One of the most persistent and popular legends in the history of eastern Europe, and in the steep Carpathian Mountains of Transylvania, is the story of an undead prince, a vampire, the ultimate blood-sucker, Count Dracula. His purported residence, Bran Castle, is the top tourist destination of Romania, with hundreds of thousands of visitors per year. Yet a quick scan of internet sites devoted to the famous prince of darkness reveals that the character created by the British novelist Bram Stoker in 1897 has almost no relation to either Bran Castle or with the notorious warrior prince, Vlad the Impaler, on which Stoker is thought to have based the character.

So who was Vlad the Impaler? For starters, although much of his history is indeed connected to the Principality of Transylvania (about which I wrote two lengthy blog posts earlier this year), the main territory over which he ruled was the neighbouring Principality of Wallachia. As he is known in Romanian, Vlad Țepeș, or Vlad III, was Voivode (duke or prince) of Wallachia in the mid-15^th century, and was infamous even in his own time as a particularly cruel warlord who beheaded and impaled his enemies by the thousands. The name Dracula came from his father, Vlad II ‘the Dragon’, and this branch of the family—the Basarab Dynasty—were known as the Drăculești, the House of the Dragon.

This post will focus on the Basarab Dynasty as rulers of Wallachia, one of the three principalities that eventually made up the Kingdom of Romania in the 19^th and early 20^th centuries. Over 300 years, from the early 14^th century until they died out in the mid-17^th century, the Basarabs were an incredibly violent dynasty in an incredibly turbulent region, on the front lines between the Christian West and the Islamic East, between the Kingdom of Hungary and the Ottoman Empire. Modern nationalist defenders of the extreme cruelties meted out by warlords like Vlad the Impaler and others of his family argue that such measures were essential in order to achieve regional independence in the face of much more powerful neighbours.

Wallachia is the southernmost of the three Romanian principalities. Occupying a broad plain bounded on the north by the Carpathians and on the south by the broad river Danube, it formed part of the Ancient Roman province of Dacia, and retained a Latin-based Romance language through the centuries when most of the surrounding lands became increasingly Slavicised. In fact, their own name for this region is Țara Românească (‘the Romanian Land’); whereas Wallachia comes instead from the name given by non-Romanians to outsiders, from the ancient Germanic term for ‘other’ (walhaz—which also gives us Welsh and Walloon). In the past, the country was referred to as Vlahia, Wlachia, or Valahia, and the people as Vlachs. Bulgarian Slavs called it Vlashko, while Turks added a vowel at the start to form Eflak. The Hungarians—often the overlords, extending their rule across the mountains from Transylvania—called it Havasalföld, or ‘Snowy Lowlands’, or sometimes Ungrovlahia. Hungarian kings took control of this area of the lower Danube valley in the late 900s (from the Bulgarians), and ruled jointly with their Turkic allies who had settled from the eastern steppes, the Cumans (sometimes the King of Hungary also added the title ‘King of Cumania’). But this coalition was destroyed by the Mongol invasions of the 1240s, and afterwards the region was divided between Hungary north of the Danube and Bulgaria to the south. They appointed local Vlach lords to act as governors or voivodes. This Slavic term literally means ‘war lord’, but has also been translated as ‘duke’ (which also originally meant a leader of troops) and sometimes as ‘prince’. Wallachian rulers were also called hospodar, another Slavic word for lord, and in Romanian domn (from Latin dominus). All of these terms implied a degree of autonomous rule, but usually as a vassal to a greater power.

The first known Wallachian voivodes were appointed by the King of Hungary in the 1240s-1280s. Some ruled in the western part of the region, known as Oltenia (west of the River Olt); and others ruled in the east, Muntenia (‘mountains’). Historical records first refer to ‘Wallachia’ as a whole under the voivodeship of Seneslau, whose name is thought to be Slavic, Seneslav, but who is specifically referred to as a Vlach. Other Vlach names are similarly reflective of the mixed ethnicities in this region: Seneslau’s possible son, Tihomir (Thocomerius) could take his name from toq-tämar, Turkic (or Cuman) for ‘hardened steel’; while Tihomir’s son’s name, Basarab, could also be of Turkic origin, as basar aba, ‘ruling father’. Basarab is considered to be the first verifiable historical figure, appointed voivode in about 1310, but rebelling against Hungarian rule and establishing his own autonomy by about 1325. The King, Charles of Anjou, tried to retake the province by force in 1330, but was defeated at Posada, in the mountains separating Transylvania from Wallachia, in one of those epic nation-building foundational battles in which a small force of local warriors and peasants fight off a much larger foreign army. Basarab is therefore known as ‘the Founder’ and gave his name to the Wallachian dynasty that followed (and also, more tangentially, to the region further to the east known as Bessarabia, now Moldova).

