Background Source: After the Magnate conspiracy and rebellion of
Francis I Rákóczi,
Leopold I introduced an absolutistic government system in
Royal Hungary (which was not
occupied by the Ottomans and was not part of the
Transylvanian Principality). The creators of this system were
Wenzel Eusebius Lobkowitz (President of the Imperial Privy Council 1669-1674),
Johann von Hocher,
Ignaz Abele,
Leopold Königsegg-Rothenfels, Johann Kinsky (Johann Oktavian, Graf Kinsky von Wchinitz und Tettau 1604-1679) and
Raimondo Montecuccoli. They also invented the Verwirkungstheorie. Hungarian Estates forfeited their rights because of this conspiracy. The emperor then had the right to govern without asking the Diet (parliament of the Estates). Königsegg said the Hungarian Kingdom was "armis subjecti." They enforced local inhabitants to maintain the army supplies (portio [food], quarters [accommodation] and forspont [delivery]) collected by the local military officers (repartitio). They neglected traditional government officials such as nádor and created a governing council in March 1673 (which consisted of four German and four Hungarian members and one leader,
Johann Gaspar Ampringen, but he was only a puppet and the real power was held by the local military leaders). The court tried again to suppress the Protestants. In 1671,
György Szepelcsenyi, the Archbishop of Esztergom,
Leopold Kollonics, bishop of Weiner-Neustadt and the President of the Hungarian Chamber, Ferenc Szegedy, Bishop of Eger, and István Bársony visited the free and important towns one by one with military escorts and took back former (more than 100 years earlier) Catholic churches and schools from Protestants. Citizens of
Pozsony, including both men and women, guarded their church for weeks Szelepcsényi was not able to fight against them until, in 1672, Kollonics took matters into his own hands. He brought 1,200 soldiers from Vienna, arresting the nobler citizens for a few weeks and forcing them to hand over their church and school. After that, they built conceptual lawsuits against Protestant pastors. Between 1673 and 1674, they twice made "judicum delegatum" against Protestant priests. The jury members were high priests and secular lords including the judge and other legislatures. The subject of the coup was political crimes — the connection of the Lutheran and Reformed pastors with the pasha of Buda and the plan of an open rebellion, the main evidence of which was the indictment of István Vitnyédy's letters to Miklós Bethlen and Ambrus Keczer. In the end, whoever signed a reversal (a document to resign work as a Protestant priest and leave Hungary) were pardoned. 200 signed, but 40 resisted. Those who refused were sold as galley slaves to
Naples (to be saved by Admiral Ruttler's fleet in 1676). Officials were often corrupt and greedy. For example,
von Sinzendorf, who handled military finances, confiscated many noble people's properties. During one negotiation, he confiscated 11 castles, 70 noble curia and 367 villages (mostly embezzled for himself). Leopold I dismissed 11,000 Hungarian fortress soldiers because he did not trust them, tried to concentrate the military into some main fortress and started to explode the nobility's enstrengthed castles. The government levied a new kind of tax (Accisa) which raised taxation rates 10 times higher. This caused taxpayers to suffer. The members of the
Wesselényi conspiracy, mostly nobles who lost their estates and the ex-soldiers who were dismissed without severance pay, fled east. The oppressed Hungarians sought refuge in Transylvania, but the Prince Apafi didn't have permission from the
Ottomans to let them in, so they started to gather by the
Tisza river. Although many of them escaped to Poland, those left were ready to start a new uprising and then became the kurucs.
The first kuruc uprising The first kuruc uprising occurred in 1672. The kuruc army gathered in the
Partium where many refugees of different origins took shelter from religious and political persecution in
Royal Hungary. They called themselves
bújdosók (fugitives). Their weapons were mostly pistols, light sabres and
fokos (battle-axes). Their war tactics were typical of
light cavalry. The main subgroups were
Protestants, who were disgruntled by the Habsburg ambitions of the
Counter-Reformation; impoverished minor nobles (holding on to their privileges while the Habsburg Court attempted to deprive them of their nobility) and soldiers from the
végvárs (frontier castles) who were sacked by Habsburg generals. Later, when the Turks lost ground to the imperial armies and Austrian despotism intensified, the Habsburg oppression of Hungarians played an increasingly important role in the motivation of the kuruc. Initially, in August 1672, the kuruc army invaded
Upper Hungary, where they conquered the castles of
Diósgyőr,
Ónod,
Szendrő and
Tokaj. After they defeated the Habsburg army of
Paris von Spankau near
Kassa, the towns of Upper Hungary surrendered and many disaffected people joined them from the Slovak and Ruthenian population of the northern counties. The two leaders of the army of "fugitives" were
Pál Szepesi and
Mátyás Szuhay, members of the minor nobility who previously took part in other anti-Habsburg movements. According to the recollections of
Pál Szepesi, the "fugitives" began looting in the northern countries: "In the guise of persecuting the Papists they pillaged whole counties. We began killing the plunderers but to no avail—they didn't respect any officers." The
Hofkriegsrat of
Vienna immediately took measures: they strengthened the Habsburg troops, called more soldiers from
Lower Hungary and made peace with the
Hajduks. On 26 October 1672, the Habsburg army defeated the "fugitives" at
Gyurke (later Hungarian
Györke, Slovak
Ďurkov). The rebels retreated across the line of the
Tisza. After this initial success, the Habsburg government began systematic religious and political persecution in
Royal Hungary. The
Palatine of Hungary was suspended and in its place
Emperor Leopold I appointed a Directorium to administer Hungary in 1673, led by
Johann Caspar von Ampringen, the
Grand Master of the Teutonic Order, which engaged in severe repression against dissidents. The most infamous case was the trial of 300 Protestant pastors who were sentenced to death in 1674, and who were later sold as galley slaves in
Naples, causing public outcry across Europe.
