,
1537 to about 1540.
Ferdinand I: Archduke of Austria from 1521, Holy Roman Emperor
1558–1564.
(Archduke) Ferdinand of Tirol, d. 1595: A younger brother of Maximilian
II, ruled in Tirol.
Ferdinand II, d. 1633: Archduke of Inner Austria from 1596, Holy Roman
Emperor from 1619.
(Grand Duke) Ferdinand I of Tuscany, d. 1609: A Habsburg ally during
the Long Turkish War.
Ferhat Beg Sokolović: See Sokolović.
(Serdar) Ferhat Paşa: Ottoman commander against Iran, grand vezir
1591–1592, 1593–1595.
Fernberger, Johann: Commander of the Croatian frontier sector in the
1570s.
Firuz Beg: Sancakbeg of Bosnia, 1495–1496, 1504–1512.
(King) Francis I: Ruled France from 1515 until his death in 1547.
Frankopan: A magnate family with extensive lands in Croatia proper;
Bernardin F. (d. 1529) was the patriarch; his son Krsto F. (d. 1527)
was a leading military commander.
(Emperor) Frederick III, d. 1493: The father of Maximilian I; he was
emperor from 1452.
Gattinara, Mercurino, d. 1530: The chief advisor of the young Charles V.
Geizkofler, Zacharias: Treasurer of the Holy Roman Empire, 1597–1617.
Gerlach, Stephan: Lutheran chaplain who accompanied David Ungnad to
Istanbul, 1573–1578.
Ghazi Husrev Beg: With some interruptions, sancakbeg of Bosnia,
1522–1541.
Gienger, Georg: A leading adviser of Ferdinand I and then of Maximilian
II.
 Glossary 389

Giustiniano, Giovanni Battista: Diedo’s colleague as syndic for Dalmatia,

1553.
Giustiniani, Pompeo: Venice’s initial commander in the Gradisca War.
Graswein, Kaspar: A Habsburg commander in Slavonia in the 1580s.
Gritti, Alvise, d. 1534: The illegitimate son of a Venetian doge; a mer-
chant who became a chief advisor to Grand Vezir Ibrahim Paşa.
Hallek, Veit: An Austrian military commander in Slavonia in the 1550s
and 1560s.
Hasan Paşa: Paşa of Bosnia, 1591–1593, killed at the Battle of Sisak.
Hieronomo of Zadar: Captain of Rijeka, Habsburg ambassador to the
Porte in the 1530s.
Hunyadi, John, d. 1456: The father of Matthias Corvinus; he defended
Belgrade in 1456.
Hürrem Sultan (Roxelana), d. 1558: The concubine whom Sultan Suley-
man made his wife.
Ibrahim Paşa, d. 1523: Promoted as a young man to be grand vezir,
1523–1536.
Isa-Beg Ishaković: Sancakbeg of Bosnia, 1464–1470.
Isma’il I, d. 1524: The first shah of a new Iranian dynasty; see Safavids.
Ivan IV (the Terrible): Czar of All the Russias, 1547–1584.
Jagiello: The ruling dynasty of Poland-Lithuania, 1386–1571. Some de-
scendants ruled in Bohemia and Hungary.
(Queen) Anna Jagiello, d. 1547: Sister of Louis II, wife of Ferdinand I,
mother of Maximilian II.
Jagiello, Isabella, d. 1559: János Szapolyai’s widow; she defended their
son’s rights.
(King) Louis II Jagiello, d. 1526: Son of Wladislas II, king of Hungary
who died at Mohács.
Wladislas II Jagiello, d. 1516: King of Bohemia from 1471, king of
Hungary-Croatia from 1490.
(Don) Juan of Austria: An illegitimate son of Charles V, overall com-
mander at Lepanto, 1571.
Jurešić, Nikola (Miklós Jurisics): He defended Köszeg against Sultan
Suleyman in 1532.
(Archduke) Karl: A younger brother of Maximilian II, ruler of Inner
Austria, 1564–1590.
Karlović, Ivan, d. 1531: Ban of Croatia, 1521–1524, 1527–1531.
Katzianer, Hans: Commander of the disastrous march to Osijek in 1537.
390 Glossary

Keglević, Petar: Ban of Croatia, 1537–1542, ousted from power in a

property dispute.
Khevenhüller, Georg: A general of the Croatian frontier sector in the
1580s.
Khisel, Veit: A general of the Croatian frontier sector in the 1590s.
Khlesl, Cardinal Melchior: A chief advisor of Rudolf II.
Kružić, Petar: Captain of Klis, killed when the fortress fell in 1537.
Kuripešić, Benedikt: Wrote an account of a journey through Bosnia in
1530.
Kurjaković: A Croatian magnate family, rivals of the Frankopans.
Ladislas V Posthumous, d. 1457: A Habsburg prince who ruled briefly in
Hungary.
Lala Mehmed Paşa: Grand vezir, 1596–1597.
Lala Mustafa Paşa: Commander of Ottoman forces in Cyprus,
1570–1571.
Lazar Hrbljanović, d. 1389: Ruler of Serbia, commanded his troops at
Kosovo Polje.
Lazarević, Stefan, d. 1427: The son of Lazar Hrbljanović, ruled as despot
of Serbia.
Leo X: Giovanni de’ Medici ruled as pope from 1513 to 1521.
Lenković, Ivan, d. 1569: The leading Habsburg commander in Croatia
proper.
Lenković, Juraj, d. 1601: General of Croatia during the 1590s.
Lezze, Zuane da: Commander of Venetian forces in Dalmatia, 1570.
Malkoč Beg, d. 1565: An Ottoman commander in Bosnia, later sancakbeg
of Herzegovina.
Malkočbegović: Several akinci commanders came from this Ottoman
family.
Mary of Hungary: Sister of Ferdinand I, widow of Louis II Jagiello,
regent of the Habsburg Netherlands, 1531–1555.
(Emperor) Matthias: Regent of Austria from 1593, Holy Roman Emperor
from 1612 to 1619.
Maximilian I: Holy Roman Emperor, 1495–1519.
Maximilian II: Son of Ferdinand I, Holy Roman Emperor, 1564–1576.
(Sultan) Mehmed II: Ruled 1444–1446, 1451–1481; the conqueror of
Constantinople, 1453.
(Sultan) Mehmed III: Son of Murad III, ruled from 1595 to 1603.
 Glossary 391

Mehmed Beg Jahjapašić: Sancakbeg of Belgrade, fought at Mohács,

1526.
Melanchthon, Philip, d. 1560: Humanist and theologian, Martin Luther’s
chief collaborator.
Memishah Beg: Long-serving emin of Ottoman Bosnia, with an office at
Gabela.
Michael the Brave (Mihai Patraşcu): Vojvod of Wallachia, 1593–1601;
briefly held Moldova and Transylvania as well, thus uniting the three
Danubian principalities for the first time.
Mihrimah: Favored daughter of Sultan Suleyman, wife of Rüstem Paşa.
(Duke) Moritz of Saxony: Archduke Ferdinand’s Lutheran partner in the
1552 pact at Passau.
Movila, Jerome: A Polish protégé, at times vojvod of Moldova in the
1590s.
(Sultan) Murad I: Ruled from 1362 to 1389.
(Sultan) Murad III: The son of Selim II, he ruled from 1574 to 1595.
Murad Beg Tardić: One of Ghazi Husrev Beg’s vojvods, or military com-
manders.
(Şehzade) Mustafa: Eldest son of Sultan Suleyman, executed in his
father’s tent in 1553.
Nádasdy, Tamás, d. 1552: Hungarian magnate, held many offices under
Ferdinand I.
Nasi, Joseph, d. 1579: A Sephardic Jewish merchant-prince, confidant of
Sultan Selim II.
Navagero, Bernardo, d. 1566: Venetian bailo at the Porte, 1550–1552,
later bishop of Verona.
Noailles, François de, d. 1585: Bishop of Dax, Charles IX’s ambassador
to the Porte, 1571–1575.
Nur Banu, d. 1583: Wife of Sultan Selim II, mother of Sultan Murad III.
Oláh, Miklós, d. 1568: Bishop of Zagreb (1542–1548), a leading Habs-
burg adviser on Hungary.
Olivera Despina: A daughter of Lazar Hrbljanović; after Kosovo Polje
(1389), she was sent to the harem of Sultan Bayezid I.
Opitz, Joshua: A preacher of the Genuine Lutheran school, active in
Vienna in the 1570s.
Orsini, Camillo, d. 1559: Condottiere general who led Venetian troops in
Dalmatia in 1540.
392 Glossary

Osman I, d. 1326: Eponymous founder of his dynasty (in Turkish, “Otto-

man” = Osmanli).
Pasquaglio, Filippo: Venetian patrician and naval commander of the early
seventeenth century.
(Pope) Paul III: Alessandro Farnese ruled as pope from 1534 to 1549.
Pečevija (Pecevi), Ibrahim, d. 1650: Wrote a history of the Ottoman Em-
pire, 1520–1640.
Pernštein, Vratislav: Moravian magnate, accompanied the future Maxi-
milian II to Spain in 1552.
(Pope) Pius II: Enea Silvio Piccolomini ruled as pope from 1458 to 1464.
(Pope) Pius V: Michele Ghislieri ruled as pope from 1566 to 1572.
Piyale Paşa, d. 1578: Admiral of the Ottoman fleet, 1553–1567; thereafter
a vezir.
Ponte, Nicolò da: Doge of Venice, 1578–1583; linked to the giovani.
Popel z Lobković, Zdenek: A member of the “Spanish” faction at Rudolf
II’s court in Prague.
Poppendorf, Franz: The first president of the Inner Austrian Kriegsrat in
Graz.
Raab, Kaspar: A captain of Senj (1576–1585) who tried to keep the
uskoks under control.
Rabatta, Giuseppe: A captain of Senj (1601); his efforts to discipline the
uskoks led to his death.
Rauber, Nicholas: Magnate from Carniola, captain of Košice under Maxi-
milian II.
Redern, Melchior von: Silesian magnate, led a cavalry regiment at Sisak
in 1593.
Rhenier, Alvise: Venetian bailo at the Porte, 1547–1550.
Rijm, Karel: Flemish jurist, Maximilian II’s ambassador to the Porte,
1570–1574.
Rodriguez, Daniel: Consul of Sephardic Jewish merchants at Gabela, in-
strumental in negotiating the Veneto-Ottoman agreement for a trade
route through Split.
Rožmberk, Vilem: Bohemian magnate; brother-in-law of Nikola IV Zrin-
ski.
Rudolf II: Holy Roman Emperor, 1576–1612; he moved the Habsburg
capital to Prague.
Rüstem Paşa: Grand vezir, 1544–1553, 1555–1561; husband of Mihri-
mah.
 Glossary 393

Safiye: Favored consort of Sultan Murad III, valide sultana for her son
Sultan Ahmed III.
Salm, Nicholas von: Military commander for Ferdinand I; his father, of
the same name, commanded the defense of Vienna in 1529.
Sarpi, Paolo: Venetian scholar and determined foe of Spain and of the
Counter-Reformation.
Satirci Mehmed Paşa: Ottoman serdar in Hungary, 1597.
Scanderbeg (George Kastrioti): Led anti-Ottoman guerilla war in northern
Albania, 1443–1468.
Schwarzenberg, Count Adolf von: A Habsburg commander in the Long
Turkish War.
Schwendi, Lazarus, d. 1583: A soldier-strategist whose ideas influenced
Habsburg planning.
(Sultan) Selim I, r. 1512–1520. He defeated the Safavids and conquered
the Mamluk Empire.
(Sultan) Selim II, r. 1566–1574: He launched the invasion of Cyprus in
1570.
Sick, Nicholas: Habsburg diplomat in the 1540s.
Siebenbürger, Martin: Burgomaster of Vienna, executed (1522) for defi-
ance of Habsburg rule.
Sigismund I, d. 1437: King of the Romans from 1411, Holy Roman
Emperor from 1433.
Sijavuş Paşa, d. 1602: Grand vezir, 1582–1584, 1586–1589, 1592–1593.
(Koca) Sinan Paşa, d. 1596: Conqueror of Yemen (1571), grand vezir
1589–1591, 1593–1595.
Skender Paşa of Bosnia: He served three terms as sancakbeg, the last
from 1499 to 1504.
Slunjski, Franjo Frankopan: From an impoverished Croatian magnate
family, ban from 1571 to 1577.
Sokolović (Sokullu): An extended Bosnian clan whose members included
Ottoman high officials and Orthodox prelates. Ferhat Beg S. was san-
cakbeg of Klis (1568–1574), then sancakbeg and paşa of Bosnia
(1574–1587). Mustafa Paşa S. was paşa of Buda from 1566 to 1578.
Mehmed Paşa S. (Sokullu Mehmed Paşa) served as admiral, as begler-
beg of Rumelia, and finally as Grand Vezir (1565–1579).
(Rabbi) Solomon Ashkenazi: Court physician to Sultan Selim II.
(Baron) Sprinzenstein, Franz Ricius: In the 1530s, served Ferdinand I as a
spy and a diplomat.
394 Glossary

(King) Stefan Thomaš: King of Bosnia, r. 1443–1461.

(King) Stefan Thomašević: The last king of Bosnia, r. 1461–1463.
Šubić: A medieval Croatian magnate clan from which various families
claimed descent.
(Sultan) Suleyman the Lawgiver: He reigned from 1520 until his death in
1566.
Szapolyai, János, d. 1540: Vojvod of Transylvania, Ferdinand’s rival for
the crown of Hungary.
Szapolyai, János Zsigmund, d. 1571: Son and heir of János Szapolyai.
(Shah) Tahmasp: Ruled Iran, 1524–1576.
Tahy, Franjo: Slavonian magnate whose cruelty helped spark the peasant
revolt of 1573.
Tiepolo, Antonio: Venetian bailo at the Porte, 1573–1576.
Tirjaki Hasan Paşa: He helped conquer Kanizsa (1596), then defended it
as sancakbeg.
Toygun Paşa: Paşa of Buda, 1553, 1558–1559.
Trautson, Hans, d. 1589: Maximilian II’s most influential adviser.
Tschernembl, Georg Erasmus von, d. 1599: A leader of Protestant resis-
tance to the Habsburgs.
Uluç ‘Ali: Ottoman naval commander, admiral from 1572 to 1587.
Ungnad: A Styrian magnate family, partisans of the Lutheran Reforma-
tion. Hans U. (d. 1564) was Landeshauptmann of Styria and com-
mander of the Habsburg frontier until he retired to Wittenberg. His
nephew David U. was ambassador to the Porte (1573–1578), later
president of the Hofkriegsrat. Christoph U. was ban of Croatia,
1576–1583.
Veltwijck, Geraard: A Flemish theologian and Habsburg ambassador to
the Porte, 1545–1547.
Venier, Cristoforo: An official whose murder (1613) gave Venice a casus
belli against Austria.
(Duke) Vincenzo II Gonzaga of Mantua, d. 1627: Habsburg ally during
the Long Turkish War.
Vlatković, Ivan: An uskok officer in the early seventeenth century.
Vukčić: A magnate family in southeastern Bosnia. Kosazka V. (d. 1466)
proclaimed himself duke of what was later “the land of the duke,”
Herzegovina. Some descendants opposed the Ottomans, but see Ah-
med Beg Hercegović.
 Glossary 395

Werböczy, István, d. 1541: A noted Hungarian jurist and a leading parti-

san of János Szapolyai.
Yemişçi Hasan Paşa: An Ottoman military commander; he was grand
vezir from 1602 to 1603.
Zrinski (Zrinyi): A Croatian magnate family. Nikola III (d. 1536) and his
brother Ivan were nephews of Ivan Karlović; their father had died at
Krbava Polje. Nikola IV was ban of Croatia (1542–1556) and died at
Szigetvár (1566). His son Juraj (d. 1603) was captain of Kanizsa.

