On Two Annals of the Long Turkish War

Abstract

The Long Turkish War proved to be the most devastating warfare in the until-then history of Hungary. Its history has been dealt with by numerous contemporary writers of Hungarian Neolatin historiography; however, the majority of their works do not have any critical edition or modern Hungarian translation. The present study focuses on two such texts. After presenting an outline of the war and the contemporary Neolatin historiography, first I will discuss some characteristics that the two texts have in common, such as the fact that the copies we have are truncated and deal with the year 1597. In the third part, I will emphasise the differences between the two texts, for example, the intentions of the authors, and the fact that in one text, the ruling dynasty is heavily criticised (with carefully chosen words) for their inefficiency against the Ottomans, while in the other, they are hardly mentioned (although this text is heavily truncated).