The Wild East or Flexible Christian-Muslim Borderlands? On the Relations between the Kingdom of Hungary and the Ottoman Empire (1453-1526) (original) (raw)

In February 1473, Georg Heimburg, the former chancellor of the Heretic King of Bohemia, George Podiebrad, branded both Matthias Corvinus and his father, John Hunyadi, as traitors of the Cross: […] der Ungarische kunig ist gut Turck als sein vater was, do er den Turck liesse Constantinople zwingen […] ("the Hungarian king is a good Turk alike his father, for he allowed the Turk to take Constantinople").[1] The first fifteen years of Matthias' reign had shed reasonable doubts on the Ottoman dealings of the son the late athlete of Christendom.[2] In the last decade of Matthias' rule, Ottoman-Hungarian relations were largely bound to a series of two year truces, repeatedly extended.[3] According to them, no conflict between up to either 300 or 400 men on each side was to be considered a break of the truce. Such mutually agreed coordinates rightfully pinned the image of a "Wild East".[4] The last Ottoman-Hungarian truce prior to Mohács was concluded in spring 1519.[5] The duration of a truce was usually two (under Matthias) or three years (under the Jagiellonians).[6] The first of the post-1456 truces was apparently concluded in 1460 (if not, certainly in spring 1468).[7] In the 1400s (prior to 1495, 1498 and most importantly 1503),[8] the provisions of the truces are largely unknown (except for an Ottoman draft, from 1483-1484/ 1487-1488)[9]. According to Sigmund von Dietrichstein's Croatian sources (June 10, 1519) a raiding party of 300 Turks did not constitute a break of the truce.[10] At any rate, the most vivid accounts date from the last years of Matthias' rule. […] Lo oratore del Turcho anchora se ritrova a Buda presso la Maesta del Re, e venne cum circha ventecinque cavalli, che e mancho assai de quello che intese a Segne [Senj/ Segna],