PLACES

Alba Iulia (Gyulafehérvár): Capital of the principality of Transylvania,

now in Romania.
Aleppo: Syrian terminus for silk caravans from Iran, and a center for
Venice’s eastern trade.
Alexandria: Leading port in the Nile delta, and a center for Venice’s
eastern trade.
Amasya: Capital of a sancak in central Anatolia, site for the Ottoman-
Iranian treaty of 1555.
Ancona: Italian port on the Adriatic, rivaling Venice as the entrepôt for
trade with Dalmatia.
Aquilea: Lands of the Patriarch of Aquilea (eastern Istria) were now
under Venetian rule.
Aragón: A kingdom in northeastern Iberia, from 1476 jointly ruled with
Castile.
Austria (Inner): The duchies of Carinthia, Carniola, and Styria had the
same ruler, 1564 to 1655.
Austria (Lower): Lower Austria included Vienna, but its capital was Wie-
ner Neustadt.
Austria (Upper): Linz was the capital of the duchy of Upper Austria.
Babócsa: A fortress-town in the southwestern corner of Hungary.
Baghdad: A provincial capital of Iran’s Safavid dynasty, conquered by
the Ottomans in 1534.
Bakar: A small port on Croatia’s Adriatic coast, and a haven for uskok
corsairs.
Banja Luka: The capital of Ottoman Bosnia from 1554, now part of the
Republika Srpska.
396 Glossary

Bar (Antivari): A Venetian port city (modern Montenegro) conquered by

the Ottomans in 1571.
Barbary Coast: A collective term for the corsairing seaports of west and
central North Africa.
Basra, Iraq: Conquered in the 1540, giving the Ottomans an outlet to the
Indian Ocean.
Belgrade: Defended against the Ottomans in 1456, conquered by Sultan
Suleyman in 1521.
Bihać: This major Croatian fortress on the upper Una held out against the
Ottomans until 1592.
Bobovac: Bosnia’s capital at the time of the Ottoman conquest in 1463.
Bohemia: Ruled by the Habsburgs from 1527, the kingdom of Bohemia
consisted of Bohemia proper, Moravia, Silesia, and Upper and Lower
Lusatia.
Bosanska Krajina: The western part of Ottoman Bosnia.
Bosnia: A kingdom that became an Ottoman sancak in 1463, and a
paşaluk or eyalet in 1580.
Bribir: A small port on the Croatian Adriatic, and a haven for uskok
corsairs.
Bruck: A city on the Mur in southern Styria.
Brzeth: Site of a small fortress on the Kupa, upstream from Sisak.
Budva: This port city (modern Montenegro) was from 1420 part of Vene-
tian Albania.
Bužim (modern Bosnia-Herzegovina): A fortress north of Bihać, taken by
the Ottomans in 1576.
Čakovec: The key fortress-town in Međimurje (q.v.), held from 1546 by
the Zrinski family.
Carinthia: One of three duchies comprising Inner Austria; its capital was
Klagenfurt.
Carniola: One of three duchies comprising Inner Austria; its capital was
Ljubljana.
Carpathian Mountains: The southern part of the long Carpathian chain
divided Transylvania from Moldova and Wallachia.
Castile: A kingdom that made up most of Spain; see Aragón.
Cazin (modern Bosnia-Herzegovina): A fortress north of Bihać, taken by
the Ottomans in 1576.
Čazma: A fortress-town east of Zagreb, held by the Ottomans from 1552
to 1606.
 Glossary 397

Celje: A fortress-town in Upper Styria (modern Slovenia).

Cephalonia: A Greek island in the Ionian Sea, captured by Venetian
forces in 1500.
Chaldoran (northwestern Iran): Where Ottoman firepower decimated Sa-
favid forces in 1514.
Cis-Danubian frontier sector: Western Hungary, from Lake Balaton north
to the Danube.
Cluj (Kolozsvár): An important city in Transylvania, now in Romania.
Croatia proper: A name used here for the southern part of Habsburg
Croatia; see Slavonia.
Dalmatia: Used here to mean coastal regions ruled by Venice (now in
Croatia and Montenegro).
Drava: A major tributary of the Sava which flows east through Styria and
Slavonia.
Drina: A tributary of the Sava, flowing north through eastern Bosnia-
Herzegovina.
Dubica: An important fortress-town on the lower Una, now in the Repu-
blika Srpska.
Dubrovnik (Ragusa): A commercial republic, and from 1442 an Ottoman
tributary state.
Edirne (Adrianople): Ottoman capital, prior to the conquest of Constan-
tinople in 1453.
Eger: Important fortress-town in Hungary, north and east of Buda.
Erzurum: A major fortress-town in eastern Anatolia, conquered by the
Ottomans in 1514.
Esztergom/Gran: Episcopal city on the Danube north of Buda, taken by
the Ottomans in 1543.
Famagusta: The fortress-town that held out when the Ottomans invaded
Cyprus in 1570.
Foča: Foča, on the Drina, was the capital of the sancak of Herzegovina.
Gabela: Here, a name for the Ottoman commercial settlement at the
mouth of the Neretva.
Georgia: The ancient kingdom in the Caucasus, fought over by Ottomans
and Safavids.
Giurgiu: A city on the Danube in Wallachia (modern Romania), south of
Bucharest.
Glina: A river flowing mainly north, to the Kupa.
Gori: A major political center in Georgia.
398 Glossary

Gorizia: On the upper Isonzo/Soča, Gorizia (now in Italy) was then part
of Carniola.
Gradec: The burghers’ town that was one of two cities comprising Za-
greb; see Kaptol.
Gradisca (Isonzo): On the middle Isonzo/Soča, now in Italy but then in
Carniola.
Gradiška (Sava): A Bosnian fortress-town on the south bank of the Sava.
Graz: Capital of the duchy of Styria.
The Gulf: A Venetian term for the Upper Adriatic, from Istria to modern
Montenegro.
Gvozdansko: A fortress- and silver-mining town east of the Una in central
Croatia.
Győr: Downstream from Vienna, anchor fortress for the Cis-Danubian
frontier sector.
Gyula: A major fortress-town in eastern Hungary, taken by the Ottomans
in 1566.
Herceg Novi (Castelnuovo): An Ottoman fortress-town at the entrance to
the Bay of Kotor.
Herzegovina: An Ottoman sancak from 1483; for the name, see Vukčić
family.
Hodidjed: An old name for the site of Ottoman Sarajevo.
Hrastovica: A Croatian fortress-town east of the Kupa.
Inner Austria: See Austria.
Isonzo/Soča: A river flowing through eastern Carniola (modern Slovenia)
to the Adriatic.
Ivanić: A fortress-town and monastery on the Slavonian frontier, just
north of the Sava.
Izmir (Smyrna): An Ottoman port on Anatolia’s Aegean coast.
Jajce: A major fortress-town on the Vrbas in northwestern Bosnia, held
by Hungary until 1528.
Jasenovac: An island in the Sava, near its confluence with the Una.
Judenburg: A major city on Carinthia.
Kamengrad: A fortress-town in western Bosnia.
Kanizsa: After 1566, the anchor fortress for the Trans-Danubian frontier
sector.
Kaptol: Name for the chapter town that was one of two cities comprising
Zagreb; see Gradec.
Karaman: An Ottoman sancak in south-central Anatolia.
 Glossary 399

Karin: A small fortress-town in Dalmatia, taken by the Ottomans in 1537.

Karlobag: Fortified and renamed, the small Adriatic port of Bag became a
haven for uskoks.
Karlovac: A new-style fortress on the upper Kupa, anchor for the Croa-
tian frontier sector.
Kärnten: The German name for Carinthia.
Klagenfurt: Capital of the duchy of Carinthia.
Klis: An almost-inaccessible hill fortress in Dalmatia, near Split, taken by
the Ottomans in 1537.
Knin: A city on the upper Krka, above Šibenik, taken by the Ottomans in
1522; see Skradin.
Kobaš: A Bosnian settlement on the right bank of the lower Sava.
Komárom: In the sixteenth century, a Danube island, and base for the
Habsburg gunboat fleet.
Koprivnica: A major fortress-town on the Slavonian frontier, between
Križevci and the Drava.
Koroni (Koron): A Venetian port at the southern tip of Greece, taken by
the Ottomans in 1500.
Košice: The main city in the eastern part of “Upper Hungary” (modern
Slovakia).
Kosovo Polje: In 1389 the Ottomans emerged victorious from a battle
here with Serbian forces.
Kostajnica: A fortress on the right bank of the lower Una, incorporated
into Ottoman Bosnia.
Köszeg (Güns): A small Hungarian fortress that held off Sultan Suleyman
for six weeks (1532).
Kotor (Cattaro): A port in Venetian Albania, at the eastern end of the Bay
of Kotor.
Kotor, Bay of: A long Adriatic inlet (now in Montenegro), from Herceg
Novi to Kotor.
Krain: The German name for the duchy of Carniola.
Kranj: A city in eastern Carniola (modern Slovenia).
Krbava: A district in southern Croatia, of which Udbina was the most
important town.
Krbava Polje: Where Ottoman troops dealt Croatian forces a devastating
defeat in 1499.
Križevci: An important fortress-town on the Slavonian frontier, between
Ivanić and Koprivnica.
400 Glossary

Krk (Veglia): A large island in Venetian Dalmatia, opposite to Senj and

the Vinodol region.
Krka: A river flowing down from the mountains which forms a large
estuary at Šibenik.
Kruje: An important Venetian fortress in northern Albania, taken by the
Ottomans in 1479.
Krupa: A fortress-town on the Una, important for supply lines to Bihać; it
fell in 1566.
Kupa: A river that flows north and east through Croatia to join the Sava at
Sisak.
Lepanto (Naupaktos): The great battle (1571) was fought near this south-
western Greek port.
Lika: A district in southern Croatia, and from 1578 an Ottoman sancak.
Livno: A town in south-central Bosnia, de facto capital for the Ottoman
sancak of Klis.
Ljubljana: The capital of the duchy of Carniola and now of modern Slo-
venia.
Lower Austria: See Austria.
Marano (Marano Lagunare): A small Adriatic port in Carniola, grabbed
by Venice in 1542.
Maribor (Marburg): A city in “Upper Styria” (modern Slovenia).
Marignano: Near Milan; Francis I of France won a great victory here in
1515.
Međimurje: A triangular “island” formed by the Mur as it flows southeast
to join the Drava.
Medvedgrad: Then an important fortress just north of Zagreb, now a
suburb.
Mezőkeresztes: Here, northeast of Buda, the Ottomans turned defeat into
victory in 1596.
Methoni (Modon): A Venetian port at the southern tip of Greece; it be-
came Ottoman in 1500.
Milan: The hitherto-independent duchy of Milan was from 1536 ruled by
Spain.
Mining District: A sector of the Habsburg Military Frontier, now in west-
ern Slovakia.
Modruš: A fortified city in southern Croatia, held by the Frankopan fami-
ly.
 Glossary 401

Mohács: Here, on the Danube south of Buda, Suleyman destroyed the

Hungarian army in 1526.
Moldova (in modern Romania): An Ottoman tributary state, north and
east of the Carpathians.
Monyorokerek: A western Hungarian fortress, center of the Zrinski lands
in Hungary.
Morlacchia: A Venetian term for the Velebit Mountains.
Moslavina: A fortress in eastern Slavonia, near the Drava.
Mur: A river flowing south and east through Styria and Hungary to its
juncture with the Sava.
Nadin: A key fortresses in the contado of Zadar lost in the 1537–1540
war; see Vrana.
Naples: The Kingdom of Naples was ruled by the kings of Aragón and by
their Habsburg heirs.
Neretva (Narenta): A river flowing south through Bosnia to the Adriatic;
see Gabela, Ploče.
Nin: A small port town in Venetian Dalmatia, part of Zadar’s contado.
Nitra: A river flowing south through the Mining District frontier sector
(modern Slovakia).
Nové Zámky (Érsekújvár): A new-style fortress, anchor for the Mining
District frontier sector.
Novigrad: A small town on the bay of the same name, part of the contado
of Zadar.
Novigrad Strait: A channel connecting Novigrad Bay (see above) to the
Adriatic.
Novo Brdo (modern Kosovo): A fortified Serbian mining town, taken by
the Ottomans in 1456.
Obrovac: A city on the Zrmanja River, near Novigrad Bay, taken by the
Ottoman in 1528.
Omiš: This small Adriatic port, south and east of Split, became a base for
uskok corsairs.
Osijek: An important city on the lower Drava, captured by the Ottomans
in 1526.
Otočac: A fortified town in the Velebit Mountains of southern Croatia.
Pag: A long, slender island in Venetian Dalmatia, north and west of
Zadar.
Pakrac: A fortified town in western Slavonia, for a time the capital of an
Ottoman sancak.
402 Glossary

Palmanova: A star-shaped modern-style fortress in Venetian Friuli, built

in the 1590s.
Passau (Bavaria): Site for a 1552 religious compromise between Ferdi-
nand and Duke Moritz.
Peć (in modern Kosovo): The seat of the patriarchate of Serbia, reestab-
lished in 1559.
Pécs: An episcopal town in western Hungary, captured by the Ottomans
in 1543.
Petrinja: A river island rear Sisak, site of an Ottoman fortress taken by the
Croatians.
Petrovaradin (Pétervárad): An important fortress-town north of the Da-
nube, now in Serbia.
Ploče: Modern Bosnia’s Adriatic outlet, at the mouth of the Neretva.
Poland-Lithuania: Sixteenth-century Poland-Lithuania was Muscovy’s
great rival.
Poljica: A small town in the contado of Split.
Posonia: Latin name for what is now the capital of Slovakia (Bratislava is
a modern coinage).
Postojna Gap: In southern Carniola (now Slovenia), a passage across the
Dinaric Alps into Italy.
Ptuj (Pettau): A market town in Upper Styria, now part of Slovenia.
Rab (Arbe): A midsized island in Venetian Dalmatia, north and east of
Pag.
Rijeka (Fiume): The major seaport for eastern (Habsburg) Istria, then part
of Carniola.
Ripac: A fortress near Bihać.
Rum: The name for “Rome” (Constantinople) in Arabic and Turkish.
Rumelia: The “Roman” (i.e., Byzantine) or European part of the Ottoman
Empire.
Šabac: A fortress on the Danube, downstream from Belgrade.
Salé: A port on Morocco’s Atlantic coast, haven for an important band of
Muslim corsairs.
Salzburg: An independent territory; its prince-archbishop was usually a
Habsburg ally.
Satu Mare (Szatmár): A major fortress-town disputed between the Habs-
burgs and Transylvania.
Senj: A small port on Croatia’s Adriatic coast that became the center for
uskok corsairs.
 Glossary 403

Shkoder (Scutari): A city in Venetian Albania, until surrendered to the

Ottomans in 1479.
Šibenik (Sbenico): One of the four major port cities in Venetian Dalmatia.
Sibiu (Hermannstadt): An important city in Transylvania, founded by
German colonists.
Sisak: Habsburg fortress at the juncture of the Kupa and the Sava, site of
a key battle in 1593.
Skradin: A city on the upper Krka, above Šibenik, taken by the Ottomans
in 1522; see Knin.
Slavonia: Northern Croatia, including land between the Sava and the
Drava; see Croatia proper.
Slunj: The eponymous fortress of the Slunjskis, a Croatian magnate fami-
ly.
Smederevo: A Danube fortress near Belgrade, built by the last ruler of an
independent Serbia.
Soča: See Isonzo.
Solin: A small coastal town near Split.
Split (Spalato): One of the four major port cities in Venetian Dalmatia.
Srijem: A name for the Danube lands east of Belgrade.
Steničnjak: An important Croatian fortress east of the Kupa.
Stubica: A Croatian fortress north of Zagreb.
Styria: The duchy of Styria was part of Inner Austria; its capital was Graz.
Susedgrad: A fortress west of Zagreb.
Székesfehérvár: A city in western Hungary where, by tradition, kings
were crowned.
Szigetvár: The anchor fortress for the Trans-Danubian frontier sector,
until it fell in 1566.
Szolnok: An important fortress in eastern Hungary, taken by the Otto-
mans in 1552.
Tabriz: A great city in northeastern Iran, sixteenth-century capital of the
Safavid shahs.
Targovişte: The capital of the principality of Wallachia.
Tbilisi: A major city in Georgia, now the capital of the Republic of
Georgia.
Terraferma: The Italian term for Venice’s mainland possessions in Italy.
Timosoara/Temesvár: A city in southeastern Hungary, capital of a
paşaluk from 1552.
404 Glossary

