Abstract
In the mid-17th century, Venice became the stage on which the Zrínyi family played out its many and multifaceted political, commercial and cultural interests. The elder brother Miklós (1620–1664), besides being one of the most well-regarded poets of 17th-century Hungarian literature, was also a politician (serving as the Ban of Croatia) and a skilled businessman. He spent his entire life fighting against the Turkish Ottoman invaders, while also attempting to reign in the uneasy alliance with the Habsburgs. The focus of this paper is to explore the visits Miklós made to Venice, together with his younger brother Péter (1621–1671) and his sister-in-law Katarina Frankopan (1625–1673), to look after their commercial interests, as well as to purchase Italian editions for their well-stocked library and find a publisher for their own translations and, last but not least, to forge diplomatic ties with the French ambassador Piero Bonsi (1631–1703), in a bid to defend the independence of Hungary, even if this meant upsetting the traditional European alliances.
Introduction
In their centuries-long struggle against the infidel Ottoman Turks, the Republic of Venice and the remnants of the Kingdom of Hungary often found ways of establishing alliances and collaborating to weaken the Sublime Porte. This was no easy goal, also because of the considerable military might of the Ottoman Empire, which, in 1529, had been able to besiege Vienna, the bastion of Catholicism. Miklós Zrínyi's great-grandfather, Miklós Šubić Zrínyi (1508–1566), whom he was named after, had been present at and survived that siege, only to lose his life shortly after at the battle of Szigetvár, which has gone down in history as one of the bloodiest battles in the wars waged by Christianity against the Muslims. The objective of weakening the Turks was difficult to achieve also due to the conflicting presence on the international scene of both the Habsburg Empire and the State of the Church. Vienna had an ambiguous political stance towards the Ottomans, to the point that it sought and eventually found a modus vivendi with the enemy, enshrined in the peace of Vasvár (Eisenberg) of 1664, which sparked the protests of Zrínyi himself against Emperor Leopold I (1640–1705), who he had hitherto served as a trusted advisor (Tóth and Zágorhidi, 2018). Rome, on the other hand, in its craving to monopolise Christendom, had preferred to turn a blind eye towards the unfolding political situation – as in the case of the Thirty Years' War – with relations between the states focusing less on confessional and religious values and more on Realpolitik dynamics (Schilling, 2013).
To further complicate the international political stage was the specific situation in the Kingdom of Hungary. After the Battle of Mohács, in 1526, the country had been carved up into three parts: the west and north, called Royal Hungary (Királyi Magyarország), was a de facto province of the Habsburg empire; the east was occupied by the principality of Transylvania, an autonomous polity, albeit a tributary of the Sublime Porte, ruled by Protestant princes; while the central and southern part of the country had been occupied by the Ottomans and was ruled directly by a pasha. Moreover, the power of Emperor Leopold I, as king of Royal Hungary, was curtailed by the local governors, magnates who wielded their influence through the diet of the Hungarian Kingdom, whose palatinus was Ferenc Wesselényi (1605–1667), and through the regional diets, such as Count Miklós Zrínyi in Croatia, Count Ferenc Nádasdy II (1623–1671) in Délvidék (today's Vojvodina) and Princes György Rákóczy II first (1621–1660) and Mihály Apafi I later (1632–1690) in Transylvania (Eickhoff, 1991).1
Against this complex political backdrop, Venice, at the crossroads of trade routes, a focus of international diplomacy and a great hub of intellectual, cultural and artistic excellence, became a magnet for Miklós Zrínyi and other members of his family, such as his brother Péter (1621–1671) and sister-in-law Ana Katarina (Katalin) Frankopan (Frangépan) Zrinska, in their quest for political connections with and support from the West to further the Magyar cause (Bene et al., 2017; Bene, 2002).
