George II Rákóczi

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George II Rákóczi, Prince of Transylvania
Signature Georg II. Rákóczi.PNG

Georg II. Rákóczi ( Hungarian II. Rákóczi György , born January 30, 1621 in Sárospatak ; † June 7, 1660 in Oradea ) was from 1648 with interruptions Prince of Transylvania from the Hungarian - Calvinian noble family of the Rákóczi .

Life

He was the eldest son (who reached adulthood) of Prince Georg I. Rákóczi from his marriage to Zsuzsanna Lórántffy and was elected (co-) Prince of Transylvania on February 19, 1642, while his father was still in office. On February 3, 1643 he married Sophia Báthory , who, under pressure from her future mother-in-law, converted from Catholicism to Calvinism. From this marriage the son Franz I. Rákóczi was born.

After his father's death in 1648, he was sole ruler and pursued his plans to win the crown of Poland for his dynasty. For this purpose he concluded alliances with the ataman of the Zaporozhian Cossacks , Bogdan Chmielnicki and the princes of Moldova and Wallachia , Vasile Lupu and Matei Basarab . But it was not until January 1657 that, as an ally of the Swedish King Karl X. Gustav , who had invaded Poland militarily in 1655 and triggered the Second Northern War , he led a Transylvanian-Cossack army of up to 40,000 men against the Polish King John II Casimir on. He devastated large parts of Poland without achieving his political goals. On the contrary, due to the cruelty of his multinational army, which he was never able to control completely, the resistance against the aggressors and the hatred of himself in particular grew among the Poles.

In Krakow he joined the Swedes , taking Brest on July 2nd , followed by Warsaw on July 16th. But when his Swedish ally withdrew from Poland, Rákóczi's political plans collapsed like a house of cards. The Transylvanian-Cossack advance guard with the entourage was encircled and defeated on June 20, 1657 by the Polish army in the battle of Czarny Ostrów in Podolia . Having lost his entourage and abandoned by the flight of his Cossack associations, he felt compelled to surrender . In the subsequent peace talks with the Poles from June 21 to 23, 1657, he dissolved the alliance with the Swedes, he also undertook to make war contributions to Poland and the Polish military leaders, and to evacuate the occupied Polish cities of Krakow and Brest. The Poles then let him return home to his principality with the rest of his army. On the way back, however, a large part of his armed forces was raided by the Crimean Tatars , allied with the Poles , who dispersed the Transylvanian army and then deported them to the Crimea (up to 11,000 men). The leftovers with the leader returned to Transylvania with little glory.

On November 3, 1657, the Transylvanian Estates deposed him under pressure from the Sublime Porte for his unauthorized actions against Poland, because his campaign took place without coordination with the suzerain of the principality, the Ottoman Empire . He was replaced by Franz Rhédey , who held the prince's throne until January 9, 1658. Georg tried to regain power in the Principality of Transylvania between 1658 and 1660, but had to deal with the new candidate of the Ottoman Grand Vizier Mehmed Pascha Köprülü , Ákos Barcsay . The civil war broke out . With clever tactics, he regained the crown of Transylvania, but finally overstepped the curve. The Ottomans no longer stopped at threats . An Ottoman army attacked the autonomous principality and systematically devastated the country. In the following battles Georg II. Rákóczi died in Großwardein from the wounds he had sustained during the Battle of Gyalu on May 22, 1660.

literature

Web links

  • Illustration by Mathias van Somer from 1665: Georgius Rakoczii, DG Princeps Transsylvaniae ( digitized )
predecessor Office successor
George I. Rákóczi Prince of Transylvania
1648 - 1657 / 1660
Michael I. Apafi