THE TRANSYLVANIAN VICTOR 319simultaneously, a clear contest emerged between the Habsburgs and the
Transylvanian.
Unlike most of the other competitors, Stefan Bathory was admirably qualified
for the task.^2 He had not sought election for himself, but had been approached
by a constellation of interests who were determined to exclude the Habsburgs.
At the electoral Sejm, his ambassador, Bishop George Blandrata, had confined
himself to a promise of personal rule, and assurances for 'the defence of
Christendom'. Bathory at 42 was a hardened campaigner. Born at Somlyo, the
youngest son of the Palatine of Transylvania, a partisan of Szapolyai, he had
received an impressive education. He had toured Western Europe, studied in
Padua, and served at the imperial court in Vienna. For fifteen years he had
fought as commanding general in the long struggle of his native province for
independence. In 1562 he had been wounded at the siege of Hadad, and for three
years from 1565 to 1567, had been held prisoner in Prague. In 1571, following
the Treaty of Speier with Austria, he had been elected Prince of Transylvania.
He was a fervent Catholic, who had made his career in resistance to the Most
Catholic Emperor. He ruled over a state where all four religions enjoyed auto-
nomy. He was familiar both with forceful action and with government by con-
sent.*
Bathory's further progress in Poland was taken in hand by Zamoyski, who,
in conjunction with former supporters of the Valois like Teczyriski and with the
Arian, Michal Sienicki, the tribune of the lesser szlachta, had decided to force
the pace. The condition of the Republic was critical. The electoral Sejm was dal-
lying to the accompaniment of internal strife and external attack. Danzig was in
revolt. The Muscovites were in Livonia. The Tartars launched the biggest raid
in Polish history. In the autumn of 1575, the Khan of the Crimea, Davlet Girej,
led a horde of 100,000 men into Ruthenia. When they returned, their numbers
had been doubled by droves of captives. Some 35,340 noblemen alone were
carried off into slavery. It was no time for legalities. Although the Primate had
unilaterally declared the Emperor Ferdinand II to have been elected, a group of
noblemen assembled in the Old Town Square of Warsaw on 14 December
resolved to offer the crown to Bathory. Their condition was that he should take
Anna Jagiellonka to wife. Bathory did not delay. He would wear the Polish dia-
dem, he said, 'if only for three days'. He was helped by the Ottoman Sultan who
ordered his army to march against the Empire as a means of frustrating the
Habsburg candidacy. He hastened over the Carpathians, and entered Cracow
on 23 March 1576, the very day on which the Emperor was finally undertaking
to do the same. He rode a Turkish charger, and wore a heron plume in his tall
fur kolpak. He was attended by 500 Transylvanian knights, with leopard skins
slung over their golden breastplates, and by 1,000 veteran hejduks. He was
* The Transylvanian syndrome, usually associated with the earlier Count Dracula, also
emerged in Stefan Bathory's niece, Elizabeth of Nadasdy, who in 1610 was found to have
murdered 650 young girls in order to bathe in their warm blood and thereby restore her
youth. See S. Baring-Could, Book ofWerewolves, London 1865.