Part I – Miklós Zrínyi and his trade relations with Venice
Miklós, and his younger brother Péter, could rely on a well-established business network in the Upper Adriatic. According to the 1671 survey by the commercial chamber of Zagreb, the wealth of the Zrínyi brothers amounted to 1,714,689 florins, in terms of their material assets, properties and trade revenues (Zimányi, 1960, 1973). Their property comprised no less than five provinces, from the port of Buccari (modern day Bakar in Croatia) to an estate at the confluence of the Drava and Mura rivers (approximately160–170 km to the north-east), and no less than five seaports, from Buccari itself, owned by Péter, to Buccarizza (Bakarac), Porto Re (Kraljevica), Cirquenizza (Crikvenica) and Selce, owned by Miklós. Trade primarily involved Hungarian cattle, whose meat was in great demand on Venetian tables, but also salt, timber, and cereals. Pannus latus, a cheap cloth for miners and furnace workers, was also traded from the minor ports, while iron from the Čabar mine arrived at the major port of Buccari, in the form of ingots and other manufactured products, such as nails, horseshoes, mortars, cannonballs, grenade tubes, sold not only to Venice but also to other Italian cities such as Ancona and Senigallia, which were already under the rule of the Papal States at the time (Zimányi, 1979).
In particular, the Hungarian meat trade featured some interesting developments over the years. The cattle were driven across the mainland, via Gorizia and Udine, to Venice, where they were slaughtered. Towards the middle of the 17th century, without warning, Vienna hiked up the Aufschlag, the special customs tax in Gorizia, from 4 to 48 soldi, with the intention not only of collecting more revenues but also of financially damaging the Zrínyi brothers by diminishing their profits. The latter, however, did not allow themselves to be intimidated and intensified trade by sea, shipping the cattle to Buccari, or even to Zara (Zadar), and then to Venice, thus managing to keep up their lucrative trade.
This significant episode explains why Vienna tried several times to buy the port properties of the Zrínyi family by offering in compensation other estates on the mainland and obtaining a flat refusal in return. The ports they owned, in fact, unlike Trieste and Rijeka, were exempt from custom duties thanks to the resolutions passed by the Hungarian diet, between 1609 and 1638, which already in 1596 had openly moved to defend their legal rights by urging Vienna to allow the Zrínyi family to trade without any harassment by the Habsburg officials and customs officers. This face-off escalated during the War of Candia (1645–1669), when the Turks blockaded the port of Zadar and Venice sent its ships to protect trade with Buccari. The authorities in Vienna viewed this as a treasonous offence but Zrínyi grounded his defence on the laws passed by the Hungarian Parliament while maintaining that without his trade revenues he would not be able to continue waging war against the common Turkish enemy. Buccari and the other smaller ports constituted both the backbone of the commercial empire of the Zrínyi brothers and a bridgehead to Venice.
The salt trade was another important source of revenue. Already flourishing in the 16th century, the industry had made the fortunes of Venetian-dominated northern Istria (Capodistria, Pirano and Muggia). In the 17th century, despite the crisis of 1609, which further exacerbated the already strained relations between Venice and Vienna, the production and trading of salt, along with oil and grain, continued to represent a substantial business estimated at around 120,000 ducats per year, even without taking into account the smuggling trade from the ports of Trieste, Fiume and Buccari for an equal amount (Ivetic, 1997). In Buccari, even a Catholic church had been turned into a salt warehouse by Miklós’ personal confessor, Francesco Cosmi, from Mogliano Veneto, a Minorite missionary placed in charge of managing the maritime possessions of the Zrínyi family. He had also seized the collection of oil and grain tithes by public force, from episcopal jurisdiction, triggering furious protests from the incumbent bishop and stirring up a hornets' nest with the Holy See (Nicolosi, 2023).
Since salt and meat were among the most sought-after products in Venice, the Serenissima represented by far the most important trading partner for the Zrínyi brothers.