Universitas of the "fugitives" In 1675, the "fugitives" occupied
Debrecen. Later that year, the town was sacked again by three different armies. This was not uncommon in troubled
Upper Hungary. The fugitives tried to organise themselves as an independent community called "
universitas" or "
communitas." They issued decrees, sent envoys to foreign powers, made a seal and held Diets (assemblies). At the time, they were already called
kuruc, though they never called themselves such. Between 1674 and 1678, their leader was Count
Paul Wesselényi, the cousin of the late Palatine
Ferenc Wesselényi. The "fugitives" established diplomatic connections with Poland in 1674 and with France in 1675. In May 1677, France, Poland, the Principality of Transylvania and the
universitas of the "Fugitives" signed a treaty in
Warsaw by which King
Louis XIV of France guaranteed 100,000
thalers aid and assistance. The "fugitives" were obliged to attack the Habsburgs with an army of at least 15,000 men.
Michael I Apafi, the Prince of Transylvania, gave military and financial support to the
universitas. In the autumn of 1677, 2,000 French, Polish and Tatar soldiers arrived in Upper Hungary. This small army, led by colonel Beaumont, wasn't able to seriously threaten Habsburg supremacy, although Habsburg control over Hungary declined in 1677 as Johann Caspar von Ampringen left the region. Royal Hungary became one theatre of the
European war between
Emperor Leopold I and Louis XIV. The president of the Viennese
Hofkriegsrat,
Raimondo Montecuccoli, drew a plan of "pacification" under the title "''L'Ungheria nell'anno 1677''." According to the plan, Royal Hungary would be occupied by three Austrian armies, the remnants of the Hungarian constitution abolished and a grand-scale program of German colonisation implemented. Chancellor
Paul Hocher, one of the most influential men in the Habsburg government, agreed with Montecuccoli's plan. In the Privy Council he declared, "All Hungarians are traitors."
Under Mihály Teleki In 1678, the fugitives accepted
Mihály Teleki, the Chancellor of Transylvania, as their leader. Prince Apafi proclaimed war against the Habsburgs. Previously, he had begged the
Ottoman Sultan (his overlord) to leave. The Sultan had demanded an unacceptable condition: in the case of success, all Royal Hungary should join the Ottoman Empire. On 5 April 1678, Prince Apafi issued an ambiguous declaration to the people of Hungary. He announced that he, along with the Polish and French kings, took up the arms against "the heavy yoke of oppression" and recommended "the submission to the mighty Turkish Emperor with a reasonable mind and sharp eye." The kuruc army of Teleki, together with the Polish and French troops, advanced well into Upper Hungary but immediately retreated into Transylvania at the sight of the first Habsburg regiments. The failure wrecked Teleki's image as a competent leader. On the other hand, a small kuruc cavalry troop (about 8,000 people) briefly occupied the most important mining towns and castles of Lower Hungary.
The great kuruc uprisings In 1678, one of the most influential young noblemen of Upper Hungary and Transylvania,
Emeric Thököly, declared war against the Habsburgs. In August 1678, Thököly's army occupied almost all of Lower and Upper Hungary. Habsburg rule in
Royal Hungary quickly collapsed. The fugitives joined the
Thököly Uprising and officially elected him as their leader in
Szoboszló in January 1680. The kuruc troops merged with Thököly's own army, although changing fortunes and Thököly's subsequent alliance with the Ottomans would split the movement. In 1681, Emperor Leopold I re-established the Palatine of Hungary, and thus some grievances were removed and a less repressive policy was adopted, but this did not deter the Hungarians from revolting again. That time onwards, the history of the kurucs is synonymous with that of the two great anti-Habsburg uprisings in the Kingdom of Hungary between 1680 and 1711, i.e. the
Thököly Uprising (1680–85) and
Rákóczi's War of Independence (1703–1711). Although they are generally called
kuruc wars, these anti-Habsburg uprisings had a much wider social base and more complex political aims than the original kuruc movements. See the history of the great kuruc uprisings under their respective leaders,
Emeric Thököly and
Francis II Rákóczi.
Later usage In the first half of the 18th century, "kuruc" was generally used to denote Hungarian cavalry soldiers (
hussars) serving in the Habsburg army, especially in the time of the
War of the Austrian Succession (1740–1748). Many former kuruc soldiers of
Rákóczi's War of Independence joined the Habsburg army after 1711. The
Prussians were also called kurucs in Hungarian literature, including by in 1790. The reason behind this strange usage was that the enemies of the
labanc Habsburgs were considered synonymous with the kurucs. At the end of the 18th century, the word went out of usage in common parlance and became an exclusively historical term for the rebels of Rákóczi and Thököly. In present-day South German language,
Kruzitürken is a swear word, combining
Kuruzen (Kuruc) and
Türken (Turks), meaning "curse it." In present-day Hungarian language,
kuruc is sometimes used to denote Hungarian national radicals. "
Kuruc.info" is also the name of a far-right, nationalist Hungarian webpage. ==Notes==