A thousand years of the Hungarian art of war

CHAPTER V

MILITARY THEORETICIAN AND GENERAL:

COUNT ZRINYI

The history of warfare can list very few men who combined in their person the thinker and the practical soldier. One of these excellent military talents was personified in Count Miklos Zrinyi (1620-1664). The son of a family which fought against the Turks for four generations, the young Zrinyi was destined to become a soldier. He was educated in the Jesuit schools of Graz, Vienna and Nagyszombat in a spirit loyal to the Habsburg monarchy. From 1635 to 1637, he toured Italy and studied at the University of Bologna. Although his humanistic education and talent made him the first real Hungarian polyhistor and a renowned poet, upon his return from Italy he chose the military profession as his career because "the buried bones and ghosts of Hungarian heroes won't let me sleep."/1/ After a few years of border-guard duties on the Turkish frontier, he participated in the Thirty Years' War. In 1646 he excelled with his troops in Bohemia in the campaign against the Swedish troops of Lennart Torstensson./2/ Emperor Ferdinand III (1637 - 1657) rewarded him with the position of Governor of Croatia in 1655.

Zrinyi took his new duty very seriously and replied to every breech of the peace by the Turkish forces with a raid on Turkish-occupied territories. His name became well known not only in Hungary but also in all of Europe. Emperor Ferdinand III showered him with flattering titles and positions: Governor General of Legrad and Murakoz, High Sheriff of Zala and Somogy counties and, finally, Master of the Royal Stable, i.e., Commander of the Calvary. Zrinyi had every reason to believe that upon the death of the nador (palatine, viceroy) Pal Palffy he would be promoted to this supreme position. The Estates and the Imperial Court, however, passed him by and appointed another magnate to the position. Zrinyi, deeply hurt, retired to his estates. While defending the frontiers against the Turks he began to study the art of

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war, adding his own military experiences and writing several excellent treatises on strategy and tactics.

In the second half of the seventeenth century, warfare was in a transition period. While in the multinational Habsburg empire the old tradition of mercenary soldiers and military entrepreneurs still lingered on, in Sweden the innovations of Gustavus Adolphus were preserved by Torstensson. The pillars of the Swedish military victories were simple soldiers who possessed the special personal qualities of nationalist feeling, religious conviction, and unconditional loyalty to their national leaders. An army made up of such soldiers could perform extraordinary deeds. Its generals could seek decisive battles instead of trying to avoid risks by forcing the enemy to surrender through clever but time-consuming maneuvers.

Zrinyi, studying the Habsburg as well as the Swedish military principles, concluded that against the Turks a Hungarian general, like Swedish generals, could rely on the emotional qualities of his soldiers. Adding thereto good training and modern armament, Zrinyi believed, the Hungarians could liberate themselves from the Turkish yoke without outside help. Furthermore, he realized that the Habsburgs' will to liberate Hungary from the Turks would always depend on the situation in the West. He was also suspicious of the Habsburgs' designs concerning the future of a liberated Hungary.

Ferdinand III had died in 1657. His successor, Leopold I (1657-1705), was too young not to be influenced by his advisors (Prince Wenzel Lobkowitz and Count Raimond Montecuccoli) who wanted to keep the liberated Hungary under their complete control by liberating it only with imperial mercenary forces. Thus, Zrinyi's idea of a Hungarian national army was horrifying to the court and unacceptable to the Hungarian estates (who would have had to pay for the maintenance of the army). His strategic principles looked ridiculous to the inflexible, mercenary strategist Montecuccoli./3/ The use of the infantry equipped with muskets, instead of the calvary, as the decision-forcing branch of the army contradicted tradition. To give up maneuvering and defensive strategy and go after decisive battles, accepting reasonable risks, seemed amateurish in the eyes of Montecuccoli. Furthermore, the grand strategy of the Habsburgs did not include renewing hostilities against the Ottoman Empire. To keep the peace, the emperor closed his eyes to Turkish raids, which were clear violations of the treaty.