Tirol: Tirol was one of six Habsburg-Austrian duchies; its capital was
Innsbruck.
Tisza: A major tributary of the Danube, flowing south through eastern
Hungary.
Tokay: A city in northeastern Hungary, contested between Transylvania
and the Habsburgs.
Topusko: A monastery town in southern Croatia, east of the Kupa.
Trans-Danubian frontier sector: Western Hungary, from Lake Balaton
south to the Drava.
Transylvania (modern Romania): Part of Hungary until 1527, this territo-
ry west of the Carpathians was thereafter an Ottoman tributary state.
Trogir (Trau): One of the four major port cities in Venetian Dalmatia.
Turopolje: A populous district in southern Croatia, south of the Sava and
west of the Kupa.
Udbina: A city in southern Croatia, captured by the Ottomans in 1527.
Udine: The major urban center of the Venetian province of Friuli.
Ulcinj (Dulcigno): A port city in Venetian Albania, taken by the Otto-
mans in 1571.
Una: This river forms a westward-pointing arc, through what is now
Bosnia to the Sava.
Upper Austria: See Austria (Upper).
Üsküdar: Across the Bosporus from Istanbul; a jumping-off point for
armies headed east.
Valpovo: A fortress in northeastern Slavonia, taken by the Ottomans in
1526.
Varaždin: A major fortress-city in northwestern Slavonia, near the border
with Styria.
Velebit Channel: An arm of the Adriatic, between the island of Pag and
the coast.
Velebit Mountains: A name for the Dinaric Alps of southern Croatia and
southern Bosnia.
Velika (Kraljeva Velika): A fortress in western Slavonia, north of the
Sava; it fell in 1544.
Veszprém: An episcopal city in western Hungary.
Vinodol: “Wine country” was a name for Croatia’s Adriatic coast north
and west of Senj.
Virovitica: A fortress in north-central Slavonia, south of the Drava; it fell
in 1544.
 Glossary 405

Vrana: A key fortress in the contado of Zadar lost in the 1537–1540 war;
see Nadin.
Vrbas: A river flowing north through western Bosnia to the Sava.
Wallachia (now in Romania): An Ottoman tributary, between the Car-
pathians and the Danube.
Wiener Neustadt: The capital city of the duchy of Lower Austria.
Yerevan: A major city in the northwestern corner of Safavid Iran.
Zadar (Zara): One of the four major port cities in Venetian Dalmatia.
Zagreb: See Gradec and Kaptol.
Zemunik: A fortress ten miles east of Zadar, lost to the Ottomans for good
in 1571.
Zrin: The eponymous seat of Croatia’s Zrinski family.
Zrmanja River: See Obrovac.
Zumberačka Mountains: A range of hills along the border between Carni-
ola and Croatia.

TERMS

akçe: Ottoman silver coin; ca. 1550, a Venetian gold ducat was worth
about 50 akçe.
akinci: Ottoman raiders, serving for a share of the booty.
arquebus: A muzzle-loaded firearm, predecessor of the musket.
Augsburg Confession: A Lutheran confession of faith submitted to the
1530 Diet of Augsburg.
Augsburg Interim: A religious settlement proclaimed in Germany by
Charles V in 1548.
Ausschusslandtag: A “committee-diet” of the estates of the Austrian
duchies.
avariz: An Ottoman extraordinary tax, imposed in cash or services.
Ayan-i vilayeti: A collective term for local Ottoman notables.
bailo: Venice’s regular representative at the Porte, usually serving for
about two years.
ban: The representative in Croatia of the Hungarian crown’s military and
civil authority.
bastion trace: A new style or fortification developed by Venetian military
architects.
beg/bey: The governor of an Ottoman province.
beglerbeg/beylerbeyi: An Ottoman governor of governors.
406 Glossary

Bektaşis: A Sufi sect, popular among Janissaries.

Beratschlagung: A word for consultation, e.g., among the provincial es-
tates.
Bohemian Brethren: A radical sect that emerged from the fifteenth-centu-
ry Hussite movement.
Bosniaks: A name for Bosnian Muslims.
Bosnian Church: A group of believers deemed heterodox by Rome; by
the time of the Ottoman conquest (1463) they were a tiny minority.
boyars: A Slavic term meaning nobles, used, e.g., in Moldova and Walla-
chia.
Cabbala: A collection of medieval Jewish mystical texts.
caliph: From an Arabic term meaning “successor.” Sultan Suleyman re-
vived the title.
camera/Kammer: The Latin and German words for “chamber” came to
mean “treasury.”
Captain of the Gulf: Venice’s naval commander in the upper Adriatic.
ćehaja: The secretary and general factotum of an Ottoman official.
çelali (jelali): Rebels who controlled parts of south-central Anatolia for
some years around 1600.
Chapter of Zagreb: For every cathedral church, there was a college or
chapter of priests.
Christianitas: The Latin term of which “Christendom” is the translation.
Collegio: A name for the executive council of the Venetian government.
condottiere: A “contractor,” a term used for military contractors or mer-
cenary commanders.
Congregation of Nobles (Slavonia): See Sabor.
contado: The Italian term for “county.”
Council of Florence, 1439: Representatives of the Patriarch of Constan-
tinople accepted papal terms for a reunion of the churches, but the
agreement was rejected by the people.
Council of Ten: A Venetian magistracy, originally focused on state secur-
ity.
Council of Trent: In three sessions between 1545 and 1562, the council
reasserted Catholic doctrine, condemned Protestant doctrine, and de-
creed reforms for the clergy.
Count Palatine of the Rhine: One of seven electoral princes of the Holy
Roman Empire.
 Glossary 407

Crown of St. Stephen: The crown reputedly worn by King Stephen (d.
1038).
Dar al-Islam: The “world of Islam,” as distinct from the dar al-harb (the
world of war, i.e., infidels).
defter: An Ottoman fiscal account.
defterdar: An Ottoman treasurer.
despotēs: The Greek term, meaning one who has authority, did not mean
“despot.”
devşirme: A levy of (mainly) boys from Christian villages in the Balkans.
diet (Hungarian): Magnates summoned by name, and representatives of
county nobles.
diet (Imperial): Made up of the college of seven electors and the college
of imperial princes, lay and clerical. Representatives from the imperial
cities had only an advisory role.
dika: A royal tax on property levied in Croatia.
divan: The Ottoman council of state, which included the vezirs and other
high officials.
dizdar: A fortress commander; the dizdar was often made town governor.
doge: The chief magistrate of Venice, chosen for life by a complicated
process.
dominio del mar: Venice claimed “lordship of the sea,” since it kept the
seas clear of pirates.
Dubrovčani: The people of Dubrovnik (Ragusa).
ducat: A Venetian gold coin.
electors/electoral princes: Since 1356, seven princes of the Holy Roman
Empire, including three prince-archbishops, had been vested with the
right to elect the emperor.
emin: An Ottoman customs official.
esrafi: A term for local notables in an Ottoman town.
eyalet: An Ottoman administrative district comprising a number of san-
caks.
fetwa: A religious decree issued by the Ottoman grand mufti.
florins (Hungarian): This gold florin was worth a bit more than the Ger-
man Rhine gulden.
fusta, pl. fuste: An oared war vessel smaller than a galley but larger than
an uskok bark.
galleass: A ship with guns mounted on all four sides.
408 Glossary

Genuine Lutherans: Those who rejected the Augsburg Interim; see Philip-
pists.
ghazi: A warrior for the Islamic faith.
giovani: “Young men” was a loose term for patricians who disagreed with
Venice’s policies.
Gradisca War, 1615–1617: A Veneto-Austrian war provoked by uskok
raiding.
Grand Council: An assembly for which all patrician men in Venice older
than twenty-five were eligible.
grand mufti: The chief authority on Islamic law, appointed by the sultan.
grand vezir: The sultan’s chief councilor, who presided over the divan in
his absence.
Gray Leagues/Grisons: A federation of cantons, distinct from the Swiss
Confederation.
Gült: A land tax in the Austrian duchies.
hajduk: A term meaning brigand; Habsburg hajduks fought for a share of
the booty.
harac: One term for the special tax to which infidels were liable, accord-
ing to Islamic law.
harambasa: Among uskoks, the harambasa was the elected commander
of a bark.
haramia: In Habsburg Croatia, a term for infantry paid at less than the
rate for “Germans.”
Hauptberatschlagung: A “high consultation.” See Beratschlagung.
Herren, Herrenstand: In the Austrian estates, “lords” or magnates were
summoned by name.
Hofkammer: The “court chamber” was the sovereign’s treasury; see cam-
era/Kammer.
Hofkriegsrat: The “court war council,” in Vienna.
Hofrat: The sovereign’s “court council,” or a “court councilor.”
Holy League, 1571–1573: An alliance between Spain and Venice, medi-
ated by the pope.
Holy Roman Empire: A federation of largely autonomous territories great
and small.
homeni da fatti: “Men of deeds,” meaning able-bodied men.
Islamdom: A term coined by the historian Marshall Hodgson; cf. “Chris-
tendom.”
 Glossary 409

Janissaries: The elite Ottoman infantry corps, recruited from boys taken
in the devşirme.
jihad: An Arabic word meaning struggle, also used to mean holy war.
jizya: Another term for the special tax to which infidels were liable,
according to Islamic law.
kadi: As Islamic judge; in Ottoman lands, the kadi for each district was
appointed by the sultan.
kerseys: Light woolens, for which there was a huge and widespread de-
mand.
King of the Romans: The emperor-elect of the Holy Roman Empire,
chosen by the electors.
kizilbaş: Safavid warriors were called “redheads” because of their red
turbans.
Kleinkrieg: “Little war”; a condition involving constant cross-border at-
tacks on a small scale.
Knights of Malta: Founded during the Crusades and based in Rhodes
from 1291 to 1522, the knights were given Malta by Charles V in
1530.
Kriegsrat: “War council.” Inner Austria had its own Kriegsrat, in Graz,
but see Hofkriegsrat.
Landeshauptmann: In the Austrian duchies, the “head of the territory”
was chosen by the estates.
Landhaus: The building in which a duchy’s estates met, often built for
that purpose.
Landsknechte: German mercenary infantry, well paid and highly sought
after.
Landtag: A “meeting [diet] of the territory,” i.e., a meeting of the estates.
League of Cambrai: Formed in 1508 by states hoping to carve up Ven-
ice’s Italian possessions.
League of Cognac: A Franco-papal alliance (1526) aimed at opposing
Charles V in Italy.
Long Turkish War: The Habsburg-Ottoman War of 1593–1606.
magnates: Great nobles, possessed of vast estates; see Herren, Herren-
stand.
mahal: An Ottoman term for an urban neighborhood.
Mamluks: “Slave-soldiers” who formed a dynasty that ruled Egypt from
1250 to 1517.
martolossi: Originally, Orthodox skirmishers fighting for the sultan.
410 Glossary

Morlacchi: A Venetian term for Vlachs.

mufti: A recognized authority in Islamic law; an important Islamic city
could have its mufti.
musket: A heavier and more accurate version of the arquebus.
Pacification of Bruck, 1578: The estates of Inner Austria agreed to higher
taxes for frontier defense in return for religious concessions by Arch-
duke Karl.
padishah: “Great king,” a Persian title claimed by both Ottoman and
Safavid rulers.
paşa, paşaluk: An Ottoman paşa ruled over a paşaluk composed of a
number of sancaks.
Peace of Augsburg, 1555: An agreement by which Lutheran as well as
Catholic princes in the Holy Roman Empire were free to determine the
religion of their territories.
Philippists: Lutherans who accepted the Augsburg Interims. See Philip
Melanchthon.
popolo: The “common people” of an Italian or Dalmatian town.
(Sublime) Porte: The seat of Ottoman government, named for the high
gate leading into the third courtyard of Topkapi Palace.
provisionati: In Venetian Dalmatia, military “provisionals” served at half-
pay until called up.
Quraish; The clan from which the Prophet Muhammad was believed to
have descended.
rákos: A Magyar term for the Hungarian Diet.
Rhine gulden: A gold coin used throughout the Holy Roman Empire.
Ritter: A knight; representatives of the knights usually made up a separate
“estate.”
robot: A Slavic term for the boon-service or forced labor that serfs had to
perform.
Ruthenians: East-Slavic speakers living in (modern) eastern Slovakia and
western Ukraine.
Sabor: The assembly of nobles in Croatia proper; in 1558 it merged with
Slavonia’s Congregation of Nobles to form a single Sabor.
Safavids: A Sufi order, until Shah Isma’il I (d. 1524) conquered Iran and
founded a dynasty.
sancak, sancakbeg: An Ottoman administrative district and its ruler; see
paşa.
 Glossary 411

sancak-i Şerif: The battle standard believed to have been carried by the
Prophet Muhammad.
San Marco: From early times, Venice was known to its people as the
Republic of St. Mark.
Schmalkaldic League: An alliance formed in 1531 by Germany’s Protes-
tant princes.
Scythians: An Iranian people who in ancient times lived in the Black Sea
steppe country.
şehzade: “Prince”; a title used for the sons of Ottoman sultans.
serdar: The official given supreme command of a major Ottoman cam-
paign.
Signoria: A collective term for the “lordship” or government of Venice.
sipahi: A regular cavalryman in the Ottoman army; see timar.
stradioti: Cavalrymen hired by Venice to patrol the Dalmatian country-
side.
sufi: Each Sufi order followed a revered master who taught a special form
of prayer.
syndics: Venetian officials, with ad hoc authority to survey overseas terri-
tories.
Szekler: A Magyar-speaking people in Transylvania, concentrated in the
eastern Carpathians.
Tatars of Crimea: An offshoot of the Mongol state, Tatars recognized the
Ottomans as overlords.
thaler: A large silver coin first minted in Joachimstal, worth ca. two-thirds
of a Rhine gulden.
timar: An Ottoman sipahi was supported by assigned income from a
timar or grant of land.
Treaty of Edirne, 1547: The first Habsburg-Ottoman treaty of peace.
Treaty of Zsitvatorok, 1606: This treaty ended the Long Turkish War.
Türkenhilfe: “Turk-help” subsidies were voted by the imperial diet for the
defense of Hungary.
umma: An Arabic term referring to the world Islamic community.
Union of Brest, 1569: The Ruthenian bishops of Poland-Lithuania recog-
nized papal authority.
Universitas: A Latin term meaning a corporate body capable of collective
action.
uskoks: A term that originally meant a refuge, but quickly came to mean a
raider or corsair.
412 Glossary

Uzbeks: A Turkic people whose khans ruled much of Central Asia, east
and north of Iran.
valide sultana: The mother of the reigning sultan.
venturini: A name for soldiers who fought for “adventure,” i.e., a share of
the booty.
vezir: A member of the Ottoman imperial council; in the sixteenth centu-
ry there were five.
viceroy of Naples: The king of Spain’s representative in Naples.
Vlachs: A pastoral people of the Balkans, known for their fighting qual-
ities; see Morlacchi.
vojvod: A Slavic term meaning duke or military leader.
zadruga: A Balkan-Slavic brotherhood of related families.
Zaporizhian Cossacks: A federation of Cossacks, below the Dniepr rapids
in Poland-Lithuania.
Zonta: A Venetian term for an ad hoc governing committee.
 Bibliography

