Egy új együttműködés kezdete; Az 1622. évi soproni koronázó országgyűlés - Annales Archivi Soproniensis 1. (Sopron-Budapest, 2014)

Az uralkodó és a rendek - Pálffy Géza: Egy elfelejtett kiegyezés a 17. századi magyar történelemben. Az 1622. évi koronázódiéta Sopronban

Egy elfelejtett kiegyezés: a^ 1622. évi koroná^ódiéta Sopronban

A Forgotten Compromise

in the Seventeenth-Century History of the Kingdom of Hungary:

The Hungarian Diet and Queen’s Coronation at Sopron (Odenburg) in 1622

The essay analyzes a period and question of the Central European Habsburg Monarchy and the Kingdom of Hungary that up till now had been hardly researched. First, it examines who among the Hungarian estates between

1619 and 1621 supported the Transylvanian prince Gábor Bethlen (1613— 1629), entering the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648) on the side of the Bohemian rebels, and why. The latter’s election as King of Hungary in August

1620 jeopardized the rule of Emperor Ferdinand II in Hungary, which, together with the Bohemian uprising, put the very survival of the monarchy at risk. Because these years represented a genuine crisis period for the composite state of the Habsburg dynasty, the topic demands particular attention from an international perspective as well. Despite this, until now neither Hungarian nor international scholarship have examined this question. Second, based on new archival research in Austria, Hungary and Slovakia the author analyzes how the emperor succeeded in resolving the crisis with the help of a new compromise reached with the Hungarian estates at the Diet of Sopron (German Ödenburg) in the summer of 1622, and thereby preserve Hungary as the monarchy’s bulwark and larder against the Ottomans. Regarding these two issues, the following major conclusions can be drawn.

Compared to István Bocskai’s uprising (1604—1606), many more within the Hungarian estates, about half, supported the prince of Transylvania, Gábor Bethlen, in the years 1619—1621. Moreover, a significant group of the high dignitaries and aristocrats playing decisive roles in the direction of the Hungarian kingdom’s military and financial affairs as well as its domestic politics and institutions supported Bethlen voluntarily and even elected him king in Besztercebánya (today Banská Bystrica, Slovakia) in August 1620 as well. This was a serious consequence primarily of the failure of the court in Vienna and the Hungarian Catholic elite allied with it to respect several elements of the system of compromises reached at the Diet of Pozsony (today Bratislava, Slovakia) in late 1608 between King Matthias II (1608-1619) and the Hungarian estates. However, because the imperial military leadership, the Hungarian prelates, the Croat lords and the Hungarian aristocrats loyal to the court, led by Miklós Esterházy, continued to back Ferdinand II, Beth57