Part II – Miklós Zrínyi, the poet and man of letters
The Zrínyis amassed an important library at their family seat at Csáktornya (modern-day Čakovec in Croatia), bearing witness to the great literary passion of both Miklós and his wider family. The library contained around 600 books, half of which were in Latin, a third in Italian and the rest in French, German, Spanish and, of course, Hungarian and Croatian (Klaniczay, 1991). The collection had begun in 1636, when Miklós, then only 16 years old, had made his first visit to Italy, on a peregrinatio academica, common since the late Middle Ages among the young scions of aristocratic families, who travelled to European university cities to complete their academic education and further their studies.
The Zrínyi library mainly comprised Italian, or rather Venetian, editions, since the lagoon city at the time was the most important publishing centre in Europe. It is very likely, therefore, that the Zrínyis purchased the books for their library in this city and it is certain that the collected poems of Miklós – translated into Croatian by his younger brother Péter – were published here in 1660 by well-known engraver, Giacomo Piccini. The collection, entitled in its original Hungarian version Adriai tengernek Syrenáya [The Siren of the Adriatic Sea], included – inter alia – the love verses dedicated to his first wife, Marija Euzebija Drašković (1624–1650), who died prematurely at the age of 26, and Miklós's masterpiece, the famous poem entitled Szigeti veszedelem [Szigetiana Obsidio, The Siege of Sziget] composed in 1651, a distinguished example of the epic literary genre in Hungarian literature about the heroic deeds of his same-named ancestor (Klaniczay, 1964, 1976; Szörényi, 1986).
This cultural fellowship between the brothers thus became a valuable source for the modern literary development of both Hungary and Croatia. Furthermore, Péter's wife, Miklós's sister-in-law, Katarina Frankopan (1625–1673), the heiress of one of the oldest and most prestigious Croatian families, originally from the island of Krk (now in Croatia), which boasted a legendary descent from the ancient Roman gens Anicia, had translated from German into Croatian a prayer book for travellers called Putni tovaruš, described by contemporary critics as a shining example of Croatian Baroque literature. The volume was published by Babiani in 1661, in Venice of course.
The vibrant literary scene of the Serenissima had also produced a number of Academies. In 1630, shortly before the terrible plague that swept through Venice and claimed 46,000 lives in the lagoon city alone, Giovan Francesco Loredan (1607–1661), writer, patron of the arts and successful entrepreneur in the field of publishing, founded the “Accademia degli Incogniti” (Academy of the Incognitos), one of the liveliest literary circles in 17th-century Italy (Miato, 1998). In the much-varied landscape of Italy at the time, dominated by considerable geographical and social differences, Venice became a de facto “officina del romanzo”, a factory of book writing, printing and dissemination, also thanks to its status as a free republic, in which secular and ecclesiastical censorship could often be easily circumvented (Stockbrugger, 2020). Giovan Francesco Loredan, for example, bypassed controls by transporting books that could potentially be censored or banned by concealing them among authorised books (Miato, 1998). The Accademia degli Incogniti was firmly ensconced as a leading light within this lively and interesting cultural milieu because it was viewed as a “hypertrophic group”, a “varied and diverse assortment” of members from different backgrounds, who represented a plurality of opinions and perfectly mirrored the general situation of Venice (Stockbrugger, 2020).
Moreover, the Accademia degli Incogniti had strongly pro-French leanings, as clearly demonstrated by the presence among its members of many illustrious Frenchmen, such as Gabriel Naudé, a librarian who was highly thought of by Mazarin, and Ismaël Boulliau, the librarian to the Dupuy brothers in Paris, who sojourned in Venice from July 1645 to September 1646, in the retinue of the then ambassador Jacques Bretel de Grémonville (Carnino, 2021). Further evidence of the pro-French leanings of the Accademia degli Incogniti lies in the membership of Galeazzo Gualdo Priorato, a secretary to Cardinal Mazarin, who, however, switched sides after he was appointed court historiographer in Vienna, in 1663, when he embraced the Habsburg cause. Cornelio Frangipane, who belonged to the Friuli branch of the Frankopan (Frangépan) family, also appears among the members of the Academy.