Basarab may also be the historical version of a more legendary figure, Radu Negru (‘the Black’), who supposedly founded a new Wallachian capital at Câmpulung—‘long field’, the site of an ancient Roman colony, Campus Longus. Radu itself comes from the Romanian word for ‘joy’ and it will be one of the most common names used in the dynasty (and indeed throughout Romania today). Not much is known about Basarab I. Was he Orthodox, in opposition to Hungary’s Catholic king? For about 25 years, he ruled Wallachia as an ally of Bulgaria, against its enemies the Serbs and the Byzantines. This alliance was sealed through marriage, and his daughter was first known as Theodora, Tsarina of the Bulgarians, and later as the nun Theophana—since 2022 recognised by the Romanian Orthodox Church as a saint. The Prince developed a new capital in the 1340s, at Curtea de Argeş, ‘the court on the Argeş’, the latter being one of the main tributaries that flows south from the Carpathians into the Danube. This town was located close to the Bran Pass, which connected Wallachia to Transylvania, and in particular to Romanian settlements north of the mountains and the significant trading city of Kronstadt (‘crown city’), founded by Hungarian kings and populated by Saxon/German colonists in the 12^th and 13^th centuries (today’s Braşov).

Basarab also built the Princely Church of St Nicholas, with its amazing painted interiors, and by the 1350s, in the reign of his son and successor, Nicolae Alexandru, had attracted the Metropolitan of the Orthodox Church to relocate his seat to the new capital. A monastery was built for him, which became the dynastic necropolis; re-founded as a cathedral in the early 16^th century. The cathedral of Curtea de Argeş was re-appointed as a dynastic  burial place, fully royal once Romania became an independent kingdom in the 19^th century, and it remains so today.

Prince Nicolae Alexandru made a deal with the Hungarian king in 1354, recognising him as overlord and allowing him to send Catholic missions to Wallachia and to establish a Catholic diocese, to operate alongside the Orthodox churches and serve an increasing number of Saxon merchants settling south of the Carpathians and along the Danube Valley. Their presence would become a source of conflict later, as we shall see when we return to the story of Vlad the Impaler.

Successive voivodes, Vladislav I, Radu I, re-affirmed their loyalty to Hungarian kings, in exchange for a more secure title to the Romanian exclaves north of the Carpathians in Transylvania (Amlaş and Făgăraş). They married Hungarian noblewomen from Transylvania, but their daughters continued to make kinship ties with their other (Slavic) neighbours, resulting in another Bulgarian tsarina and a tsarina of the Serbs. Voivode Dan I tried to extend his rule south into Bulgaria but was defeated and killed in 1386.

His brother Mircea I was more successful, and earned the nickname ‘Mare’ (‘the Great’). He gained the territory at the mouth of the Danube on the Black Sea (Dobruja) in 1388, as well as the region bordering Serbia and Hungary, the Banat of Severin, in 1389. He strengthened the army and the Principality’s borders, brought in increased trade and developed a court culture to rival other princes. In 1394, Prince Mircea went to the aid of the Bulgarians now that the Ottoman Turks had arrived in the Balkans led by Sultan Bayezid. At first he repulsed the Ottoman attack in the valiant Battle of Rovine (another of these David vs Goliath moments celebrated in song and story), but was later chased out and replaced as voivode (or bey in Turkish) by Vlad I. Mircea joined the grand western crusade against the Turks in 1396, which culminated in their defeat at the Battle of Nicopolis, a severe blow to Christian power in the Balkans. But he reclaimed his throne in 1397, defeated the Turks again in 1400, and even intervened in Ottoman internal politics in the confused dynastic succession of 1403-06.

Prince Mircea also moved the capital of Wallachia once more, to the town of Târgoviște, to be a bit more central to the region. This town, which takes its name from the old Slavic word for ‘marketplace’ and had been settled by Saxon traders emigrating from Transylvania in the early 14^th century. Mircea began the transfer of the princely court in about 1400, and fortified his residence—its grand tower, the Chindia Tower, was added later in the century by Vlad III.

Mircea the Great ruled peacefully until 1418 when he was succeeded by his son Mihail then his brother Radu II. Things start to get really messy again in the 1420s, as the dynasty split into two branches: the descendants of Mircea’s brother Dan I (the Dănești), and the family of Mircea’s illegitimate son, Vlad II ‘Dracul’ (the Drăculești). Different cousins competed for the throne with a variety of supporters, sometimes the local Romanian boyars, or nobles, and sometimes the Ottoman sultan, who first started demanding tribute in this period. Dan II re-asserted Wallachian independence, but was deposed and killed by invading Ottoman forces who placed his cousin, Alexandru I Aldea on the throne in 1432. Alexandru thus acknowledged the suzerainty of the Sultan and did formal homage to him in Adrianople.

