PART IV
THE END
CHAPTER I
THE POLISH INVASION: BATORY
I.—Batory.
After the year 1572, when the election to the Polish monarchy became genuine instead of fictitious, as it had hitherto been, the electoral meetings on the field of Wola developed into what was neither more nor less than a gambling hell. The whole continent of Europe played there, and once only in the course of two centuries did the players cut a King. He was an unknown man. A pure-blooded Hungarian, through his father, Stephen Batory of Somlyo, and his mother, Katherine Telegda, he was of a good family, and nothing more, had seen honourable service with the Imperial armies, and manœuvred in still more successful fashion behind the diplomatic scenes at Vienna and Constantinople—so successfully, indeed, that, thanks to the united goodwill of the Sultan and the Emperor, he found himself Voiévode of Transylvania in 1571, when he was only thirty-eight. In Poland this foreigner was very little known. He was reported to have ruled a small territory exceedingly well, and was said, at a later period, to have studied at the Academy of Padua, at which place, in 1789, the last of his successors on the throne of the Jagellons was to erect a second-rate work by Carlo or Ferrari as a monument to his memory. He learnt no Polish there. When he was elected King, he either talked Latin to his new subjects or held his tongue—the best plan in a
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