There is no trace, however, of the Zrínyi brothers, although it is highly likely that Miklós and Péter, given their multifaceted interests in the city and being well-introduced in the Venetian literary milieu, were very familiar with the Accademia as its major driving force (Bene, 1993, 2002). This is confirmed by the famous autobiography of Miklós Bethlen (1642–1716), son of the Chancellor of the Principality of Transylvania János Bethlen and right-hand man of the rulers of Transylvania János Kemény (1661–1662) and Mihály Apafi I (1662–1690). Published in Hungary only in 1858–1860, with the title Gróf Bethlen Miklós önéletírása [The Autobiography of Count Miklós Bethlen], the work was written in prison, in Eszék (modern day Osijek in Croatia) and in Vienna, where Bethlen served time between 1704 and 1710, having been accused of lèse majesté against the Habsburgs (Bethlen, 1858; Zs. Tóth, 2012). The memoirs are a shining example of the Hungarian and European memoir genre, as well as a valuable source for reconstructing the political events explored in this paper.
Part III – Miklós Zrínyi, the diplomat and political intrigue in Venice
As Bán of Croatia, Zrínyi ruled what was probably the region most exposed to the numerous Ottoman incursions that attempted to smash the delicate geopolitical balance in this area of Europe and which turned the civilian population into helpless victims of pillage and plundering, not only by the Turks but also by mercenary troops, especially German, paid by the Habsburg emperors. Count Zrínyi had only two options to stop this sorry state of affairs. He could either submit to the Ottoman Turks and pay land tax to avoid further plundering, or he could send a request for help to Emperor Leopold I, making it clear that repelling the advance of the infidels was a matter of life or death not just for the Hungarians but for the European civilization as a whole.
In a letter addressed to the emperor, written shortly before the battle of St Gotthard (Mogerdorf), in the wake of which the peace treaty of Vasvár (Eisenberg) was signed, Miklós, reflecting on the military strength of Christendom against the Turks, spoke of defence and attack and, with a frankness bordering on the disrespectful, to say the least, advised and prompted the emperor to take the leadership of the army into his own hands and ensure that his orders were carried out immediately “senza chiacchiere inutili”: it was a reference to the emperor's counsellors with whom Zrínyi was in bad relations, namely Raimondo Montecuccoli (1609–1680), supreme commander of the Imperial forces, and Prince Johann Weichard Auersperg (1615–1677), Oberhofmeister (Grand Master of the Court) of Ferdinand III and then of Leopold I (Testa, 2000; Nagy and Hausner, 2011). Zrínyi also tried to dissuade the emperor from supporting the political (not military) strategy of preserving the frontiers since the Turks “senza vincere, tutto vince, quando non resti vinto”, while “noi se non vinciamo, siam vinti”. Zrínyi argued that while the enemy remained camped on Hungarian soil, its strength and treasury would be depleted, the vassals would despair, and the army be scattered. The only solution was to restore the unity of the Christian forces because only through unity could the enemy be defeated: “ma non per tanto il nemico è invincibile, massime se li cade addosso il congiunto taglio delle spade battezzate” (Szelestei, 1980).
In his letter, Count Miklós also showed how he could always be one step ahead. Regarding the voices against him and his younger brother Péter, suspected of conspiring against the emperor, Miklós swore that “il mio cuore non va anelando ricchezze, né ha sete di famose conquiste, e di fumose dignitá, la certezza d'haver bene, et onoratamente servito, è la più bella ricompensa, che possa godere un animo moderato; essendo la glória più degna delle virtuose azzioni quella d'haverle fatte”. And again, “l'ultimo de’ miei voti consiste in poter fare argine col mio proprio cadavere alla piena dell'armi turchesche e s'io havessi di Sansone un sol capello, di Sansone non mi mancharebbe il cuore” (Szelestei, 1980). The brothers were suspected of a double-dealing strategy in favour of the French king Louis XIV. Montecuccoli himself had expressed concern about the fact that “egli teneva della corrispondenza co’ stranieri, ai quali si rivelava cose di Stato” (Testa, 2000).