ABBREVIATIONS

ASV-DAC = “Dispacci dagli Ambasciatori di Constantinopoli,” Archivio di Stato di Venezia,

Venice.
Austro-Turcica = Srečko Džaja, Günter Weiss, Mathias Bernath, and Karl Nehring, eds., Aus-
tro-Turcica 1541–1552. Diplomatische Akten des habsburgischen Gesandtschaftsverkehrs
mit der hohen Pforte im Zeitalter Suleymans des Prächtigen (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1995).
Charrière = E. Charrière, Négotiations de la France dans le Levant (4 vols., Paris: Imprimerie
nationale, 1844–1860).
CRV = Commissiones et Relationes Venetae, vols. II (1525–1553) and III (1553–1571), ed.
Sime Ljubić (Zagreb: Academy of Sciences, 1877, 1880); Mletačka uputstva i izvjestaji /
Commissiones et Relationes Venetae, vols. IV (1571–1590) and V (1590–1600), ed. Grgur
Novac (Zagreb: Academy of Sciences, 1964, 1970).
“Documenti Turchi” = Maria Pia Pedani Fabris, I “Documenti Turchi” dell’Archivio di Stato
di Venezia (Venice: Ministero per i bene culturali, 1994).
DRJR = Deutsche Reichstagsakten, Jüngere Reihe. The following volumes were published in
Göttingen by Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht: vol. 7, ed. Johannes Kühn (1963); vol. 8, ed.
Wolfgang Steglich (1970); vol. 13, ed. August Kluckhohn and Adolf Wrede (2010); and vol.
15, ed. Erwein Eltz (2001). The following volumes were published in Munich by Olden-
bourg: vol. 10, ed. Rosemarie Aulinger (1992) and vol. 16, ed. Rosemarie Aulinger (2003).
DSK = Arhiv Republike Slavonije, Ljubljana, “Dezelni Stanovi za Kranjsko.”
Familienkorrespondenz = Die Korrespondenz Ferdinands I. Familienkorrespondenz: vol. I, Bis
1526, ed. Wilhelm Bauer (Vienna: Kommission für die neuerere Geschichte Österreichs,
1912); vol. II, 1527/1528, ed. Wilhelm Bauer and Robert Lacroix (Vienna: as above, 1937);
vol. III, 1529/1530, ed. Wilhelm Bauer and Robert Lacroix (Vienna: as above, 1938); vol.
IV, 1531/1532, ed. Herwig Wolfram and Christiane Thomas (Vienna: as above, 1973).
Gerlach, Gesandtschaft = Stefan Gerlach des Älteren Tagebuch der . . . zu Constantinopel
abgefertigten und durch den wohlgeborenen Herrn David Ungnad. . . . Gesandschaft
(Frankfurt am Main: Johann David Zunner, 1674).
Gévay = Anton von Gévay, Urkunden und Aktenstücke zur Geschichte der Verhältnisse zwis-
chen Österreich, Ungarn und der Pforte im XVIen und XVIIen Jahrhundert: Gesandtsschaf-
413
414 Bibliography

ten König Ferdinands I an Sultan Suleyman (10 vols., Vienna: published by the editor,
1838–1842).
HHST = Haus- Hof- und Staatsarchiv, Vienna, “Turcica.”
HSS = Ferdo Šišić, ed., Hravatski Saborski Spisi / Comitalia Regni Croatiae, Dalmatiae, et
Slavoniae (3 vols., Zagreb: Dioničke, 1912–1916).
Korrespondenz Maximilians II = Viktor Bibl, ed., Die Korrespondenz Maximilians II (2 vols.,
Vienna: A. Holzhausen, 1916).
Lanz = Friedrich Wilhelm Lanz, ed., Korrespondenz des Kaisers Karl V (3 vols., reprint
Frankfurt/M: Minerva, 1966).
“Lettere de Levante” = “Lettere e Commissioni de Levante,” Država Arhiv u Dubrovačka,
Dubrovnik.
MHHS = László Szalay, ed., Verancsics Antal, Összes Munkái = Monumenta Hungariae His-
torica—Scriptores (12 vols., Pest: Magyar Tudomanyos Akademia, 1857–1875; vols. IV
and V used here).
MOE = Vilmos Franknoí, ed., Magyar Országgyülési Emlékek / Monumenta Comitalia Regni
Hungariae (vols. I–III, Budapest: Ráth Mor, 1874–1876).
Monumenta Habsburgica Croatiae = Emilije Laszowski, ed., Monumenta Habsburgica Regni
Croatiae, Dalamataie, Slavoniae / Habsburški Spomenici Kraljevine Hrvatske Dalamacije i
Slavonije (2 vols., Zagreb: Dioničke, 1914–1916).
Monumenta Uscocchorum = Karlo Horvat, ed., Monumenta Uscocchorum Illustrantia. Ex
archivis Romanis, praecipue a secreto Vaticano deprompta (2 vols., Zagreb: Officina Typo-
graphica, 1910–1913).
Muhimme Defteri = Esref Kovačević, Muhimme Defteri. Documenti o našim kraljevima (Sara-
jevo, 1985).
Muvekkit = Salih Sidki (Muvekkit) Hadžihuseinović, Povijest Bosne (Sarajevo: El Kalem,
1997).
OML = Oláh Miklós Levelezése, ed. Ipolyi Arnold = Monumenta Hungariae Historica / Mag-
yar Törtnélmi Emlékek (Budapest: Akadémia Könykiado Hivatala, 1875).
Osmanische Beamtenschriften = Gizela Prochazka-Eisl and Claudia Römer, ed., tr., Osmanis-
che Beamtenschriften und Privabriefe der Zeit Süleymans des Prächtigen aus dem Haus-
Hof- und Staatsarchiv zu Wien (Vienna: Academy of Sciences, 2007).
Pečevija, Historija = Ibrahim Alajbegović Pečevija, Historija 1520–1576, with an introduction
by Fehim Nametak (2 vols., Sarajevo: el-Kalem, 2000).
Pray = Georgius Pray, ed., Epistolae Procerum Regni Hungariae (3 vols., Posonia: G. A.
Belnay, 1806).
Prilozi Styria = Radoslav Lopašić, ed., “Prilozi za Povijest Hrvatske XVI i XVII vijek iz
štajerskoga zemljkoga arhiva u Gradcu,” Starine XVII (1885): 151–230.
Regni Hungarici Historia = Miklós Istvánffy, Regni Hungarici Historia Libris XXXV Exacte
Descripta (Cologne: J. W. Friessen, 1685).
Relazioni = Eugenio Alberi, Relazioni degli Ambasciatori Veneti al Senato (15 vols., Florence,
1838–1865), vols. III, VI, IX, Relazioni di Baile e di Ambasciatori Veneti alla Porto Otto-
mano nel Secolo XVI.
Sanudo, Diarii = Marin Sanudo, I Diarii [1496–1533], ed. Rinaldo Fulin et al. (Venice,
1879–1903) (consulted here: vols. I–III).
Sanudo Izvodi = F. Rački, ed., “Izvodi za jugoslovensku povijest iz dveznika Marina Sanuda za
godine 1526–1533,” Starine XV (1883): 177–240 (1526–1529).
Sanudo Odnošaji = “Odnošaji skupnovlade Mletačke za Južnim Slavenom priobćeni u izvadcij
iz rukopisnih lietopisah Marina Sanuda od godine 1496–1533” / “Rapporti della Repubblica
Veneta coi Slavi Meridionali, tratti dei manoscritti diarii di Marino Sanudo,” Arkiv za
 Bibliography 415

Povijestnicu Jugoslavensko V (1859) (not consulted here); VI (1860), 162–453 (years

1501–1513); VIII (1862) , 1–255 (years 1513–1526).
Sisak u Obrani = Josip Kolanović, ed., Sisak u Obrani od Turaka. izbor grade 1543–1597
(Zagreb: Matica Hrvatska Sisak, 1993).
Spomenici Hrvatske Krajine = Radoslav Lopašić, Spomenici Hrvatske Krajine, vol. I,
1479–1610 (Zagreb: L. Hartman, 1884).
Valvasor = Johann Weichard von Valvasor, Die Ehre des Herzogthums Krain (reprint, 4 vols.,
Rudolfswerth: J. Krajec, 1877–1879).
ZML = Samu Barabas, ed., Zrinyi Miklós Levelek és Okiratok (2 vols., Budapest, 1898–1899).

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(Rue Richelieu), Salle des Manuscrits.
Simancas: Archivios de Simancas, “Estado.”
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(Klagenfurt: Wieser, 1997).
Oláh Miklós Levelezeése, ed. Ipolyi Arnold = Monumenta Hungariae Historica / Magyar
Törtnélmi Emlékek (Budapest: Akadémia Könykiado Hivatala, 1875).
Pečevija, Ibrahim Alajbegović, Historija 1520–1576, with an introduction by Fehim Nametak
(2 vols., Sarajevo: el-Kalem, 2000).
Pedani Fabris, Maria Pia, I “Documenti Turchi” dell’Archivio di Stato di Venezia (Venice:
Ministero per i bene culturali, 1994).
Pray, Georgius, ed., Epistolae Procerum Regni Hungariae (3 vols., Posonia: G. A. Belnay,
1806).
Prochazka-Eisl, Gizela, and Claudia Römer, ed., tr., Osmanische Beamtenschriften und Priva-
briefe der Zeit Süleymans des Prächtigen aus dem Haus-Hof- und Staatsarchiv zu Wien
(Vienna: Academy of Sciences, 2007).
Santerelli, D., ed., La corrispondenza di Bernardo Navagero, amabasciatore veneziano a
Roma (1556–1558) (2 vols., Rome: Aracne, 2011).
Sanudo, Marin, I Diarii [1496–1533], ed. Rinaldo Fulin et al. (Venice, 1879–1903); used here:
—vol. I, ed. F. Stefani et al. (Venice: published by the editors, 1879).
—vol. II, ed. G. Berchet (Venice: published by the editors, 1879).
—vol. III, ed. N. Barozzi et al. (Venice: published by the editors, 1880).
—“Marina Sanuda Odnošaji skupnovlade Mletačke prama Južnim Slkavenom / Rapporti della
Repubblica Veneta coi Slavi Meridionali, tratti dei manoscritti diarii di Marino Sanudo,”
Arkiv za Povjestnicu Jugoslavensko, VI (1860), 162–371 (years 1501–1513); VIII (1862),
1–255 (1513–1526).
—Rački, F., ed., “Izvodi za jugoslovensku povijest iz dveznika Marina Sanuda za godine
1526–1533,” Starine XV (1883): 177–240 (1526–1529).
Sarpi, Paolo, “Aggionta all’Istoria degli Uscocchi di Minuccio Minucci,” in Paolo Sarpi, La
Repubblica di Venezia, la Casa di Austria, e gli Uscocchi, ed. Gaetano Cozzi and Luisa
Cozzi (Bari: Laterna, 1965), 7–70.
Sarpi, Paolo, La Repubblica di Venezia, la Casa di Austria, e gli Uscocchi, ed. Gaetano Cozzi
and Luisa Cozzi (Bari: Laterna, 1965).
Šišić, Ferdo, ed., Hravatski Saborski Spisi / Comitalia Regni Croatiae, Dalmatiae, et Slavoniae
(3 vols., Zagreb: Dioničke, 1912–1916).
Soranzo, Lazaro, L’Ottomano (Ferrara: Vittorio Baldini, 1599).
Spaho, Fehim Dž., and Ahmed S. Aličić, eds., and Behija Zlatar, introd., Opširni popis Kliškog
Sandžaka iz 1550. godine (Sarajevo: Orientalni Institut, 2007).
Szalay, László, ed., Verancsics Antal, Összes Munkái = Monumenta Hungariae Historica—
Scriptores (12 vols., Pest: Magyar Tudomanyos Akademia, 1857–1875; vols. IV and V used
here).
Valvasor, Johann Weichard von, Die Ehre des Herzogthums Krain (reprint, 4 vols., Rudolfs-
werth: J. Krajec, 1877–1879).
Vatin, Nicolas, ed., tr., Ferîdūn Bey. Les Plaisants secrets de la campagne de Szihetvár.
Édition, traduction et commentaire des folios 1 à 147 de Nüzhetü-l-esrâri-lahbâr der sefer-I
Szigetvár (Berlin: LIT Verlag, 2010).
Zrinyi, Miklós, The Siege of Sziget, tr. László Kőrőssy, with an introduction by George
Gőmőry (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University Press, 2011).
418 Bibliography

SECONDARY LITERATURE

Books and Dissertations

Abrahamowicz, Zygmunt, Vojtech Kopčan, et al., Die Türkenkriege in der historischen Fors-
chung (Vienna: Franz Deuticke, 1983).
Abu-Lughod, Janet, Before European Hegemony: The World System A.D. 1250–1350 (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1989).
Adamček, Josip, Seljačke Buna 1573 (Zagreb: Vjesnik, 1968).
Adanir, Fikret, and Suraiya Faroghi, The Ottomans and the Balkans: A Discussion of
Historiography (Leiden: Brill, 2002).
Ágoston, Gábor, Guns for the Sultan: Military Power and the Weapons Industry in the Ottoman
Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).
Aksan, Virginia H., and Daniel Goffman, eds., The Early Modern Ottomans: Remapping the
Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).
Allouche, Adel, The Origins and Development of the Ottoman-Safavid Conflict, 906–962/
1500–1555 (Berlin: K. Schwarz, 1983).
Arbel, Benjamin, Trading Nations: Venetians and Jews in the Early Modern Eastern Mediter-
ranean (New York: Brill, 1995).
Árnason, Jóhann Páll, Civilization in Dispute: Historical Questions and Theoretical Traditions
(Leiden: Brill, 2003).
Aščerić, Ines, “Dervishes and Islam in Bosnia: The Role of Dervish Orders in the Islamisation
Process in Bosnia and the Formation of Bosnian Muslim Society in the 15th and 16th
Centuries” (Ph.D. dissertation, Oriental Studies, St. Antony’s College, Oxford University,
2004).
Atçil, Muhammet Zahit, “State and Government in the Sixteenth Century Ottoman World: A
Reconsideration of the Grand Vizierate of Rüstem Paşa” (M.A. thesis, University of Chica-
go, 2009).
Atçil, Zahit, “State and Government in the Mid-Sixteenth Century Ottoman Empire: The Grand
Vizierates of Rustem Pasha (1544–1561)” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Chicago, 2014).
Augustynowicz, Christoph, Andreas Kappeler, et al., eds., Russland, Polen und Österreich in
der frühen Neuzeit = Wiener Archiv für die Geschichte des Slawentums und Osteuropas, 19
(Vienna; Böhlau, 2003).
Aymard, Maurice, Venise, Raguse et le commerce du blé pendant la seconde moitié du XVIe
siècle (Paris: S.E.V.P.E.N., 1966).
Babayan, Kathryn, Monarchs, Mystics, and Messiahs: Cultural Landscapes of Early Modern
Iran (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002).
Babić, Anto, and Bodo Grafenauer, eds., Historija Naroda Jugoslavije (2 vols., Zagreb: Skols-
ke Knjiga, 1953–1959).
Bahlcke, Joachim, Regionalismus und Staatsintegration im Wiederstreit. Die Länder der
böhmischen Krone im ersten Jahrhunder der Habsburger-Herrschaft, 1526–1619 (Munich:
Oldenbourg, 1994).
Bak, János M., and Bela K. Király, eds., From Hunyadi to Rákóczy: War and Society in Late
Medieval Hungary (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982).
Barkey, Karen, Bandits and Bureaucrats: The Ottoman Route to State Centralization (Ithaca,
NY: Cornell University Press, 1994).
Bartl, Peter, Der Westbalkan zwischen Spanischer Monarchie und Osmanischem Reich (Wies-
baden: Harassowitz, 1974).
 Bibliography 419

