Transylvanian-Turkish War of 1657-62

The Cossack army, with their Transylvanian allies in Poland, have suffered a number of setbacks in addition to diplomatic tensions with Russia.

As a result, Khmelnytsky has had to deal with a Cossack rebellion on the home front.

Troubling news also comes from Crimea, as the Tatars, in alliance with Poland, are preparing for a new invasion of Ukraine.

Though already ill, Khmelnytsky continues to conduct diplomatic activity, at one point even receiving the Tsar's envoys in his bed.

He had on July 22, suffered cerebral hemorrhage and become paralyzed.

He dies on the morning of July 27, 1657.

Ivan Vyhovsky, serving in the Polish military, had been captured by Khmelnystsky's rebel Cossack forces at Zhovti Vody in May of 1648; freed on account of his education and experience, he had risen to become secretary-general or chancellor of the Cossacks and one of Khmelnytsky's closest advisors.

Elected hetman upon the death of Khmelnytsky, Vyhovsky seeks to find a counterbalance to the pervasive Russian influence present in Ukraine after the 1654 Treaty of Pereyaslav.

While the Cossack elite and the ecclesiastical authorities support this pro-Polish orientation, the masses and the Cossack rank-and-file remain deeply suspicious and resentful of the Poles, by whom they have long been forced into serfdom.

As a result, some Cossacks, led by Iakiv Barabash, put forward an alternative candidate for the hetmancy in Martyn Pushkar, the colonel of the Poltava regiment of Cossacks.

The Transylvanian diet, on Turkish orders, deposes Rákóczi in November of 1657 for undertaking an unauthorized war.

The Turks invade Transylvania in force in January 1658 after the Medgyes Diet reinstates Prince György II Rákóczi.

Rákóczi turns back Turkish besiegers at Transylvania’s capital.

The rebellion against the hetman grows, and comes to a head when Vyhovsky's forces clash with the pro-Russian Cossacks in June of 1658.

Vyhovsky's forces prevail, killing Pushkar and forcing Barabash to flee (he will later be captured and executed).

However, it has clearly been a fratricidal conflict, resulting in some 50,000 deaths.

A double assault by the grand vizier in June sacks Karlsburg and captures three other fortresses.

Rákóczi is again deposed and flees to his estates in Austrian Hungary.

Rákóczi, returning in 1659 with other Hungarian recruits to Transylvania, is again proclaimed prince.

Turkish forces under the pasha (governor) of Buda invade in response and attack from Temesvár to Torda and Herrmannstadt, victorious all the way.

Transylvania, the eastern part of the former Hungarian Kingdom that after 1526 had gained semi-independence while paying tribute to the Ottoman Empire, had felt strong enough in 1657, to attack the Tatars (the Empire's vassals) to the East, and later the Ottoman Empire itself, which had come to the Tatars' defense.

Transylvania’s Prince György II Rákóczi has turned to Austria for help against the invasion of his Ottoman Turkish suzerain, making land concessions, but the Austrians have delayed.

A Ottoman army in 1660 makes a tour of destruction from northeastern Hungary, enters Transylvania, and in May defeats Rákóczi at the Battle of Gyula, near Fenes, where he is mortally wounded; he dies at Nagy-Várad in June.

His son, Ferenc Rákóczi, had in 1652 been designated to become prince of Transylvania, but is never to reign after his father's death.

The Sublime Porte now openly disregards the Transylvanian Estates' right to elect the prince.

Hungarian aristocrat János Kemény views this, and the successive invasions of Transylvania by the Turks and their Crimean Tatar allies, as an end of Transylvania's autonomy, which he thinks can be prevented only with reliance on Habsburg help.

Kemény is elected prince by the rebellious Transylvanian Diet on January 1, 1661, after Ákos Barcsai, backed up by the Turks, had been forced to resign.

The Transylvanian Diet, led by Kemény, had in April 1661 proclaimed the secession of Transylvania from the Ottoman Empire and called on Vienna for help.

In turn, an overwhelming Turkish and Tatar army attacks Transylvania in June, defeating Kemény's army and driving him to Royal Hungary.