Radical Protestant Propaganda of the Thirty Years' War

forging of plans with both the Ottomans and the Austrian Habsburgs confused outsiders and
led Bethlen to be accused by some Europeans of being unreliable 71 and a vassal of the
Turks. 72 But this was simply an effect of the Prince’s unerring goal to oust both occupying
forces, a goal which had to be concealed from the wider public because it would have
gained him the enmity of both of the imperial powers that he sought to evict.
The Austrian Habsburgs: A Complex Relationship
Five years after his election as Prince of Transylvania, Bethlen exploited the turmoil caused
by the Bohemian rebellion in 1618 to launch a campaign against the Archduke of Styria, the
soon-to-be Emperor Ferdinand II. One of the principal reasons for this attack was Bethlen’s
aim to rid Royal Hungary of Habsburg absolutism. But there were also other reasons which
contributed to the Prince’s decision to act. Chief among them was Bethlen’s genuine
concern over the fate of Protestantism in the country. By the outbreak of the Thirty Years’
War, the Habsburgs had already instigated the Counter-Reformation in Hungary and had
achieved some success. In doing so, the Habsburgs had violated the 1606 Peace of Vienna, a
treaty which had guaranteed Hungarian Protestants freedom of worship and recognized the
political independence of Transylvania. 73
Bethlen’s offensives against the Habsburgs have been interpreted by some historians to
have stemmed from personal ambition. 74 These critical voices believe that Bethlen was
motivated by the desire to extend his power in Hungary. In my own and in other historians’
71 Kósary, p. 171.
72 Rumours circulated in Europe that Bethlen had converted to Islam and had been circumcised. The
imperial court labelled him the ‘Turcarum creatura’ and Duke Maximilian even called him ‘des
türkischen Erbfeindes fast Leibeigenen’. See Depner, p. 32.
73 Imre Gonda and Emil Niederhauser, Die Habsburger: Ein europäisches Phänomen, 2 nd edn
(Budapest: Corvina Kiadó, 1983), p. 88.Henceforth Gonda.
74 See for example Thomas von Bogyay’s assessment in Grundzüge der Geschichte Ungarns. Dritte,
überarbeitete und um ein Register vermehrte Auflage (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche
Buchgesellschaft, 1977), p. 105.
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