Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Italy who completely rebuilt, extended and fortified the Royal Palace in the Renaissance
style.
Under Matthias' successor Vladislav II (Úlászló; r 1490-1516), what had begun as a cru-
sade in 1514 turned into an uprising against the landlords by peasants, who rallied near Pest
under their leader, György Dózsa. The revolt was repressed by Transylvanian leader John
Szapolyai (Zápolyai János) and some 70,000 peasants were tortured and executed, including
Dózsa himself. The retrograde Tripartitum Law that followed codified the rights and priv-
ileges of the barons and nobles and reduced the peasants to perpetual serfdom.
A Hungarian expression recalls the Turkish occupation:Hátravan még a feketeleves('Still
to come is the black soup'), suggesting something painful or difficult is on the cards.
After a meal the Turks would serve their Hungarian guests an unknown beverage - coffee
- which meant it was time to talk about taxes.
The Battle of Mohács
The defeat of the ragtag Hungarian army by the Ottoman Turks at Mohács in 1526 is a wa-
tershed in the nation's history. On the battlefield near this small town in Southern Trans-
danubia, some 195km south of Budapest, a relatively prosperous and independent Hungary
died, sending the nation into a tailspin of partition and foreign domination that would last
for centuries.
It would be unfair to put all the blame on the weak and indecisive teenage king Louis.
Bickering among the nobility and the brutal crackdown on the Dózsa uprising had severely
weakened Hungary's military power, and there was virtually nothing left in the royal cof-
fers. By 1526 Ottoman sultan Suleiman the Magnificent (r 1520-66) had taken much of the
Balkans, including Belgrade, and was poised to march on Buda and Vienna.
Unwilling to wait for reinforcements from Transylvania under the command of his rival
John Szapolyai, Louis rushed from Buda with a motley army of just over 25,000 men to
battle the Turks and was soundly thrashed. Among the estimated 18,000 dead was the king
himself - crushed by his horse while trying to retreat across a stream.
Turkish Occupation
The Ottoman Turks marched on and occupied Buda in 1541. Hungary was then divided into
three parts. The central section, with Buda as the provincial seat, went to the Ottomans,
while parts of Transdanubia and what is now Slovakia were governed by the Austrian House
of Habsburg, assisted by the Hungarian nobility based at Bratislava (Hungarian: Pozsony).