Bentley, Jerry H., Old World Encounters (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993).
Benz, Ernst, Wittenberg und Byzanz. Zur Begegnung und Auseinandersetzung der Reformation
und der östlich-orthodoxen Kirche (Marburg: Elwat-Gräfe und Unzer, 1949).
Birken, Andreas, Die Provinzen des osmanischen Reiches (Stuttgart: Reichert, 1976).
Bisaha, Nancy, Creating East and West: Renaissance Humanists and the Ottoman Turks (Phil-
adelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004).
Biščević, Vedad, Bosanski namjesnici Osmanskog doba (1463–1878) (Sarajevo: Biblioteka
Antologia, 2006).
Black, Antony, The History of Islamic Political Thought from the Prophet to the Present
(Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2001).
Boogert, Maurits van den, and Kate Fleet, The Ottoman Capitulations: Text and Context
(Rome: Istituto per l’Oriente, 2004).
Bouwsma, William J., Venice and the Defense of Republican Liberty: Renaissance Values in
the Age of the Counter-Reformation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968).
Bracewell, Wendy Catherine, The Uskoks of Senj: Piracy, Banditry and Holy War in the Early
Modern Adriatic (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992).
Brady, Thomas A., Jr., German Histories in the Age of Reformations, 1400–1650 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2009).
Braude, Benjamin, and Bernard Lewis, eds., Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Empire: The
Functioning of a Plural Society (2 vols., London: Holmes & Meier, 1982).
Brekhunenko, Viktor, Morski Vijny Ukrainskykh Kozakiv (Kyiv, 2007).
Brooks, Andrée Aelion, The Woman Who Defied Kings: The Life and Times of Doña Graciela
Nasi (St. Paul, MN: Paragon House, 2002).
Brummett, Palmira, Ottoman Seapower and Levantine Diplomacy in the Age of Discovery
(Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994).
Buchmann, Bernard Michael, Österreich und das Osmanische Reich. Eine bilaterale Geschich-
te (Vienna: University of Vienna Press, 1999).
Caimmi, Riccardo, La Guerra del Friuli 1615–1618, altrimento nota come Guerra di Gradisca
o degli Uscocchi (Gorizia: Editrice Goriziana, 2007).
Capponi, Niccolò, Victory of the West: The Great Christian-Muslim Clash at the Battle of
Lepanto (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2006).
Carande Thobar, Ramón, Carlos V y sus banqueros (3 vols., Madrid, 1943–1967, reprinted
Barcelona, 2000).
Casale, Giancarlo, The Ottoman Age of Exploration (New York: Oxford University Press,
2010).
Čelić, Džemal, and Mehmed Mujezinović, Stari mostovi u Bosni i Hercegovini (Zagreb: Ogn-
jen Prica, 1969).
Chaline, Olivier, La bataille de la Montagne Blanche (8 novembre 1620). Un mystique chez les
guerriers (Paris: Noësis, 2000).
Chambers, David, and Brian Pullan, eds., Venice: A Documentary History, 1450–1630 (Toron-
to: University of Toronto, 2001).
Çiçek, Kemal, Ercüment Kuran, Nejat Göyunci, and Ilber Ortalyi, Great Ottoman Turkish
Civilization (Ankara: Yeni Türkiye, 2000).
Coco, Carla, and Flora Manzonetto, Baili Veneziani alla Sublima Porta (Venice: Stamperia di
Venezia, 1985).
Collings, Matthew, This Is Civilization (London: 21 Publishing, 2008).
Collins, James B., The State in Early Modern France (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1995).
420 Bibliography

Contemporaries of Erasmus: A Biographical Register of the Renaissance and Reformation, ed.

Peter G. Bietenholz and Thomas G. Deutscher (3 vols., Toronto: University of Toronto
Press, 1985–1987).
Cook, Michael, Ancient Religions, Modern Politics: The Islamic Case in Comparative Perspec-
tive (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014).
Cozzi, Gaetano, Michael Knapton, and Giovanni Scarbello, La Repubblica di Venezia nell’età
moderna (2 vols., Turin: UTET, 1992).
Crouzet-Pavan, Elisabeth, Venice Triumphant: The Horizons of a Myth, tr. Lydia G. Cochrane
(Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002).
Crowley, Roger, Empires of the Sea (London: Faber & Faber, 2008).
Čubrilović, Vasa, ed., Vojne Krajne u Jugoslavenskim zemlyama u novom veku do Karlovačkog
Mira 1699 (Belgrade: Srpska Akademija Nauka i Umetnosti [Serbian Academy of Arts and
Sciences], 1989).
Dal Borgo, Michela, and Guglielmo Zanelli, Zara. Una fortrezza, un porto, un arsenale (secoli
XV–XVIII) (Rome: Viella, 2008).
Darling, Linda T., Revenue-Raising and Legitimacy: Tax Collection and Finance Administra-
tion in the Ottoman Empire, 1560–1660 (Leiden: Brill, 1996).
Dassovich, Mario, Fiume, Segna, e le vicende del Quarnero Interno dal periodo medievale al
1717 (Udine: Del Bianco, 2007).
Dávid, Géza, and Pál Fodor, eds., Hungarian-Ottoman Military and Diplomatic Relations in
the Age of Süleyman the Magnificent (Budapest: Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Institute
of History, 1994).
Dávid, Géza, and Pál Fodor, Ottomans, Hungarians, and Habsburgs in Central Europe: The
Military Confines in the Era of Ottoman Conquest (Leiden: Brill, 2002).
Dávid, Géza, and Pál Fodor, eds., Ransom Slavery along the Ottoman Border: Early Fif-
teenth–Early Eighteenth Centuries (Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2007).
Davies, Brian J., ed., Warfare in Eastern Europe, 1500–1800 (Leiden: Brill, 2012).
Davies, Norman, God’s Playground: A History of Poland (2 vols., New York: Columbia
University Press, 1982).
De Groot, A. H., The Ottoman Empire and the Dutch Republic: A History of the Earliest
Diplomatic Relations 1610–1630 (Leiden/Istanbul: Nederlands Archeologische Instituut,
1978).
de Jong, Michiel, Staat van Oorlog. Wapenbedrijf en militaire hervorming in de Republiek der
Verenigde Nederlanden, 1585–1621 (Hilversum: Verloren, 2005).
Dilger, Konrad, Untersuchungen zu der Geschichte des osmanischen Hofzeremoniells im 15en
und 16en Jahrhundert (dissertation, Ludwig-Maximilians Universität, Munich 1967).
Dillon, Kenneth J., King and Estates in the Bohemian Lands, 1526–1564 = Études presentées à
la Commision pour l’Histoire des Associations des États, LVII (Brussels: Librairie Ency-
clopédique, 1976).
Djokić, Dejan, Yugoslavism: Histories of a Failed Idea, 1918–1992 (Madison: University of
Wisconsin Press, 2003).
Duffy, Christopher, Siege Warfare: The Fortress in the Early Modern World, 1494–1660
(London: Routledge and Keegan Paul, 1979).
Dursteler, Eric R., ed., A Companion to Venetian History (Leiden: Brill, 2014).
Dursteler, Eric R., Venetians in Constantinople: Nation, Identity, and Coexistence in the Early
Modern Mediterranean (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006).
Džaja, Srečko, Konfessionalität und Nationalität Bosniens und der Herzegowina: Voremanzi-
patorische Phase, 1463–1804 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1986).
 Bibliography 421

Eberhard, Elke, Osmanische Polemik gegen die Safawiden im 16en Jahrhundert nach arabis-
chen Handschriften = Islamkundliche Untersuchungen, 3 (Freiburg im Breisgau: Klaus
Schwarz Verlag, 1970).
Edelmayer, Friederich, Maximilian Lanzinner, and Peter Rauscher, Finanzen und Herrschaft.
Materiellen Grundlagen fürstlicher Politik in den habsbürgischen Ländern und im Heiligen
Römischen Reich des 16en Jahrhunderts (Vienna/Munich: Oldenbourg, 2003).
Ehmann, Johannes, Luther, Türken, und Islam. Eine Untersuchung zum Türken- und Islambild
Luthers (1515–1546) (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlaghaus, 2008).
The Encylopaedia of Islam, ed. P. J. Bearman, Th. Blanquis, C. S. Bosworth, and Evan Donzel
(2nd ed., Leiden: Brill, 1960–2005).
Engel, Pál, The Realm of St. Stephen: A History of Medieval Hungary, 895–1526 (London,
New York: I. B. Tauris, 2001).
Evans, R. J. W., The Making of the Habsburg Monarchy: An Interpretation (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1979).
Evans, R. J. W., Rudolf II and His World: A Study in Intellectual History, 1576–1612 (Oxford:
Clarendon, 1973).
Evans, R. J. W., and Peter H. Wilson, eds., The Holy Roman Empire, 1494–1806: A European
Perspective (Leiden: Brill, 2012).
Farah, Caesar E., ed., Decision-Making and Change in the Ottoman Empire (Kirksville, MO:
Thomas Jefferson University Press, 1993).
Faroghi, Surayija, The Ottoman Empire and the World around It (New York: I. B. Tauris,
2007).
Fekete, Lajos, Buda and Pest under Ottoman Rule (Budapest, 1976).
Fichtner, Paula Sutter, Emperor Maximilian II (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001).
Fichtner, Paula Sutter, Terror and Toleration: The Habsburg Empire Confronts Islam,
1526–1850 (London: Reaktion, 2008).
Fine, John V. A., Jr., The Bosnian Church: A New Interpretation (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1975).
Fine, John V. A., Jr., The Late Medieval Balkans: A Critical Survey from the Twelfth Century
to the Ottoman Conquest (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1987).
Fine, John V. A., When Ethnicity Did Not Matter in the Balkans (Ann Arbor: University of
Michigan Press, 2009).
Finkel, Caroline, The Administration of Warfare: The Ottoman Military Campaigns in Hun-
gary, 1593–1606 = Beihefte zur Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes, 14
(Vienna: A. Hölder, 1988).
Finkel, Caroline, Osman’s Dream: The Story of the Ottoman Empire, 1300–1923 (New York:
Perseus Books, 2005).
Fodor, Pál, In Quest of the Golden Apple: Imperial Ideology, Politics, and Military Administra-
tion in the Ottoman Empire (Istanbul: Isis, 2000).
Forel, George Wolfgang, and James F. McCue, Confessing One Faith: A Joint Commentary on
the Augsburg Confession (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1982).
Fortea-Peréz, José-Antonio, Las Cortes de Castilla y Léon bajo los Asturias. Una
interpretación (Valladolid: Junta de Castilla y Léon, 2008).
Franceschi, Franco, Richard A. Goldthwaite, and Reinhold C. Mueller, eds., Il Rinascimento
Italiano e l’Eiuropa, vol. IV, Commercio e cultura mercantile (Treviso: Fondazione Casa-
marca, 2007).
Franzl, Johann, Ferdinand II. Kaiser im Zweispalt der Zeit (Graz: Styria, 1998).
Fuchs, Maria, and Alfred Kohler, eds., Kaiser Ferdinand I. Aspekte eines Herrscherlebens
(Münster: Aschendorff, 2003).
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Fučikova, Eliška, et al., eds., Rudolf II and Prague: The Court and the City (London: Thames
& Hudson, 1997).
Geelhaar, Tim, Christianitas: A History of the Term from Late Antiquity to the Middle Ages
(Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2015).
Goffman, Daniel, The Ottoman Empire and Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2002).
Goldstein, Ivo, and Milan Kruhek, eds., Sisačka Bitka 1593 (Zagreb: Zavod da hrvatske povij-
est Filozofskoga fakulteta sveucilista u Zagreb, 1994).
Goodwin, Godfrey, The Janissaries (London: Saqi Books, 2001).
Greene, Molly, Catholic Pirates and Greek Merchants. A Maritime History of the Mediterra-
nean (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010).
Griswold, William J., The Great Anatolian Rebellion, 1000–1020/1591–1611 (Berlin: K.
Schwarz Verlag, 1983).
Guilmartin, John F., Gunpowder and Galleys: Changing Technology and Warfare at Sea in the
16th Century (revised ed., Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press, 2003).
Guldescu, Stanko, The Croatian-Slavonian Kingdom, 1526–1792 (The Hague: Mouton, 1970).
Guthmüller, Bodo, and William Kühlmann, eds., Europa und die Türken in der Renaissance
(Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 2000).
Hahlweg, Werner, Die Heeresreform der Oranier und die Antike (reprint of 1941 edition with a
new preface by the author, Osnabrück, 1987).
Hale, J. R., ed., Renaissance Venice (London: Faber & Faber, 1973).
Haliczer, Stephen, The Comuñeros of Castile: The Formation of a Revolution, 1475–1521
(Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1981).
Hammer-Purgstall, Joseph Freiherr von, Geschichte des osmanischen Reiches (2nd ed., 2 vols.,
Pest: C. A. Hartleben, 1834–1836).
Handžić, Adem, Studije o Bosni. Historiski prilozi iz osmansko-turkso perioda (Istanbul: Or-
ganization of the Islamic Conference, 1994).
Hanna, Nelly, An Urban History of Bulak in the Mamluk and Ottoman Eras (Bulaq: Institut
français d’Archéologie Orientale, 1983).
Harding, Robert, The Anatomy of a Power Elite: The Provincial Governors of Renaissance
France (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1978).
Hazard, Harry W., and Norman P. Zacour, eds., The Impact of the Crusades on Europe (Madi-
son: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989).
Hegyi, Klára, and Vera Zamányi, Muslime und Christen. Das Osmanische Reich in Europa
(Budapest: Corvina Kiadó, 1986).
Heinig, Paul Joachim, Kaiser Friederich III (1440–1493): Hof, Regierung, Politik (Cologne,
1997).
Hengel, Martina, Renaissance und Gegenreformation. Geschichte Österreichs (Vienna: Pich-
ler, 2003).
Hequet, Suzanne, The Regensburg Colloquy of 1541: In Pursuit of Church Unity (Saarbrücken:
Verlag Dr. Müller, 2009).
Hinz, Walther, Irans Aufstieg zum Nationalstaat im Fünfzehnten Jahrhundert (Leipzig: Walter
de Gruyter, 1936).
Hocquet, Jean-Claude, Le sel et la fortune de Venise (2 vols., Lille: Publications de l’Université
de Lille, 1979).
Hodgkinson, Harry, Scanderbeg: From Ottoman Captive to Albanian Hero (New York: I. B.
Tauris, 2005).
Hodgson, Marshall, The Venture of Islam (3 vols., Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
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 Bibliography 423

