Berecz Mátyás - Bujdosné Pap Györgyi - Petercsák Tivadar (szerk.): Végvár és mentalitás a kora újkori Európában - Studia Agriensia 31. (Eger, 2015)

ILLIK PÉTER: A háborús békeévek mindennapjai egy 1616. évi kártételi lista alapján

Péter Illik

EVERYDAY LIFE IN PEACETIME IN THE LIGHT OF A 1616 DAMAGE INVENTORY

The Habsburgs and the Ottoman Empire ended hostilities within the Kingdom of Hungary at the Peace of Zsitvatorok ( 1606). It was a peace that had to be confirmed on a number of occasions, as the parties involved were not in the habit of respecting its terms or its restrictive nature. As a result the 17lh century witnessed a more peaceful state of affairs rather than a long period of sustained peace. In practice the border incidents that were always going on, were proxy wars rather than all-out military campaigns.

The situation described above provides the context for the damage inventory (which was in actual fact two interconnected documents). In the text, one finds listed the breaches in the peace made by the Ottomans, committed in blatant contravention of the peace treaties signed at Zsitvatorok and Vienna. The list is special for several reasons. Firstly, it was the peace violations committed by the local Ottoman soldiers and secondly these violations occurred at the beginning of the period of peace, in contrast with the other listed incidents that took place in the middle of the century. In doing so the inventory shows just how fragile the Habsburg-Ottoman peace in fact was.

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