In 1660, the peace period ended. The Ottoman Porte had never really trusted its satellite state of Transylvania. When George Rakoczi II, Prince of Transylvania with an eye on the Polish throne, began to pursue an independent foreign policy, the Turks decided to teach him a lesson. Rakoczi sought help in the Viennese

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Court. To prove his sincerity he was willing to hand over to Montecuccoli some of his key fortresses. The Ottoman army was faster to act, and Montecuccoli gave up the whole of Transylvania without a battle. Zrinyi desperately urged him and the court to resist the Turkish invasion, but his pleas were disregarded.

After this less-than-glorious campaign, Montecuccoli defended his strategy in an unsigned leaflet, accusing the bitter Hungarians of being military illiterates and thus unable to understand his flawless military operations./4/ Zrinyi replied in another pamphlet. After refuting Montecuccoli's charges, he ridiculed with irony and contempt: "You received a wonderful army and destroyed it without fighting the enemy. You molested your friends more than your enemies; you looked on passively as the Turks carried away over 100,000 Hungarians into captivity. Such behavior is worse than that of a villainous hangman."/5/

Then he laid down those principles which he thought should be the basis for the strategy of an anti-Turkish campaign./6/

According to Zrinyi, the precondition of victory is not to maneuver so as to keep a safe distance from the enemy, but to advance courageously, forcing the enemy to fight. A general should not be concerned exclusively with numbers. Although the Hungarians in Montecuccoli's army were inferior in numbers to the Turks, he should have taken into consideration the fighting spirit of the Hungarian soldiers. Zrinyi believed that a good general always takes into account the fighting spirit of the soldiers. A general should award his subordinate commanders if they use their initiative to seek out and defeat the enemy. A general should search for those factors which in his judgment will make victory possible instead of looking only for those factors which will make his victory only probable, or outright impossible. A general should be the protector of the local population; gaining their support will benefit military operations. Courageous raids into the rear of the enemy are worth more than cautious maneuvering in the front. Only victoriously fought battles can win the war.

Zrinyi not only wrote about these principles, but in the 1663-64 campaigns he proved, with his troops, that their application really did produce victories. While Montecuccoli retreated from Hungary to protect Vienna against an expected Turkish invasion of Austria, Zrinyi destroyed the bridge on the Drava River, deep in the rear of the Turkish army, and deprived it of much-needed supplies. Then he fought dozens of victorious combats against the advancing Turkish columns. Montecuccoli, with his usual excess of caution, failed to exploit the successes of Zrinyi. Simply blockading the

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main roads to Vienna, he even refused to send aid to the troops which defended the besieged Zrinyi fort. After the fort fell, he ironically remarked: "It was built on the wrong location; I knew it was undefendable."/7/ After losing his fort to the superior Turkish forces, Zrinyi travelled to Vienna to plead personally with the emperor to adopt a more aggressive strategy.

By that time the whole of Europe echoed his name. The Pope awarded Zrinyi a gold portrait of himself. Emperor Leopold raised him to the rank of prince, but rejected his recommendations. Zrinyi refused the princely title, resigned his command, and returned to his estates a frustrated and disappointed man.

World history remembers Montecuccoli as the glorious general who stopped the Turkish army in a bloody battle at Szentgotthard and saved Austria in 1664./8/ What history fails to mention is the fact that the battle took place against Montecuccoli's wish. During the battle he desperately tried to withdraw his forces. The Turks actually broke through the lines of the imperial army and only the spontaneous attack of the German, Hungarian, and French cavalries, that is, the attack of "foreign subsidiary troops," turned the disaster into victory./9/ It is an irony of life that Montecuccoli won the greatest victory of his life by using, although unwillingly, the strategy of his forgotten rival - Count Miklos Zrinyi - the great military theoretician and general. Zrinyi's statement proved to be true: only victorious battles can win the war.

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A thousand years of the Hungarian art of war