Holjevac, Želiko, and Nenad Moačanin, Hrvatska-Slavonska Vojna Krajine i Hrvati pod
Vlašču Osmanskoga Carstva u ranom novom vijeku (Zagreb: Bibliotheka Hrvatska Povijest,
2007).
Holt, Mack P., The French Wars of Religion, 1562–1629 (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1995).
Housley, Norman J., The Later Crusades, from Lyons to Alcazar, 1274–1580 (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1992).
Huntington, Samuel P., The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New
York: Simon & Schuster, 1996).
Imamović, Enver, Historija Bosanske Vojske (Sarajevo: Bosanski Korijeni, 1999).
Imber, Colin, Ebu’s-su’ud: The Islamic Legal Tradition (Stanford, CA: Stanford University
Press, 1997).
Imber, Colin, The Ottoman Empire, 1300–1600 (London: Palgrave, 2002).
İnalcik, Halil, An Economic and Social History of the Ottoman Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1994).
—vol. I, 1300–1600, ed. Halil İnalcik.
—vol. II, 1600–1914, ed. Suraiya Faroghi, Bruce McGowan, Donald Quataert, and Şevket
Pamuk.
İnalcik, Halil, and Cemal Kafardar, eds., Süleyman the Second and His Time (Istanbul: Isis,
1993).
Israel, Jonathan, Diasporas within a Diaspora: Jews, Crypto-Jews, and the World Maritime
Empires (1540–1740) (Leiden: Brill, 2002).
Ivetic, Egidio, and Drago Roksandić, eds., Tolerance and Intolerance on the Triplex Confin-
ium, Approaching “the Other” on the Borderlands: Eastern Adriatic and Beyond (Padua:
Editrice Universita di Padova, 2007).
Ivetković, Cirillo M., Bau- und Kunstdenkmalen in Dalmatien (2 vols., Vienna: Anton Schroll,
1927).
Jakšić, Nikola, Zemunik. Srednovjekovni Zadarski kaštel i Turska kasaba (Split: Muzeij
Arheoloških Spomenika, 1997).
Jorgenson, Wayne James, The Augustana Graeca and the Correspondence between the
Tübingen Lutherans and Patriarch Jeremia (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press,
1979).
Kann, Robert A., and David V. Zdenek, The Peoples of the Eastern Habsburg Lands,
1526–1918 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1984).
Kárman, Gábor, and Lovro Kunčević, eds., The European Tributary States of the Ottoman
Empire in the 16th and 17th Centuries (Leiden: Brill, 2013).
Kaser, Karl, Freier Bauer und Soldat: Die Militarisierung der agrarischen Gesellschaft in der
Kroatisch- Slawonischen Militärgrenze (1535–1881) (Habilitationsschrift: University of
Graz, 1986).
Keniston, Hayward, Francisco de los Cobos: Secretary to the Emperor Charles V (Pittsburgh:
University of Pittsburgh Press, 1960).
Lord Kinross (Patrick Balfour), The Ottoman Centuries: The Rise and Fall of the Turkish
Empire (New York: Morrow & Quill, 1977).
Kirschbaum, Stanislav J., A History of Slovakia (2nd ed., London: Palgrave, 2005).
Kissling, Hans Joachim, Rechtsproblematiken in den christlich-muslimischen Beziehungen vor-
ab im Zeitalter der Türkenkriege (Graz: Universitätsbuchdrückerei Styria, 1974).
Klaić, Vjekoslav, Povijest Hrvata od najstarijih vremena do svršetka XIX stoleca (5 vols.,
reprint, Zagreb: Nakladni Zavod, 1974).
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Knecht, R. J., Renaissance Warrior and Patron: The Reign of Francis I (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1994).
Knecht, R. J., The Rise and Fall of Renaissance France, 1483–1610 (2nd ed., Oxford: Black-
well, 2001).
Koebach, Markus, Die Eröberung von Fülek durch die Osmanen 1554. Eine historisch-quel-
lenkritische Studie zur osmanischen Expansion im östlichen Europa (Vienna: Böhlau,
1994).
Kohler, Alfred, Ferdinand I, 1503–1564. Fürst, König, und Kaiser (Munich: C. H. Beck,
2003).
Koller, Markus, and Kemal H. Karpat, eds., Bosnia: A History in Peril (Madison: University of
Wisconsin Press, 2004).
Konstam, Angus, Pavia, 1525: The Climax of the Italian Wars (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1996).
Köpeczi, Béla, László Makkai, András Móczy, and Zoltán Szas, eds., History of Transylvania,
tr. Bennett Kopvrig (Highland Lakes, NJ: Social Science Monographs, 2010).
Kortpeter, Carl Max, Ottoman Imperialism during the Reformation: Europe and the Caucasus
(New York: New York University Press, 1972).
Krekić, Bariša, Dubrovnik: A Medieval Urban Society, 1300–1600 (Aldershot: Variorum,
1993).
Krstić, Tijana, Contested Conversions to Islam: Narratives of Religious Change in the Early
Modern Ottoman Empire (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011).
Kruhek, Milan, Krajiške utvrde i obrana Hrvatska kraljevsta tijekom 16. Stolječa (Zagreb:
Velika Gorica, 1995).
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 Index

‘Abbas I, 248, 290, 333 Archduke Karl, 217, 219, 220, 224, 229,
Achaemenid Dynasty, 54 230, 253, 257, 268, 274, 275, 278, 279,
Adriatic, 98–99, 155; caravan trade to, 258 280, 281, 282, 283, 290, 301n160, 313,
Ahmed Beg/Paşa Hercegović, 32, 99 314, 322, 375
Ahmed I, 320, 321, 327, 336 Archduke Maximilian III, 294n40,
Aias Beg (Bosnia), 37, 38 301n160, 318, 327, 335, 350
Aias Pasa, 119, 125, 176 Archduke Wenceslaus, 294n40
akinci (light cavalry), 36, 37, 38, 39, 41, 52 Arco family, 253
Alapy, Gaspar, 227 Argos, 35
Alba Iulia (Gyulafehervar), 326 arquebusiers, 75, 76, 93, 100, 225, 277,
Albania, 14, 35, 36, 155 279, 287, 288, 290, 300n152, 376
Albert of Habsburg, 11 Ashkenazi, Rabbi Solomon, 212
Albert V, duke of Bavaria, 163 Auersperg, Andreas von, 287
Alberti, Ivan, 338 Auersperg, Herbart von, 206, 228
Aleppo, 53, 251 Auersperg, Weikhard von, 278
Alexander the Great, 2 Augsburg Confession, 164
Alexandria, 251 Augsburg Interim, 158
‘Ali Beg, 258, 270 Augustana Graeca, 316
‘Alibeg Michaelogli, 38, 40 Augustus of Saxony, 163
‘Ali Paşa Semiz, 149, 176, 177, 198, 206, Ausschusslandtäge, 165
216, 221 Austria, 51, 78, 167, 216, 344; finances,
Amasya, 197 225–227; rivalry with Hungary, 42–43;
Anatolia, 8, 51, 248, 317, 333 taxes, 164
Ancona, 15 Austrian Duchies, 112, 114, 313–315;
Andronicus, Tranquillus, 150 Council of Lower and Upper Austria,
Anne of Foix, 66 112; Diet of Bruck-an-der-Mur
Aquilea, 38 (November 1577–February 1578), 274;
Archduke Albert, 294n40, 313 Generallandtag, 164
Archduke Ernst, 235n66, 252, 256, 272, azabs, 53
277, 280, 281, 287, 291
Archduke Ferdinand of Tirol, 301n160 Babósca, 176, 177

437
438 Index
Badoer, Alvise, 108, 158
Badoer, Andrea, 212, 213
Baghdad, 94
bailo (baili), 18
Bakar, 71
Bakóocz, Tamás, 66
Balbi, Alvise, 268, 269
Balkans, 33, 202, 213
Banja Luka, 153, 202, 255, 256, 260, 261,
347
Bar (Antivari), 14, 15, 210
Barbaro, Marcantonio, 208, 212, 371
Barbarossa, Hayreddin, 106, 156
Barbary corsairs, 343
Barzizza, Giovanni Maria, 119
Basra, 201
Basta, Giorgio, 330, 333
bastion trace. See trace italienne
Báthory, András, 329
Báthory, István, 72, 324
Báthory, Zsigmund, 324, 325, 326, 327,
329, 330, 334
Batthyány, Boldiszar, 253
Batthyány, Ferenc, 97, 114, 116
Bavaria, 163
Bayezid I, 31, 41, 42, 43, 52, 76
Bayezid II, 41, 42, 43, 56, 67, 76
Bektaşis, 253, 254
Belgioso, Giacomo, 334
Belgrade, 31, 68
Bembo, Zuane, 340
Beratschlagung, 228–230, 231, 289
Berislavić, Franjo, 69
Berislavić, Petar, 69, 70, 72, 75
Berislavić, Stjepan, 97, 101, 102, 115, 126
Bihac, 35, 69, 72, 116, 119, 205, 206, 222,
223, 225, 258, 260, 261, 278, 279
Bobovac, 32
Bocskai, István, 307, 321, 326, 329, 332,
333–335
Bohemia, 110, 113, 146, 147, 217, 252,
288
Bohemian Brethren, 251
Bosanska Krajina, 347, 349, 369
Bosnia, 13, 62, 95; base for akinci raids,
36, 37, 38, 39–40, 43; base for Ottoman
expansion, 62, 63, 69, 70, 74, 75, 99,
120, 126, 151–152, 152, 153, 203, 204,
205, 205–206, 213, 256–258, 260–261,
290; civil society, 347–349; conquest
by the Ottomans, 32; dual roles in
Ottoman system, 254–256, 368; in the
Long Turkish War, 346–347; military
forces, 96, 150, 203, 255, 346, 347;
Muslims and Christians, 95, 202, 254;
as an Ottoman province, 55–58;
sources, 18; sources for history of, 18;
trade, 14, 203, 258, 259; transition to
peace, 369; Vlach settlements, 349, 350
Bosniak (Bosnian-Muslim), 254
Bosnian Church, 12, 32, 254
Bosporus, 53
Both, Andreas, 69, 70, 73
Bracewell, Catherine Wendy, 105
Brahe, Tycho, 252
Brankovic, George, 31
Brest, 283, 286
Brezth, 225, 227
Brinj, 116, 117
Bruck-an-der-Mur, 230, 275, 277
Bucharest, 317
Buda, 14, 67, 70, 115, 118, 119, 150, 152,
176, 177, 291, 317
Busbecq, Oghier Gislain de, 177, 198, 216,
221
Bužim, 230, 279
Cairo, 53
Čakovec, 169, 222, 277
Caliph, 92, 309
Calvin, John, 311
Calvinism, 252
Calvinists, 311, 337
Calvinist-Szekler rebellion, 333
Canal, Fabio da, 213, 214
Capistrano, Giovanni, 31
captives, 40, 43, 113, 125, 152, 160, 215,
258, 261, 262, 279, 296n71; Bosnia, 63;
Carinthia, 40; Carniola, 40, 152;
Croatia, 72, 113; Dalmatia, 40, 62, 63;
Ottoman subjects, 160; sale of in
Sarajevo, 62; Styria, 41; Una, 40;
Vrana, 62; Zadar, 61
Caramusali, 278
Caravan trade, 258
Cardinal Carvajal, 31
Carinthia, 11, 39, 116, 166, 171, 173, 273,
280, 286, 288, 350
 Index 439

Carniola (Ljubljana), 11, 38, 39, 40, 42, 43, Crete, 54, 211
103, 116, 117, 120, 122, 125, 126, 151, Croatia: Croatia proper, 16; “Croats” and
166, 169, 173, 205, 222, 273, 278, 280, “Slavonians”, 4; defense, 221–225;
286, 288, 290, 350 finances, 226; governance, 17; and the
Carpathian Mountains, 308 Habsburgs (until 1526), 76, 77, 78; and
Catholic League, 332 the Habsburgs under Ferdinand I, 99,
Cavalli, Marino, 208, 371 111, 116–117, 122, 126, 152–153, 165,
Cavalry, 111 168–169, 172, 174, 204, 216, 221–223;
Cazin, 230, 257, 262, 279 and the Habsburgs under Ferdinand II,
Čazma, 153, 202, 221 354, 354–356; and the Habsburgs under
ćehaja, 13 Maximilian II, 223–225; and the
Cephalonia, 52 Habsburgs under Rudolf II, 256–258,
Černović, Michael, 285, 325, 326, 328, 260–261, 273, 275, 277, 278–279, 347,
329, 330, 361n93 350–351, 352; and the Hungarian
Chaldoran, 53 succession conflict, 114–115; under
Chamber of Accounts (Hungary), 220, Jagellionian rule, 2, 16, 17, 35, 43, 57,
282, 352 69–70, 71–72, 75–76; micro-state,
Chapter of Zagreb, 166, 168, 262, 282, 157–159, 280–282, 351, 352; peasant
283, 287 labor, 173, 226, 227; sources for history
Charles V, 7, 19, 77, 87n188, 91, 92, 94, of, 19; stabilization, 373, 374; war, 352,
95, 99, 100, 103, 104, 106, 108, 111, 353
112, 115, 117, 118, 119, 120, 124, 126, Crown of St. Stephen, 12
151, 155, 159, 161, 162, 163, 167, 171, Cyprus, 54, 211, 219, 227
177, 178, 197, 208, 374 Cyprus War, 210–211, 214, 223, 250
Charles IX (France), 212
Chief Black Eunuch, 248 Dal Burgo, Andrea, 68
Christianitas(Christendom), 307 Dalmatia, 337, 338, 356, 370, 372;
Cis-Danubian Hungary, 165, 176 “caressing” Ottoman officials, 156,
Clement VIII, 311, 316, 322, 329, 332 264, 270; countryside, 108–109, 209,
Cles, Bernhard von, 113 263, 264, 267, 338; depopulation,
Common Penny Tax, 163 61–62; governance, 15, 56; Ottoman
connected history, 5 raids, 36, 55, 56; popolo, 15; resources,
Contarini, Hieronimo, 62 60–61, 62; sources for history of, 18;
Contarini, Nicolo, 345 town and country, 3, 157–159; trade,
Contarini, Paolo, 270 15, 159, 258–259, 337; uskok raids,
Contarini, Tommaso, 95 108, 160, 171, 213–215, 222; Venetian
Corcyra, 211 policy in Dalmatia, 59, 63–64, 104,
Correr, Nicolò, 259, 263, 265 207, 208, 265; as a Venetian province,
Corsairs, 269 6, 15, 373; as a Venetian province at
Corvinus, János, 44, 56, 64, 68, 69, 70, 73, war with the Ottomans, 106, 107, 210
75 Damat Ibrahim Pasa, 323, 324, 326, 327,
Corvinus, Matthias, 12, 33, 34, 39, 55, 68, 328, 331, 332, 350
174 Dandolo, Zuane Antonio, 75
Cossacks (Zaporizhan), 325, 343 Daničić, Juraj, 278
Council of Florence (1439), 316 Danube, 16, 55, 149, 318, 324, 369
Council of Trent, 311 dar-al-Islam, 29
Counter-Reformation, 250, 310, 311, 313, Dardanelles, 35
314, 337 defterdars, 8, 13
Cracow, 293n18 Deli Hasan Paşa, 317, 333, 347
440 Index

