Eastern Hungarian Kingdom

The Eastern Hungarian Kingdom was the east Hungarian realm of the Zapolyas, the modern historians' name for John Zapolya and his son John Sigismund, who disputed the Hungarian crown with the Habsburgs from 1526 to 1570. When Mohacs killed Louis II the Ottomans walked away from conquest, and two kings rose: Ferdinand of Austria, the emperor's younger brother, in the west, and Maximilian after him, against Zapolya in the east, each claiming the whole, while repeated Habsburg drives broke on Ottoman backing. The Turks, who wanted no united Hungary, propped up the east, and Nagyvarad in 1538 drew a line between the halves that satisfied nobody. The realm's extent was never settled. John died in 1540 nine days after his son's birth, and Isabella with Friar Martinuzzi ruled for infant John Sigismund under Suleiman, until 1570, when Speyer turned the eastern kingdom into the Principality of Transylvania after forty-four years.