STEPHEN BATHORY - KING OF POLAND -
1533-1586
Robert Nisbet Bain
Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th edition, 1910, vol 25, page 911
STEPHEN (ISTVAN) BATHORY (15331586), king of Poland and
prince of Trausylvania, the most famous member of the Somlyó branch of
the ancient Bathory family, now extinct, but originally almost coeval with the
Hungarian monarchy. Istvhn Bâthory spent his early years at the court of
the emperor Ferdinand, subsequently attached himself to Janos Zapolya, and won
equal renown as a valiant lord-marcher, and as a skilful diplomatist at the
imperial court. Zapolya rewarded him with the voivodeship of Transylvania, and
as the loyal defender of the rights of his patron's son, John Sigismund, he
incurred the animosity of the emperor Maximilian, who kept him in prison for
two years. On the 25th of May 1571, on the death of John Sigismund, Bathory was
elected prince of Transylvania by the Hungarian estates, in spite of the
opposition of the court of Vienna and contrary to the wishes of the late
prince, who had appointed Gaspar Bekesy his successor. Békesy insisting
on his claims, a civil war ensued in which Báthory ultimately drove his
rival out of Transylvania (1572). On the flight of Henry of Valois from Poland
in 1574, the Polish nobility, chiefly at the instigation of the great
chancellor, Jan Zamoyski, elected Bathory king of Poland (1574) in opposition
to the emperor Maximilian, the candidate of the senate. On hearing of his
altogether unexpected elevation, Bathory summoned the Transylvanian estates
together at Medgyes and persuaded them to elect his brother Christopher prince
in his stead; then hastening to Cracow, he accepted the onerous conditions laid
upon him by the Polish Diet, espoused the princess Anne, the elderly sister of
the last Jagiello, Sigismund II, and on the 1st of May was crowned with
unprecedented magnificence. At first his position was extremely difficult; but
the sudden death of the emperor Maximilian at the very moment when that
potentate, in league with the Muscovite, was about to invade Poland, completely
changed the face of things, and though Stephen's distrust of the Habsburgs
remained invincible, he consented at last to enter into a defensive alliance
with the empire which was carried through by the papal nuncio on his return to
Rome in 1578. The leading events of Stephen Báthory's glorious reign can
here only be briefly indicated. All armed opposition collapsed with the
surrender of Danzig. The Pearl of Poland, encouraged by her immense
wealth, and almost impregnable fortifications, as well as by the secret support
of Denmark and the emperor, had shut her gates against the new monarch, and was
only reduced (Dec. 16, 1576) after a six months' siege, beginning with a
pitched battle beneath her walls in which she lost 5000 of her mercenaries.
Danzig was compelled to pay a fine of 200,000 guldens, but her civil and
religious liberties were wisely confirmed. Stephen was now able to devote
himself to foreign affairs. The difficulties with the sultan were temporarily
adjusted by a truce signed on the 5th of November 1577; and the Diet of Warsaw
was persuaded to grant Stephen subsidies for the inevitable war against
Muscovy. Two campaigns of wearing marches, and still more exhausting sieges
ensued, in which Bathory, although repeatedly hampered by the parsimony of the
Diet, was uniformly successful, his skillful diplomacy at the same time
allaying the suspicions of the Porte and the emperor. In 1581 Stephen
penetrated to the very heart of Muscovy, and, on the 22nd of August, sat down
before the ancient city of Pskov, whose vast size and imposing fortifications
filled the little Polish army with dismay. But the king, despite the murmurs of
his own officers, and the protestations of the papal nuncio, Possevino, whom
the curia, deluded by the mirage of a union of the churches, had sent expressly
from Rome to mediate between the tsar and the king of Poland, closely besieged
the city throughout a winter of arctic severity, till, on the 13th of December
1581, Ivan the Terrible, alarmed for the safety of the third city in his
empire, concluded peace at Zapoli (Jan. 15, 1582), thereby ceding
Polotsk and the whole of Livonia. The chief domestic event of Stephen's reign
was the establishment in Poland of the Jesuits, who alone had the intelligence
to understand and promote his designs of uniting Poland, Muscovy and
Transylvania into one great state with the object of ultimately expelling the
Turks from Europe. The project was dissipated by his sudden death, of apoplexy,
on the 12th of December 1586.
See I. Polkowski, The Martial Exploits of Stephen Bdthory
(Pol.; Cracow, 1887); Paul Pierling, Un Arbitrage pontifical an xvi~
siècle (Brussels, 1890); Lajos Szadeczky, Stephen
Bdthory's election to the Crown of Poland (Hung.; Budapest, 1887). (R. N.
B.)