94 The Origins of the Thirty Years War and the Revolt in Bohemia, 1618
which had been taken over by Protestants, and one case in particular
inflamed tempers and paved the way for the following revolt. In Novem-
ber 1603 the authorities secured a possession order from the emperor for
a church in the principal north-Hungarian city of Kaschau (Košice, now
in Slovakia), together with an instruction to the military commander of
Upper Hungary to enforce it. The citizens resisted, the troops responded
violently, and in the resulting proceedings not only were the Protestant
pastors expelled but Protestant services were banned in the city, while
punitive fines and confiscations were also imposed.^20 Property seizures,
partly to finance military operations, were also carried out more widely
in this period, targeting any Protestant nobles who openly opposed the
Habsburg regime and even extending to Stephan Illéshazy, then the
holder of the highest office in the government of Hungary.^21
In February 1604, in the midst of these events, the Hungarian Estates
began their scheduled meeting, but far from handling the furious
protests and wide-ranging complaints diplomatically Rudolf, through
his deputy, chose to use the closing resolution to renew the attack. In it
he re-validated a range of measures which his predecessors had enacted
in support of the Catholic church but which had long since lapsed, com-
prising in total a major step towards counter-Reformation and a direct
challenge to the predominantly Protestant Hungarian nobility. Resis-
tance coalesced around Stefan Bocskay, a Calvinist magnate with lands
straddling the Hungarian–Transylvanian border, and after the failure of
a pre-emptive Habsburg move against him this developed into an open
revolt.
Bocskay quickly gained both political and military support, whereas
the Imperial troops sent against him were ill-organised, unpaid and in
no mood or condition to fight a pitched battle, so that after a period
of skirmishing they retreated into the relative safety of the mountains
in the north, while Bocskay moved on to Kaschau, which went over to
him before the end of the year. Other Hungarian cities and magnates
followed suit, enabling Bocskay to invade and take Transylvania early
in 1605, while the Imperial forces crumbled under Turkish pressure and
were quickly forced to retreat back to the Austrian border, leaving him in
full control of Habsburg Hungary. At an Estates meeting in April Bocskay
was recognised as prince of Hungary and Transylvania, following which
he set out to invade Moravia, while the Turkish sultan proposed a joint
campaign against the emperor in the autumn.^22