Deli Pop, 206 Ferdinand I of Tuscany, 322

Derffy, Wolfgang, 175 Ferdinand II, 253, 314, 331, 332, 333, 335,
Dervis Paşa, 347 336, 337, 340, 341, 342, 344, 345, 350,
despotēs, 45n13 353, 373
Diedo, Antonio, 156 Ferhat Beg Sokolović, 201, 202, 206, 209,
Diet. See under Austrian Duchies; Holy 210, 211, 213, 228, 251, 255, 256–258,
Roman Empire; Hungary 260, 265, 277, 279
Dietrichstein, Adam von, 252 Ferhat Paşa, 326
Dika, 282 Ferrara, 58
divan, 8 fetwa, 310
dominio del mar, 344, 346 Fine, John, 15
Donà, Leonardo, 251 Firuz Beg, 55, 56, 57, 75
Doria, Andrea, 99, 103, 106 Florence, 58
Dózsa, György, 66 Foca, 33
Dragut Reis, 155 Foscarini, Antonio, 300n138
Drašković, Ivan, 350, 351 France, 58, 106, 147, 312
Drašković, Juraj, 206, 224, 225, 283 Francis I, 59, 91, 146, 147, 159
Drava River, 11, 16, 39, 118, 121, 151, Frankfurt, 198, 215
169, 175, 204, 229 Frankol, Daniel, 341
Drina River, 33 Frankopan family, 17, 35, 70, 76, 116, 170
Dubica, 69, 102 Frankopan, Bernardin, 71, 72, 73, 74
Dubrovnik, 96, 150, 203, 212, 250, 255, Frankopan, Dorotea, 72, 74
258, 260, 285 Frankopan, Krsto, 71, 73, 75, 78, 86n168,
Dušan, Stefan (king of Serbia), 30 87n188, 114
Dutch Republic, 231, 271, 346 Frankopan, Stjepan, 123
Frankopan, Vuk, 117
Eastern Orthodoxy, 315–317 Frederick III, 10, 11, 12, 19, 39
Ebu’s-su’ud, 310 Friuli, 38, 39, 58, 73
Eger, 326 Fülek, 150
Eggenberg, Ruprecht von, 287, 350 Fuste, 83n110, 104, 269
emin, 8, 13
Erdödy, Petar, 115, 153, 165, 168, 205, Gabela, 258, 259, 260, 269
221, 222, 224, 351 Geizkofler, Zacharias, 321, 322
Erdödy, Simon, 114–115 Gerlach, Stephan, 315
Erdödy, Tamás, 258, 260, 261, 286 Genuine Lutherans, 313
Estado de India, 54 Germany, 163
Esztergom (Gran), 118, 147 ghazi, 29, 36
eyalet, 9 Ghazi Husrev Beg, 55, 57, 58, 63, 74, 75,
76, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102,
Famagusta, 200 103, 106, 107, 115, 117, 120, 123, 124,
Fels, Leonhard von, 113, 123, 151 125, 257
Ferdinand I, 7, 10, 96, 99, 101, 104, 109, Gienger, Georg, 217
110, 111, 112, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, giovani, 251
120, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 127, Giustiniani, Pompeo, 345
149, 150, 151, 152, 154, 159, 161, 162, Giustiniano, 158
163, 164, 165, 166, 167, 168, 171, 172, Giustiniano, Giovanni Battista, 157
173, 175, 176, 177, 178, 179, 192n259, Glina River, 206
197, 198, 204, 215, 218, 222, 223, 228, Gradec, 17
229; as Archduke, 76, 77, 91
 Index
Gradisca War (1615-1617), 307, 325,
337–346
Gradiška, 153, 167, 262, 289
grain, 176
grain trade, 155
Grand Mufti, 310
Graswein, Kaspar, 286
Graz, 35, 37, 166, 274, 290, 291, 341, 342
Greece, 35
Grey League/Grisons, 346
Gritti, Alvise, 99–101, 104, 117, 118, 119
Gritti, Andrea, 99
Gritti, Lorenzo, 107
gült, 225
gunpowder: technology, 127; warfare, 231;
weapons, 289, 319
Gvozdansko, 71, 204, 256
Győr, 42, 216, 332
Habsburg dynasty, 10
Habsburg monarchy, 1; Akinci raids, 39;
and the aristocracy, 227, 253; and
Catholicism, 217, 219, 314, 337; and
Croatia, 109–126, 161–177, 215–230,
271–290; diplomatic relations with the
Ottomans, 96; government, 228, 230,
231; government invasion, 257;
military advantages, Long Turkish War,
319; more centralized in seventeenth
century, 2; relations with Jagiellonian
Hungary, 42; relations with Venice,
154, 344, 346; resources, 127, 321–322;
sources, 19; and the uskoks, 124, 159,
160, 221, 339, 340, 341, 342; war
finance, 321
Habsburg monarchy and the Ottomans:
border friction, 152; diplomacy, 11,
162, 216, 218, 291, 347, 379, 380, 381;
frontier consolidated, 227, 255; frontier
defense, 169, 174, 176, 219, 221,
282–284, 284; hostilities, 106, 121,
152, 172, 174, 204, 224, 256, 258, 260,
261, 262, 277, 278, 284–288, 291, 332;
military balance, 6, 318, 319, 334;
military strategy, 122, 178, 179, 217,
222, 229, 272–275, 323, 330
Hadim Husrev Paşa, 347
Hafis Ahmed Paşa, 351
The Hague, 346
441
hajduks, 150, 175, 219, 321, 347
Hallek, Veit, 224, 280
harambasa, 340
Hasan Beg Sokolović, 235n74
Hasan Grad, 261
Hasan of Zvornik, 74
Hasan Paşa Predojević, 248, 260–262, 279,
285, 286, 287, 288, 290, 291, 347
Hasan Paşa Tirjaki, 347
Hauptberatschlagung, 255, 272–275, 331,
376, 380, 381
Hayduk, Jurisa, 341
Hennyngh, Andrija, 227
Henri IV of France, 312, 331, 332
Herceg Novi (Castelnuovo), 156, 210, 341
Herzegovina, 32, 33, 38, 57, 58, 74, 75,
101, 124, 150, 160, 172, 204
Hieronimo of Zadar, 118, 119, 124
Hoedaverdi Paşa, 351
Hoffman, Hans, 113
Hofkriegsrat (Graz), 280, 284
Hofkriegsrat (Vienna), 165, 215, 223, 272,
278, 281, 283, 323
Hofrat, 112, 165, 291
Holi Beg, 236n104
Holland (province of), 272
Holy League of 1537–1538, 121, 127
Holy League of May (1571), 200, 311
Holy Roman Empire, 65, 73, 146, 159,
178, 224, 230, 314, 321, 337; Augsburg
Diet (1530), 111; Augsburg Diet
(1548), 148, 163, 164; Nuremberg Diet
(1532), 111; Passau Diet (1552), 163;
Regensburg Diet (1594), 321
homeni da fatti, 62
Horwath, Markus, 175
hostages, 167
Hrastovica, 205, 223, 224, 282, 283
Hungary, 11, 16, 17, 33, 34, 42, 51, 54, 56,
64, 68, 72, 100, 110, 111, 112, 116,
117, 119, 121, 127, 150, 152, 155, 163,
164, 167, 171, 175, 176, 177, 205, 216,
219, 226, 252, 262, 272, 281, 282, 290,
317, 323, 335, 347, 374; counterassault
on Mehmed II, 33; diets, 165, 280, 333,
352; fortifications, 34; Jagiellonian
kings, 64–69; magnate clans, 33;
Magyars, 42, 65; medieval, 11, 12
Huntington, Samuel, 2
442 Index

Hunyadi, John, 31, 39 Kasim Beg, 149

Hurrem Sultan, 145 Katzianer, Hans, 78, 102, 113, 120, 123
Husrev Beg (Požega), 236n104 Keglević, Petar, 117, 122, 167
Kepler, Johannes, 252
Ibrahim Beg, 198 Khevenhuller, Georg, 279
Ibrahim Paşa, 93, 99, 115, 118, 119, 309 Khisel, Veit, 342
Inner Austria, 113, 166, 173, 175, 217, Kizilbaş, 51, 53
221, 229, 230, 282, 313, 314, 315, 347, Klagenfurt, 37, 274
350, 375; military forces, 221; taxes, Kleinkrieg, 37, 179, 200, 219, 224, 336,
173; war council, 166 352
Iran, 94, 151, 152, 251, 260, 270, 290, 336 Klis, 70, 74, 99, 100, 101, 104, 116, 119,
Isa-Beg Ishaković, 32, 34, 37 124, 125, 157, 159, 160, 172, 202, 204,
Isa Ishakbegović, 39 206, 209, 210, 257, 263, 270, 338
Isfahan, 293n18 Knights of Malta, 199, 343
Islamicization, 202 Knights of St. Stephen, 343
Isma’il I of Iran, 62, 75 Knin, 70
Isonzo/Soča, 59 Kobaš, 120
Istanbul, 32, 212, 230, 250, 255 Kolovrat family, 253
Istria, 158, 340 Koprivnica, 224, 277
Istvánffy, Miklós, 277, 281 Korana River, 256, 257, 258
Italy, 154 Koroni, 119
Ivanić, 205, 277 Kosača, Herceg Stefan Vukčić, 32
Ivan the Terrible, 247 Košice, 272, 330
Izmir, 248 Kosovo Polje, 7, 43
Kostajnica, 122, 174, 204, 223, 311, 350
Jagiello, Anna, 103 Köszeg (Guns), 94, 117
Jagiello, Isabella, 145 Kotor (Cattaro), 14, 107, 156, 157, 159,
Jajce, 33, 57, 58, 69, 70, 75, 97, 279 160; Bay of Kotor, 268
Janissaries, 41, 52, 53, 68, 76, 145, 153, Krasso-Szoreny, 34
155, 163, 231, 253, 254, 255, 256, 261, Krbava Polje, 43
271, 288, 318, 319, 320, 328 Krizevci, 222, 277, 282
Jasenovac, 103 Krk (Veglia), 214
jizya, 13 Krka River, 63, 107, 157, 214
(Don) Juan of Austria, 227, 316 Kruje, 36
Judenburg, 274 Krupa, 116, 205, 222
Julius II, 58 Kružić, Petar, 99, 101, 116, 117, 119, 123,
Jurešić, Nikola, 78, 113, 114, 126, 127, 124
167, 168, 175, 204, 219, 220, 221, 222 Kupa River, 16, 204, 223, 225, 227, 255,
256, 257, 258, 261, 278, 279, 282–284,
kadis, 8, 13 286, 289
Kamengrad, 255 Kuripšić, Benedikt, 95
Kanisza, 219, 255, 275, 277, 284, 330–333 Kurjakovic family, 17, 35
Kaptol, 17
Kara Mustafa Beg Sokolović, 174 Ladislas V (Hungary), 31
Karlobag, 266 Lala Mustafa Paşa, 199, 334, 335
Karlovac, 278, 288 Landeshauptmann, 11
Karlovac Generalates, 350 Landsknechte, 42, 91, 111
Karlović, Ivan, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 78, Łaski, Hieronim, 126, 166
114, 117, 120, 126 Lazar Hrbljanović, 30
 Index 443

Lazarević, Stefan, 31 Maximilian II, 198, 200, 206, 212, 215,

League of Cognac, 103 217, 218, 219, 220, 223, 225, 227, 229,
Lenković, Ivan, 165, 170, 171, 172, 204, 230, 251, 253, 285, 313, 375; as
220, 221, 222 Archduke Maximilian II, 161, 174, 198,
Lenković, Juraj, 338, 350 216
Leo X, 66, 67, 72 Međimurje, 169, 175, 176, 221, 224
Lepanto (Naupaktos), 67, 200, 210, 224, Mediterranean, 260
250 Medvedgrad, 71, 126
Levant, 250 Mehmed II, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 35, 36, 52,
Lezze, Zuane da, 210, 214, 215 53, 248, 310, 332
Lika, 62, 202, 214, 257, 264, 266, 270, 278 Mehmed III, 250, 318, 323
Livno, 270 Mehmed Beg Jahjapašić, 97, 101, 102,
Ljubljana, 37, 166, 274, 283 103, 149, 151, 213, 300n138
Longo, Antonio, 106 Mehmed Paşa Sokolović, 199, 200,
Long Turkish War (1593-1606), 2, 201–202, 205–206, 211, 213, 216, 219,
307–309, 311, 312, 319, 320, 321, 322, 223, 248, 249
323–337, 336, 338, 342, 344, 353, 376; Melanchthon, Philip, 315
as Christian Holy War, 311–313; as Memishah Beg, 203, 259
Muslim Holy War, 309–310; Mercoeur, Philippe Emmanuel duc de, 332
objectives, 318; results, 307; strategies, Metlika, 77
323–325 Metz, 171
Louis II Jagiello, 55, 66, 68, 69, 72, 74, 75, Mezőkeresztes, 326
110 Michaelogli, 36
Louis XII (France), 58 Michael the Brave, 325, 328–330
Low Countries, 271 Mihrimah, 155, 198, 199, 250
Lower Austria, 167, 272, 313, 331 military frontier, 354, 356, 366n185, 380
Luther, Martin, 148, 164, 312 Modruš, 71, 72
Lutheranism, 155, 171, 217, 219, 311, 313, Mohács, 97
314, 315 Moldova, 41, 324, 326, 328, 330
Montenegro, 157
Machiavelli, Niccolò, 230 Moravia, 147
mahals, 13 Moritz of Saxony, 148
Malkoč Beg (Klis), 204, 209, 221 Morlacchi, 108, 158, 159, 209, 257, 264,
Malkocbegović family, 36 265; Orthodox-Slav, 271; Ottoman,
Mamluks, 41, 53, 54, 309 373; Turkish, 209, 263, 338
Mantua, Marquis, 58 Moro, Benedetto del, 338
Marano (Lagunare), 154, 344 Morocco, 201
Maribor, 39 Morosini Brothers, 251
Marquis of Este, 35 Moslavina, 221, 222, 261, 285
martolossi, 53, 56, 156, 166, 169, 170, 203, Mostar, 33
210, 225, 255, 256 Movila, Jerome, 328, 329, 330
Mary of Hungary, 111, 161 Mula, Antonio da, 108
Matthias I, 345; as Archduke Matthias, Mur River, 291
253, 287, 291, 323, 325, 327, 331, 333, Murad I, 30–31
334, 335, 337, 340, 357n15, 360n77 Murad II, 200, 255, 261, 263, 291, 319,
Maximillian I, 52, 57, 58, 59, 65, 66, 67, 320, 338
73, 76, 103, 109, 344; as Archduke Murad III, 200, 248, 249, 261
Maximilian I, 42, 43, 44 Murad Beg, 99
444 Index
Murad Beg Tardić, 95, 97, 98, 99, 101,
103, 151, 168
(Sehzade) Mustafa, 145
Mustafa Beg (Klis), 338
Mustafa Paşa Sokolović, 201, 202, 205,
222
Nádasdy, Tamás, 122, 127, 165, 176
Nadin, 108
Nanj, Federigo, 338
Naples, 58
Nasi, Joseph, 200
Navagero, Bernardo, 154, 155, 160
Navarino, 52
Negroponte, 35
Neretva River (Narenta), 33, 160, 214,
259, 260, 269
Noailles, François de, 212, 213
Novigrad, 204, 210, 223, 264, 267
Novigrad Strait, 214
Novo Brdo, 31
Nur Banu, 248
Obrovac, 15, 98, 99, 105, 214, 266
Oláh, Miklós, 168
Olivera Despina, 31
Opitz, Joshua, 313
Orsini, Camillo, 106, 127
Osijek, 121, 122, 149, 221, 347
Osman, 29
Ostrožac, 256, 257
Otocac, 116, 346
Ottoman Empire, 1, 3, 7, 8, 32, 34, 36, 38,
58, 61, 68, 69, 71, 76, 77, 99, 102, 117,
128, 149, 154, 165, 171, 176, 177, 179,
200, 218, 230, 247, 270, 271, 275, 278,
279, 284, 285, 286, 288, 289, 290, 314,
317, 318, 334, 344, 353, 381; attacks on
Croatia, 43; border forts, 255; Bosnia,
51–58, 92–103, 149–154, 201–207,
254–262; campaign tactics, 378;
captive taking, 61, 62; cavalry, 62, 262,
343; conquest of Balkans, 30–36;
conquest of Buda, 163; conquest of
Obrovac, 116; corsairs, 155; disparity
of sources, 377; encroachments in
Dalmatia, 208–210; frontier, 175; fuste,
259; galleys, 210; garrisons, 277;
governance, 231; -Habsburg campaign
of attrition, 36–41; -Habsburg relations,
230; invasions, 224; irregulars, 72;
Martolossi, 210; military advantage,
377, 378, 379; military advantages-
Long Turkish War, 317; mutineers,
317; pirates, 343; raids, 39–41; raiders,
61, 72, 116, 124; strategic objectives,
96–98, 149–150; Sultan’s power, 378;
taxes, 157, 218; trade, 154, 155, 203,
258; trade networks, 171, 203; war
against Inner Austria, 172–175; war
against Safavid Iran, 53; war against
Vienna, 52–55; war finance Long
Turkish War, 319–321
Pacification of Bruck, 313, 314
Padishah, 333
Pag, 160, 208, 210, 265, 268, 270
Pakrac, 221, 258, 277
Palatine of Hungary, 75
Pallavicini, Sforza, 165, 207
Papal States, 343
paşaluks, 9
Pasquaglio, Filippo, 343
Passau, 148
Paul III, 106
Pax Mongolica, 22n36
Peace of Augsburg (1555), 7, 148, 314
Peace of Edirne (1547), 171, 177
Peace of Zsitvatorok (1606), 1, 335, 336,
342
Peć, 201
Pečevija, Ibrahim, 262
Pécs, 147, 201
Pederin, Ivan, 59
Pekry, Lajos, 115
Pernštein (Bohemia), 253
Pernštein, Vratislav, 252
Pest, 66
Petrinja, 261, 262, 279, 286, 287, 289, 291,
350, 351
Petrovaradin (Petervarad), 34, 145
Philip II (Spain), 161, 197, 209, 251
Philip III (Spain), 332, 345
Philippists, 313, 315
Pisa, 58
Pius II, 32, 58, 171
Pius III, 171
Pius V, 311
 Index 445

