Petercsák Tivadar - Berecz Mátyás (szerk.): Magyarország védelme - Európa védelme - Studia Agriensia 24. (Eger, 2006)
MAGYARORSZÁG VÉDELME -EURÓPA VÉDELME BALASSI BÁLINT ÉS BOCSKAI ISTVÁN KORÁBAN - GIZINSKA CSILLA: Egy lengyel vitéz magyar végvárakban a 16. század végén
Csilla Gizinska A POLISH WARRIOR AT THE HUNGARIAN BORDER FORTRESSES AT THE END OF THE 16TH CENTURY Adam Czahrowski (c.1565-c.1599), the Polish warrior poet from the eastern marches, played a dubious role on the side of the losing Maximilian party in the struggle for succession that followed the death of Stephen Báthory. It was something that forced him to leave the country following the election of Sigismund III. Czahrowski chose as the scene for his political exile the battlefields of Hungary, where the wars were being fought against the Turks. Between 1588 and 1596 he found himself fighting in all the most important conflicts. Indeed, there was scarcely a Hungarian border fortress he didn’t visit at some point during the hostilities. On his return he sang a cycle of poems based on his Hungarian experiences, which was published in Poznan in 1597 under the title Songs of Mourning and Other Matters. Apart from these poems relating to his Hungarian sojourn we have no other sources, and it is for this reason that we are entirely dependent on the poem cycle for a reconstruction of these eight years. Of the 92 poems contained in the volume, 14 contain topographical references, localities, dates and military events linking them to Hungary and life on the Hungarian border fortresses. It is particularly noticeable that the many colourful events Czahrowski lists contain all the most important scenes of combat. Initially he serves at the border castles at Eger and Szolnok with his forty horsemen, before taking part in the Battle of Szikszó. When the Porte planned to wage war on Vienna, Czahrowski travels to the endangered southern territories, where he spends a considerable time in Kanizsa. In 1593, at the time of the peace negotiations, he stays in Pozsony (now Bratislava, Slovakia), from where he travels to Nógrád, to take part in the winter campaign attacking those castles then in Turkish hands. In the spring of 1594 he fights in Komárom, Fehérvár and Győr, before taking part in the siege of Esztergom. Decreasing levels of military success, lack of payment, and ever greater feelings of disappointment caused by deprivation, take their toll, and in the years that follow Czahrowski devotes less and less time to describing his fate. He is still in Hungary following the capture of Hatvan, and to the fall of Eger 236