There seems to be a core of truth in Montecuccoli's suspicions, if we consider that in precisely the same years Jacques Bretel de Grémonville (1625–1686), then ambassador extraordinaire to Vienna, had received orders from Versailles to make contact with Miklós Zrínyi (Romain, 1986). Given the international situation and the fact that the Hungarian magnates, in order to save at least the heartland of the kingdom, were ready to make a deal even with the enemy Turks, Louis XIV did not shy away from fanning the flames of Hungarian discontent to his advantage. Yet Grémonville's attempts to win Miklós Zrínyi over to the French cause did not meet with the success he had hoped for, perhaps because the latter did not wish to betray the emperor, but certainly also because his sudden death in November of that same year, during a hunting expedition, inevitably put a stop to any ambitions in that direction. Grémonville was more successful with other members of the Hungarian elite, such as Péter Zrínyi, who had inherited the estates and titles of Miklós after his death, aspired to become Prince of Transylvania, and the international support of France was the best he could hope for, while Ferenc Nádasdy, the Supreme Judge of Hungary yearned to receive the title of Count Palatine, in place of Ferenc Wesselényi, who died shortly thereafter in 1667. The Magyar rebels went so far as to propose to Grémonville, in exchange for French help, on one hand the election of a Bourbon prince as King and on the other hand support for Louis XIV's candidacy to the imperial crown, promising that Hungary would be annexed to the Holy Roman Empire and would declare war on Austria (Eichkoff, 1991). However, when it became clear that Grémonville could not commit himself to any concrete support on behalf of Louis XIV, the Magyar nobles seriously considered appealing directly to Sultan Mehmed IV (1648–1687). At this juncture, the Magyar cause turned into a full-fledged conspiracy, the so-called Magnatenverschwörung, which was crushed by Vienna in 1671, following which all the conspirators, Péter Zrínyi, Ferenc Nádasdy and Francis Christopher Frangepan, Katarina's younger brother and Péter's brother-in-law, were sentenced to death. The termination of Grémonville's tenure in Vienna, in 1673, and especially the signing of the Peace of Nijmegen in 1678, by which France achieved a considerable diplomatic victory over the Empire, put an end to the Magyar hopes of creating a free Hungary independent of Vienna (Köpeczi, 1982). Reason of State had prevailed (Carsten, 1968).
Also, the Venetian ambassador to Vienna from 1661 to 1665, Giovanni Sagredo (1616–1682), embraced the Magyar cause. In his Relation de la Cour Imperiale faite au Doge de Venise (Kont, 1913), he strongly condemned the Imperial policy towards Hungary. In particular, the Peace of Vasvár, concluded on 10 August 1664 after the Battle of St. Gotthard and ratified the following September, showed that a cowardly betrayal had been perpetrated against the Magyar nation. The battle on the field had demonstrated the overwhelming superiority of the Imperial forces, to which Zrínyi had made an important contribution. Yet, in spite of the victory, Leopold I had concluded a shameful agreement with the Turks, since the peace established a territorial status quo that looked ill at odds with the victorious outcome of the battle, revealing that the government in Vienna had “alcun desiderio di vedere l’Ungheria libera ed unificata”. Sagredo, for his part, accused the emperor of coming to terms with the Turks only out of cowardice, fearing that France might otherwise become too strong. The Hungarians, Sagredo claimed, were caught between two fires, “les Turcs qui les veulent oppress et les Allemands qui ne les veulent pas defendre”, because if they did so the Hungarians would regain their freedom and demand the election of a national king (Köpeczi, 1982). The Venetian ambassador thus demonstrated that he was on Zrínyi's side by claiming, moreover, that after the peace of Vasvár the Hungarian bán had been prepared to put himself at the service of the Serenissima. Only the fatal hunting incident and subsequent death of Zrínyi had cut short any negotiations and played in favour of the Imperial party (Bérenger, 1967, 1973, 1979).
