John Zápolya

Rise of the Szápolya family

John was the oldest son of Count Stephen Zápolya and his second wife, Hedwig of Cieszyn. Stephen Zápolya was descended from a Croatian noble family from Slavonia. Their family name was derived from the Croatian phrase "za polje" (literally translated as "behind field"). Stephen became one of the wealthiest lords in the Kingdom of Hungary after inheriting the large domains of his brother, Emeric Zápolya, in 1487. Stephen Zápolya's marriage with the Silesian duchess, Hedwig, who was related to Emperor Maximilian I, increased the prestige of the Zápolya family.

Habsburg-Jagiellon war of succession

Stephen Zápolya had no sons when Matthias Corvinus, King of Hungary, died on 6 April 1490, according to a contemporaneous report, but a charter issued in September 1491 already mentioned John, showing that John was born between the two dates. Stephen Zápolya became Palatine of the Kingdom of Hungary from 1492 until his death in 1499.

Vladislaus's brother, King Sigismund Jagiellon of Poland, came to Hungary to mediate between the royal family and the Zápolyas in late June. Emperor Maximilian had already in September declared war on Hungary, because he wanted to protect his claim (acknowledged in the 1491 Peace of Pressburg) to succeed Vladislaus. The teenager Stephen Zápolya was made one of the commanders of the Hungarian army. During the war, the envoys of King Vladislaus and Maximilian signed a secret treaty on 30 March 1506 about the marriage of Vladislaus's daughter, Anne Jagiellon, and Maximilian's grandson, Ferdinand.

Childhood

John was born in Szepes Castle (now Spiš Castle in Slovakia), which was an important center of the Zápolyas' domains. At the Diet of Hungary in 1497, Stephen Zápolya's opponents circulated rumours about his intention to have his son crowned king. John and his younger brother, George, inherited their father's vast domains in 1499. Their domains were primarily located in Upper Hungary (now Slovakia), where they held most landed estates in five counties. John could write letters in Latin, showing that his mother provided excellent education to him. Hedwig of Cieszyn wanted to persuade Vladislaus II, King of Hungary and Bohemia, to marry his only child, Anne, to John. However king Vladislaus refused the idea of marriage between princess Anne and John Zápolya.

Party leader of the gentry

Zápolya began his public career as a member of the new Diet at Rákos in 1505. On 13 October, the Diet, prompted by Zápolya, passed a bill which prohibited the election of a foreigner as king if Vladislaus died without male issue. The bill was aimed at creating a legal basis for Zápolya's ascension to the throne after the death of Vladislaus, but the king refused to ratify it, and the Diet was closed by the king. Moreover, Vladislaus's wife, Anne of Foix-Candale, gave birth to a son, Louis, on 1 July 1506.

Zápolya's serious conflicts with the royal court had meanwhile made him the leader of a "national party", consisting of the smaller untitled noblemen (the gentry) who were opposed to the pro-Habsburg orientation of the higher aristocracy, the higher clergy, and King Vladislaus. The Diet initially refused to elect the infant crown prince Louis as successor to Vladislaus, but Louis was finally crowned on Vladislaus's demand on 4 June 1508. According to the late 16th-century historian Miklós Istvánffy, when the king returned from Bohemia in early 1510, Zápolya asked Vladislaus for the hand of his daughter Anne, but Vladislaus refused.

Voivode of Transylvania

Vladislaus II made John Zápolya Voivode of Transylvania and Count of the Székelys on 8 November 1510. He moved to Transylvania and took up residence in Kolozsvár (now Cluj-Napoca, Romania) in March 1511. The Ottomans invaded the southern frontier of the Kingdom of Hungary in April 1511. John regularly held Diets for the representatives of the "Three Nations of Transylvania". He also headed the judicial assemblies of the Székely people.

Vladislaus's brother, Polish king Sigismund I the Old, married John's younger sister, Barbara Zápolya in early 1512. To show off his wealth, John went with Barbara to Poland accompanied by 800 horsemen who wore gilded clothes. This increased the influence of the Zápolyas, but only in the short term, as Barbara died in 1515. John raided Ottoman Bulgaria in summer 1513. After returning to Transylvania, he crushed a revolt in Hermannstadt (now Sibiu, Romania) and forced the townspeople to pay an extraordinary tax.

Crushing the Peasants' Revolt of 1514

Zápolya launched a new campaign into Bulgaria in early May 1514.

