Századok – 2010

TANULMÁNYOK - Neumann Tibor: Békekötés Pozsonyban - országgyűlés Budán. A Jagelló-Habsburg kapcsolatok egy fejezete (1490-1492) (Első közlemény)

372 NEUMANN TIBOR Romans, and early in November the peace treaty was finally concluded at Pressburg. As part of the long treaty, the Austrian House recognised Wladislaw II as the „unquestionable king of Hungary", and engaged themselves to restore all the castles still occupied by the Germans (with the exception of the territory along the border, which had been mortgaged to Frederick half a century before). In return, Maximilian was guarenteed that in case of the Hungarian king's dying heirless, he or his heirs would inherit the Hungarian throne; moreover, Wladislaw resigned the territories he was still holding in the hereditary provinces, and promised to pay 100.000 florins of indemnity. Although the practical consequences of the treaty will be analysed in the second part of the study, it can safely be stated that the treaty of Pressburg was far from humiliating from the Hungarians' point of view. The king of Hungary, pressed by financial misery, could not pursue a war on several fronts, and the prime condition of peace was exactly the abandoning of all claims to Austrian territories. It has to be emphasised that the Hungarians were very far from victory before the treaty; quite to the contrary, it was the German troops of Frederick and Maximilian which were on the attack in October. Consequently, the demand of an indemnity was not unfounded, and, as we will see later, its payment was not even burdensome for the Hungarian government. That the peace was by no means humiliating is further proved by king Maximilian's displeasure with what was in fact a work of the emperor's diplomacy. Indeed, one of our sources emphasises that he could have made a much more advantageous peace a year before. From this point of view, Wladislaw's summer campaign in 1491 did produce a more favourable situation for making the peace.