Confirming the diplomatic plots within the court, we know for certain that the Zrínyi's ties with Venice were not only commercial and cultural in nature but political as well. In his autobiography, Miklós Bethlen, an eyewitness to the hunting accident that caused Count Zrínyi's death, tells us that he remained in Csáktornya until the arrival of the latter's brother Péter, who asked him to go to Grobnyi, where Péter's wife Katarina Frankopan was staying, to take the news of her brother-in-law Miklós’ death. After a few days spent with Péter and Katarina at their home, Bethlen left for Venice, in the middle of winter, shortly after Christmas. His account is not clear about whether this journey was an actual assignment, although, by his own admission, it was dictated by his desire to make his own contribution to the struggle against the Turks to redeem the death of the great Magyar poet and continue his mission. Bethlen further notes in his memoirs that “a Venezia fui raccomandato ai conoscenti della signora [i.e. Katarina Frankopan]” (Di Francesco, 2002), who must have been a frequent visitor to the lagoon city since she had met the bishop of Béziers and the new French ambassador to Venice, Piero Bonsi2 (1631–1703), there only a few weeks earlier asking for financial aid, arms and ships (Eickhoff, 1991). The bishop, for his part, had encouraged the marriage of Ilona Zrínyi, the daughter of Péter and Katarina, to Ferenc Ráckózy I, who reigned as Prince of Transylvania between 1657 and 1658, in order to join the most influential lineages of Transylvania and Croatia in the name of the Magyar cause. Although Zrínyi and Louis XIV exchanged letters in June-July 1664 (Kont, 1913), the Hungarians received only vague assurances from Versailles about military support. Then Zrínyi suddenly died and his loyal companions turned to conspiracy. For this reason, France abandoned the Magyar cause, certain that Hungary could not resist the Ottoman Empire without the support of the Habsburgs.
Conclusions
The poet Miklós Zrínyi dedicated his entire life to the Magyar cause. Finding nothing but ambiguity at the imperial court of Leopold I, the Hungarian count tried to play the French card by forging relations with Louis XIV's ambassadors in Vienna and Venice. But it was with the lagoon city that the Zrínyi family forged its closest ties, and all political encounters took place in this city, helped by the fact that – in the cultural and literary circles rather than in the venues of power (and Loredan's Accademia degli Incogniti was a shining example of this) – Venetian public opinion had openly sided with France. The lagoon city thus became a crossroads of political intrigue, commercial activities and cultural exchange. The Zrínyi brothers came to Venice on several occasions to protect their commercial interests, but also to purchase books in their Italian edition for their huge library, to publish their translation and, last but not least, to establish ties with the French ambassador. The Transylvanian Miklós Bethlen, a sincere admirer of the charisma of the poet Miklós Zrínyi, also travelled through Venice in the hope of mediating between Paris and his native country in an anti-Turkish capacity.
For the Magyar history of the period, therefore, the Republic of St. Mark played an invaluable role: it was the setting in which the autonomist and independentist ambitions of Royal Hungary took shape and the country tried to join the concert of European powers. Miklós’ sudden death during a hunting trip marked a hiatus between the secret meetings that could have led to resounding diplomatic alliances and the actual conspiracy that failed miserably in 1671 and unleashed the bloody Habsburg revenge.
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Since Délvidék was de facto under Ottoman rule at that time, Nádasdy had lost his own dominance over this region. However, his political influence was still vital, considering that he was the Supreme judge of the Hungarian Kingdom (iudex curiae regiae), and that, after the death of Ferenc Wesselényi, he was appointed lieutenant of the king. Relating to Transylvania, its status of autonomous polity allowed its Princes to safeguard their political influence on foreign affairs.
A brief biographical note about him can be read in “Bulletin mensuel de l’Académie des sciences et lettres de Montpellier” https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k5544665z/f16.image.r=pierre%20bonsi?rk=150215;2 (June 2024).