Meanwhile, Tamás Bakócz, Archbishop of Esztergom, declared a Crusade against the Turks on 9 April. About 40,000 peasants joined the crusade and assembled near Pest, although their lords had tried to retain them before the harvest. The "crusade" soon turned into a peasant rebellion. As the peasant army marched toward Turkish territory, they took to plundering nearby noble manors. Many villagers refused to pay taxes and duties. On 22 May, Vladislaus and the Archbishop ordered the peasants to disband, but they refused. Peasant bands took control of the southern lowlands along the rivers Danube and Tisza and murdered many nobles.

The main army of the peasants, commanded by György Dózsa, laid siege to Temesvár (now Timișoara, Romania). Stephen Báthory defended the town. Zápolya, who had returned from his Ottoman campaign, came to relieve Temesvár. His army routed the peasants on 15 July.

The leaders of the revolt were tortured to death with much cruelty. Dózsa was put on a red-hot iron "throne" with a red-hot iron "crown" on his head, and his accomplices were compelled to eat his flesh before being executed. In October, the Diet deprived the peasants of the right to free movement and obliged them to work on their lords' lands without remuneration one day in every week.

Zápolya's victory over the peasant revolt strengthened his authority in several ways: on the one hand, he had opposed the "crusade" from the beginning, and on the other hand, it gained him support among the petty nobility (gentry).

The Diet hailed Zápolya as the "liberator of the realm" and rewarded him with a payment of 20 denars for each peasant household. Supporters of Zápolya were appointed to the royal council, becoming a majority, and his friend, Gregory Frankopan, Archbishop of Kalocsa, was made chancellor. The previous chancellor, George Szatmári, Archbishop of Esztergom, remained hostile to Zápolya.

Zápolya, Stephen Báthory, Emeric Török, and Michael Paksy joined forces to lay siege to Žrnov, the Ottoman fortress near Nándorfehérvár (now Belgrade, Serbia) in April 1515. However, Sinan, Bey of Smederovo, defeated their united troops. The defeat weakened Zápolya's position.

King of Hungary

In 1526, the Ottoman Empire crushed the Hungarian royal army in the Battle of Mohács and killed King Louis II. Zápolya was en route to the battlefield with his sizable army but did not participate in the battle for unknown reasons. The Ottomans sacked the royal capital of Buda and occupied Syrmia, then withdrew from Hungary. The last three months of the year were marked by a power vacuum; political authority was in a state of collapse, yet the victors chose not to impose their rule.

Two candidates stepped into the breach. One was Zápolya, voivode of Transylvania and Hungary's most prominent aristocrat as well as commander of an intact army. The other was Archduke Ferdinand of Austria, the late king's brother-in-law and brother of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, who claimed Hungary for the House of Habsburg.

The majority of Hungary's untitled lesser nobility (the gentry) backed Zápolya, who for fifteen years had been playing a leading role in Hungarian political life. Part of the aristocracy acknowledged his leadership, and he enjoyed the enthusiastic support – not always reciprocated – of the lesser nobility. Most of his opponents succumbed at Mohács: the Hungarian branch of the Jagiellon dynasty became defunct, and its pro-Habsburg following was decimated. The higher nobility of Hungary (the magnates or barons) sided with Ferdinand, and gathered in Pozsony for Ferdinand's election. The German dynasty's main argument – one that many historians would judge to be decisive – was that the Habsburg dynasty could help Hungary fight against the Ottomans. But in 1526, the promise rang empty. Hungary had been fighting the Ottomans for over a century, during which time the Empire and the Habsburgs had offered much encouragement but no tangible help. The likelihood of assistance was further reduced by the conflict of Ferdinand's older brother, Emperor Charles V, and King Francis I of France that once again flared into open war in the summer of 1526. This circumstance led the Voivode to discount the threat lurking behind the Habsburgs' candidacy: that Zápolya's Hungary would have to contend not only with the Ottomans, but also with an attack from the west.

Thus Zápolya took no notice of his rival's protests, nor of those voiced by the few Hungarians who rallied to Ferdinand. On 10 November 1526, Zápolya had himself proclaimed king at the Diet at Székesfehérvár by the lesser nobles (gentry), and he was duly crowned the next day. Ferdinand was also elected king by the magnates, barons, and the Catholic clergy in a rump Diet in Pozsony on 17 December 1526.