Piyale Paşa, 199 Rožmberk, Vilem, 253

Ploce, 258 Rudolf II, 230, 247, 248, 251, 252, 253,
Podesta, 15 255, 262, 272–274, 280, 281, 282, 283,
Polijica (Polizza), 61, 265 285, 290, 291, 307, 311, 313, 314, 315,
Ponte, Nicolo da, 251 318, 321, 322, 323, 326, 329, 330, 335,
Popel z Lobković, Zedenel, 291 336, 337, 338, 351, 355
Poppendorf, Franz, 275, 283 Rumelia, 8, 262, 290, 291
(Sublime) Porte, 6, 8, 12, 51, 56, 57, 60, Rüstem Paşa, 145, 146, 149, 150, 151, 152,
62, 99, 103, 104, 117, 118, 119, 120, 155, 160, 179, 198, 209
125, 145, 149, 152, 154, 156, 160, 162, Ruthenians, 316
176, 177, 200, 202, 216, 217, 219, 222,
231, 257, 260, 261, 263, 265, 267, 270, Šabac, 34, 54
290, 315, 324, 335, 337, 343, 345, 347, Sabor (Croatia), 116, 205, 220, 223, 224,
367 225, 226, 227, 229, 279, 280, 281, 282,
Portugal, 54 283, 321, 350, 351, 354, 355, 356, 375
Posonia, 27n125, 42, 111, 118, 252, 352 Safavid Dynasty, 51, 53, 151, 251
Posthumous, Ladislas, 12 Safavid Iran, 94
Postojna, 76 Safiye, 248, 323
Postojna Gap, 38 salines, 265
Požega, 121, 152, 167, 202, 221, 255, 258, Salm family, 253
277, 353 Salm, Nicholas von, 78, 112
Prague, 163, 268 salt trade, 208, 265, 299n119
Prince Selim, 52, 199 Sanmicheli, Giangirolamo, 107, 108, 208
provisionati, 59 Sanmicheli, Michele, 107
Ptuj, 39, 113, 166 sancak/sancakbeg, 8, 9, 21n28, 127
Pula, 340 sancak-i Şerif, 310
Sanudo, Marin, 18
Raab, Kaspar, 266, 278 Sarajevo, 13, 37, 146, 202, 203, 255, 258,
Rabatta, Giuseppe, 340 260, 369
raiding economy, 124 Sarpi, Paolo, 341, 345
Raittenau, Wolf Dietrich von, 288 Satirci Mehmed Paşa, 327, 328, 329
rákos. See Hungarian Diet Satu Mare (Szatmar), 198, 218, 219, 226
ransom, 125, 171, 236n104 Sava-Danube line, 34
Rauber, Nicholas, 123, 273 Sava River, 11, 16, 31, 55, 96–98, 101,
Redern, Melchior von, 287, 288 120, 153, 168, 204, 205, 229, 255, 258,
Regensburg, 272 279
regiment, 77 Savary de Breves, 312
relazioni (realizone), 18 Scepper, Cornelis de, 117, 120
Rhein gulden, 122, 163, 165, 173, 174, 272 Schmalkaldic League, 147, 374
Rhenier, Alvise, 158 Schmalkaldic War, 161, 163, 164
Rijeka, 125, 160, 268, 269 Schützpferde/strelsi, 273
Rijm, Karel, 206 Schwarzenberg, Adolf von, 327
Ripac, 35, 116, 261 Schwendi, Lazarus, 199, 226, 229, 230,
robot, 225–228 253, 272
Rodriguez, Daniel, 259, 369 sconces, 271
Roggendorf, Wilhelm von, 113 Sekely, Jakob, 42
Romania, 34 Selim I, 51, 52, 53, 54, 57, 67, 112, 219,
Rovere, Franceso Maria della, 107 224, 252, 255, 310, 340
Rožmberk, Eva, 253 Selim II, 199, 224, 248, 252
446 Index

Seljuk Turks, 7 Soča. See Isonzo

Senj, 15, 17, 35, 71, 116, 125, 160, 170, Sofia, 261
171, 172, 205, 214, 222, 267, 269, 278, Sokolovic family, 202, 231
341, 342, 343 Soranzo, Lazzaro, 371
Senj Fair, 72 Spain, 207, 212, 250
Sephardic Jews, 258 Spanish, 343
Serbia, 30, 31, 34, 69 Spanish Habsburgs, 271
Shah Tahmasp, 151, 197 Split (Spalato), 14, 59, 74, 104, 124, 209,
Shi’ite Iran, 146, 310 213, 255, 259, 263, 267, 338
Shi’ite Safavids, 340 Sprinzenstein, Baron Franz Ricius, 96,
Shkoder (Scutari), 36, 38 124, 130n44
Šibenik (Sebencio), 14, 63, 64, 156, 157, Srebenica, 33, 57
158, 209, 211, 263, 264, 265, 266, 270 Statuta Vlachorum, 354, 356
Šibenik contado, 209 Stefan Tomaš (Bosnia), 32
Sick, Nicholas, 151 Stefan Thomašević (Bosnia), 32
Siebenburger, Martin, Dr., 77 Štefanec, Nataša, 280
Sigismund I of Hungary, 31, 32 Stenicnjak, 258, 277, 279
Signoria (Venice), 10, 35, 62, 70, 73, 104, Stephan Dušan (Serbia), 30
105, 106, 107, 154, 155, 156, 207, 208, stradioti (light horse), 16
219, 265, 270, 312, 373 Stubenberg (Styria), 253
Sijavuş Paşa, 262 Stubica, 227
Silesia, 288 Styria (Graz), 10, 39, 42, 57, 103, 113,
Sinan Paşa, 262, 270, 290, 291, 310, 317, 122, 164, 166, 174, 177, 272, 273, 275,
320, 323, 325, 326, 347 277, 279, 280, 286, 287, 289, 290, 331
Sinan Paşa’s War (1594-1599), 325–328 Subrahamanyam, Sanjay, 5
sipahi, 9, 52, 68, 317 Sufi, 253, 310
Sisak, 169, 225, 260, 261, 262, 283, 286, Suleyman the Lawgiver, 6, 54–55, 62, 68,
289, 347; Battle of Sisak (June 22, 74, 76, 92, 93, 101, 106, 115, 117, 119,
1593), 287, 288, 289, 290; Habsburg 123, 152, 162, 163, 177, 214, 216, 248,
defenses, 284–287 336, 340
Skanderbeg (George Kastrioti), 36 Sunni, 253, 310
Skender Paşa (Skender Beg), 38, 44, 55, Sunni Muslims, 337
56, 58, 60, 61, 70, 73, 75 Susedgrad, 227
Skopje, 32 Syria, 173
Skradin, 17, 75 Szalahazy, Tamás, 120
Slavonia, 16, 17, 70, 71, 72, 97, 102, 111, Szapolyai, Janós, 64, 66, 68, 93, 100, 102,
114, 115, 120, 121, 122, 126, 149, 151, 110, 112, 114, 115, 118, 122, 145, 149
152, 153, 154, 165, 166, 167, 169, 172, Szapolyai, Janós Zsigmund, 94, 179n5,
173, 174, 175, 177, 202, 205, 216, 220, 198, 324
227, 255, 257, 258, 261, 272, 275, 277, Szatmár. See Satu Mare
279, 280, 285, 287, 289, 355; Szeckel, 153
Congregation of Nobles, 17, 114, 122, Szeckel, Lukas, 152, 166, 167, 224
166, 173; management of frontier, Székesfehérvár, 147, 291, 333
165–167; military frontier, 275–280; Szekler, 330
military losses, 167–169; Vojna Szigetvár, 150, 175–177, 177, 178, 179,
Krajinc, 354–356 202, 216, 217, 219, 221, 222, 223, 253,
Slunj, 258 331, 375
Slunjski, Franjo Frankopan, 223, 224, 225 Szigetvár War, 253
Smederevo, 31, 38, 57, 67
 Index 447

Tabriz, 247 Tycho Brahe, 252

Tahmasp I, 151, 152, 200
Tahy, Franjo, 227 Udbina, 222
Targovişte, 329 Udine, 37, 38
Tbilisi, 247 Ulama Beg, 150, 151, 152, 153, 168, 172,
Temesvár. See Timosoara 202; in Bosnia, 150–152; in Požega,
Tercios(Spanish), 271 152–154
Terraferma, 59, 64, 73, 154, 207, 250 Ulcinj (Dulcigno), 14, 210
Territorio (Venetian), 263 Uluç Ali, 200, 209, 210
Teutonic Knights, 253 Umma, 307
Tezcan, Baki, 249 Una River, 16, 35, 69, 102, 173, 204, 255,
Thomašević, Stefan, 32 257
Thurzo, Alexius, 100 Ungnad (Styria), 167, 172, 228, 253
Thurzo family, 253 Ungnad, Christoph, 280, 281, 282
Tiepolo, Antonio, 208 Ungnad, David, 230, 252, 281, 312, 315,
timars, 9 323, 330
Timosoara (Temesvár), 34, 67, 146 Ungnad, Hans, 111, 113, 121, 123, 126,
Tirjaki Hasan Paşa, 331, 332, 333 146, 164, 165, 173, 280
Tirol, 11, 136n184 Union of Brest, 316
Topusko, 283 Upper Austria, 315
Toygun Paşa, 150, 176, 177 Upper Hungary, 165, 219, 247
trace italienne (bastion trace), 59 Urad Beg, 106
Trade Venetian, 171 uskoks, 6, 108, 109, 117, 123, 124, 125,
Tranquillus Andronicus, 150 160, 170, 171, 206, 213, 214, 215, 220,
Trans-Danubian Frontier, 165, 166, 168, 221, 257, 263, 265, 267, 269, 278, 280,
175, 177, 247, 277 321, 338, 339, 341, 342, 343, 344, 345,
Transylvania, 112, 118, 150, 152, 162, 346; Croatia, 169–172; Cyprus War,
171, 197, 201, 216, 324, 328, 329, 330, 213–215; during Gradisca War,
333, 334, 335 340–344; land offensive, 266–268;
Trautson, Hans, 217 piracy, 268, 343; raids, 160, 171, 266,
Treaty of Bologna (1530), 154 267; sea offensive, 268–269;
Treaty of Edrine (1547), 146, 197 Zumberačka, 227
Treaty of Erdine, 152 Uzbeks, 197, 251, 255
Treaty of Istanbul, 250
Treaty of Madrid (September 1617), 346, vakufs, 56
356 Valier, Luca, 265
Treaty of Passarowitz/Požarevac, 5 Valpovo, 121, 151, 168
Treaty of Zsitvatorok, 336, 356 Varaždin, 149, 153, 166, 224, 275, 277,
Trieste, 125 280, 288
Trogir (Trau), 14, 56, 70, 159, 209, 263, Vecchi, 251
264, 267, 270, 271 Velebit Channel, 210, 222, 266, 267, 338
Tschernembl, George Erasmus von, 315 Velebit Mountains, 5, 71, 160
Tunis, 200 Velika, 151, 167
Turk, 267, 272 Veltwijck, Geraard, 151
Türkenhilfe, 112, 163, 178 Venice, 6, 7, 9, 16, 52, 54, 57, 59, 67, 71,
Turks, 95, 104, 107, 169, 171, 206, 207, 73, 75, 77, 99, 103, 105, 106, 107, 109,
227, 266, 283, 312, 353 119, 124, 154, 156, 200, 211, 212, 213,
Turopolje, 225, 252, 258, 260, 261, 262, 250, 259, 263, 265, 338, 339, 343, 344,
279, 282, 283, 289 345; Venetian Albania, 14; Venetian-
448 Index
Austrian relations, 344–345; Venetian
Dalmatia, 58–64, 103–109, 263–265,
370; Venetian finances, 250; Venetian
Greece, 35–36; Venetian-Habsburg
trade, 372; Venetian military capacity,
2, 161; Venetian-Ottoman trade, 147,
207, 208, 251, 371, 372; Veneto-
Ottoman War of 1499–1503, 67;
Veneto-Ottoman War of 1537–1538,
106–108
Venetian Republic, 9, 58–60; Collegio, 10,
15, 59, 63, 70, 73, 107; Council of Ten,
59, 63, 104, 251; governance, 9–10;
Grand Council, 10, 251; Senate, 259;
La Serenissima Republica, 9
Venier, Cristoforo, 343
Venier, Lunardo, 62
venturini, 222, 266, 268
Vespasiano of Zadar, 118, 119, 120
Veszpém, 291
Vienna, 2, 10, 42, 112, 114, 125, 126, 145,
149, 150, 162, 169, 171, 176, 206, 216,
218, 221, 224, 226, 227, 272, 275, 279,
280, 287, 290, 291, 323, 325, 342, 352;
Blood court, 77; High Consultations,
277
Vincenzo II Gonzaga (Duke of Mantua),
332
Vinodol, 170, 222, 268
Virovitica, 121, 153, 224
Vjekoslave Klaic, 74
Vlachs, 20n8, 108, 159, 160, 169, 170,
257, 338, 353, 355, 356, 369; Dalmatia,
159; Ottoman tax privileges, 353;
Orthodox, 354
Vlatkovic, Ivan, 341, 342, 344
vojvod, 8, 55, 325, 340
Volga River, 201
von Cles, Bernhard, 113
Vrana, 56, 60, 61, 105, 107, 108, 170
Vrbas, 255
Vukčić, Hrvoje, 32. See also Kosača
Wallachia, 324, 326, 330
War of the Holy League, 206
Werböczy, István, 65
Wildenstayn, Georg, 152, 167
William of Orange, 300n142
Wladislas II Jagiello (Hungary and
Bohemia), 12, 42, 44, 64, 65, 66, 67,
70, 72, 74, 75, 76
Yakub Beg, 42, 43
Yemisci Hasan Paşa, 332, 333
Yugoslavia, 5
Yugoslaviansim, 5
Zadar (Zara), 14, 15, 16, 55, 56, 59, 60, 61,
62, 64, 74, 105, 107, 108, 156, 157,
158, 160, 208, 209, 210, 211, 214, 260,
263, 264, 267, 337; Contado, 16,
60–61, 158, 159, 160, 264
Zadruga, 4
Zagreb, 17, 114, 126, 153, 166, 167, 168,
173, 205, 224, 227, 277, 281, 283, 286,
287, 291
Zaigetvar, 177
Zay, Ferenc, 176
Zdenek Popel z Lobkovic, 252
Zeeland, 272
Zemun, 34
Zemunik, 60, 209, 210, 211–213, 264, 267
Zerbi, Gabriele, 56
Zigetvar, 216
Zonta, 251
Zrin, 223
Zrinski family (Zrinyi), 102, 152, 153, 168,
169, 170, 172, 176, 204, 222, 223
Zrinski, Ivan, 125
Zriniski, Juraj, 146, 155, 224, 253, 277,
281, 291, 325, 355
Zrinski, Nikola III, 69, 71, 101, 102, 116,
117
Zrinski, Nikola IV, 103, 122, 125, 126,
127, 146, 167, 168, 169, 199, 204, 221,
253
Zumberačka, 170, 221