Diaconescu, Marius (szerk.): Mediaevalia Transilvanica 1998 (2. évfolyam, 2. szám)
Stat
On the Political History of Transylvania in 1440-1443 195 voivodes can be shown to have turned up in Transylvania and assumed his duties there26. Quite to the contrary, one of them, namely Mihály, is clearly attested in the king's entourage in the court of Buda on 20 October 144027. Wladislaw's position was not stable enough to be able to give military help to his own men and deprive Losonci of his authority in Transylvania. Elisabeth's German and Bohemian mercenaries laid siege to the castle of Pressburg, defended by Wladislaw's faithful partisan, István Rozgonyi, while the queen's other followers ravaged the regions west of the Danube. In view of this situation it is not surprising that Losonci continued to function as voivode of Transylvania throughout the rest of the year 144028. The situation only changed in the early days of 1441, when Wladislaw's army defeated Elisabeth's partisans near Bátaszék29 30. After the battle the queen definitively withdrew to the northwestern comer of the kingdom, setting up her residence in the city of Pressburg, and she was no more able to put up any resistance outside the territory directly controlled by her formidable condottiere, Jan Giskra. Wladislaw himself took the field in person and, having forced archbishop Szécsi's brother, Tamás, to a truce, reconquered the Transdanubian castles which had been occupied by Elisabeth's barons in the fisrt half of 1440. The king’s victories seem to have prompted voivode Dezső to seek a rapprochement with Wladislaw; at least this is what can be inferred from a charter dated to 13 January 1441, in which Losonci orders the burghers of Bistriţa to send him the rest of their tax, because he will have to account for it to his lord the kingTM. Yet whatever the intentions of the former voivode were, Wladislaw had already decided to carry out a complete reorganisation of the kingdom's southern defensive system, an important element of which was of course Transylvania itself. Sometime during February 1441 the king conferred upon two of his partisans, János Hunyadi and Miklós Újlaki, heroes of the battle of Bátaszék, a hitherto unprecedented amount of administrative authority. They became together voivodes of Transylvania, counts of the Szeklers, counts of Timiş and a series of other counties, and at the same time retained their former offices (Hunyadi remained banus of Severin, Újlaki that of Macsó)31. 26 The best way to make sure whether the new office-holders could get possession of the voivode's honor would be to identify their familiares as castellans of the strongholds belonging to the honor. Unfortunately, our evidence from these years is so fragmented that no such investigation is possible. See P. Engel, Archontológia (see note 5), II, under the individual castles. 27 Zbiór dokumentów malopolskich, II., Wroclaw, 1968, No. 569. 28 A kolozsmonostori konvent jegyzőkönyvei (1289-1556), published by Zsigmond Jakó, I-II., Budapest, 1990,1, p. 257, nos. 274, 275. 29 On this battle and its role in the career of János Hunyadi see Pál Engel, János Hunyadi: The Decisive Years of his Career, 1440-1444, in From Rákóczi to Hunyadi. War and Society in Late Medieval and Early Modern Hungary, ed. by J. M. Bak and Béla K. Király, Columbia University Press, 1982, p. 117 and 123, no. 29. 30 Bánffy (see note 11) II, pp. 637-638: "...quia rationem domino nostro regi nobis superinde exhibere oportet.". 1 See Engel, Archontológia (see note 5), passim, where all the relevant information can be found.
