Principality of Transylvania

The Principality of Transylvania was a semi-independent state ruled by Hungarian princes in the eastern lands of the old Hungarian crown, an Ottoman vassal for most of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and at times also under Habsburg suzerainty. Its territory was Transylvania proper plus the Partium, a second block of counties across the plain which in some periods was as large as Transylvania itself. The principality grew out of the crisis of Mohacs, when Suleiman destroyed the Hungarian army in 1526 and the kingdom split three ways: royal Hungary in the west and north under the Habsburgs, Ottoman Hungary in the centre, and the Eastern Hungarian Kingdom of the Zapolya family in the east. The Ottomans occupied Buda and central Hungary in 1541, and after the Treaty of Speyer the principality was established, a change helped along because Stephen Bathory was also king of Poland. Transylvania remained part of the lands of the Hungarian crown, and its princes saw themselves as guardians of Hungarian statehood and Hungarian law against Habsburg rule, while their state became predominantly Protestant, one of the few places in Europe where several churches were tolerated by law. After the unsettled years of Rakoczi's War of Independence, the principality was subordinated to the Habsburg monarchy.