When he died in 1436, Alexandru was succeeded by his brother, Vlad II. Vlad had been sent by his father to be raised at the court of Sigismund of Luxembourg, King of Hungary—initially as a hostage, and later as a guest and friend—and he was granted membership in the King’s new order of chivalry, the Order of the Dragon. When he returned to Wallachia at the head of a Hungarian army to take up his brother’s throne, he wore the badge of this order and thus was given the nickname ‘Dragon’ or ‘Dracul’. But Sigismund died in 1437, and, finding himself without a powerful patron, Vlad II turned to the Ottomans and agreed to do homage and pay a tribute. A few years later, in 1441, he changed his spots again and supported the invasion of Ottoman territory by the Hungarian prince of Transylvania (János Hunyadi), for which he was deposed and imprisoned by the Sultan. He was replaced by his cousin from the rival Dănești branch, Basarab II. But only a year later Vlad II was put back in charge of Wallachia, though he had to leave two of his younger sons, Vlad and Radu, in Ottoman hands as hostages, and agreed to send 500 Vlach boys to the Sultan’s court to be trained as Janissaries. Yet again, in the same year (1443), he turned against the Sultan and joined the crusade of western princes who invaded Bulgaria, and were badly defeated at Varna in November 1444. Vlad II Dracul made a separate peace with the Sultan in 1446, prompting his former ally Hunyadi to invade Wallachia in 1447; Vlad was captured and executed just outside the new capital at Târgoviște.

Vlad’s eldest son, Mircea II, had been a leader of his father’s troops in the Crusade of Varna; at the time of the invasion of 1447 by Hunyadi, he was captured by the frightened Wallachian boyars, who poked his eyes out and buried him alive. The horrors of this century were really starting to intensify. Again, a prince from the rival branch, Vladislav II, was named voivode, probably by Hunyadi, and ruled peaceably for several years. In 1455, however, he decided to bite the hand that fed him, and invaded Transylvania to lay claim to the Romanian settlements there and the key trading city of Kronstadt/Braşov; Hunyadi responded by supporting a coup by one of those two sons of Vlad II Dracul that had been left as Ottoman hostages back in the 1440s: Vlad III, the future Impaler. The cousins met for single combat in August 1456 and Vladislav was killed. Vlad Dracula (or Drakulya, ie, son of Dracul) soon revealed himself to be one of the most intensely ruthless rulers this part of the world had ever seen. In the face of ongoing opposition to his rule by Vladislav’s brother, Dan III, he staked his claim in the capital by rounding up Wallachian boyars and Saxon merchants who supported his rival, and impaled them on stakes all around the city. Dan led an invasion, with Hungarian support, in 1460, but was defeated in the Bran Pass, forced to dig his own grave, and beheaded. His supporters were impaled. Two years later, the Ottoman Sultan sent envoys, and (so the story goes) Vlad nailed their turbans to their heads, since they were ‘so attached’ to them that they wouldn’t remove them in his presence (a sign of honour). The Impaler reportedly created a ‘forest’ of 20,000 impaled bodies all around the city of Târgoviște to frighten Ottoman troops sent to avenge the ambassadors.

Already Vlad III was getting a reputation for extraordinary cruelty—real or exaggerated. Contemporary writers spread tales of his excesses across Europe. As the years went by, these stories grew: a German woodcut from 1499 shows ‘Dracule waide’ (voivode) dining casually amongst his impaled victims. As noted above, later Romanian nationalist historians would defend this reputation, seeing his severe acts as necessary in the goal of securing Wallachian autonomy in the face of two powerful neighbours and the internal self-interested treachery of the boyars. He is also seen by some as a crusader for the Orthodox Church.

Dracul does mean ‘devil’ (not ‘dragon’) in modern Romanian, but there is no indication that Vlad Țepeș (Romanian for ‘the Impaler’) was ever connected with local legends of vampirism, undead demons who survive by drinking human blood, until the era of the novel Dracula by Bram Stoker—and even here the link is only indirect. Stoker also used the name Nosferatu, thinking (probably incorrectly) that it was a Romanian term for ‘undead’.

Bran Castle (perhaps due to the closeness of the name to Bram?) is today marketed as ‘Dracula’s Castle’ to foreign tourists, though it does not fit the description in Stoker’s novel very well, and really had very little connection to the historic Vlad the Impaler. It was built in the 1370s by the Saxon merchants of the town of Kronstadt (Braşov) and was maintained by them for centuries as the key defence of the mountain pass between Wallachia and Transylvania. Bran Castle became a royal residence in the 1920s, and was significantly renovated by the Romanian royal family; it was confiscated by the Communists in 1948, then restored to the family in 2006, in the person of Princess Ileana of Romania’s son, Archduke Dominic of Austria.

Dracula’s actual castle is high in the mountains of the upper Argeş valley: Poenari Castle, perched on a rocky spur. It had been the chief stronghold of the Basarab lords in the 13^th and 14^th centuries, and was rebuilt by Vlad III in the 1450s, supposedly using the slave labour of those same Wallachian boyars he so persecuted at the time of his accession to power.

Eventually, and unsurprisingly, these Wallachian boyars turned against him, and in 1462 compelled him to cross into Transylvania to seek help from the Hungarian king, Matthias Corvinus, who imprisoned him instead, in his castle at Visegrad for thirteen years. While there, some think he became a Catholic, and gradually earned Corvinus’ trust, and so he was again placed at the head of a Hungarian army to attack Ottoman troops first in Bosnia in 1476, then in Wallachia to reclaim his throne.

Back in 1462, the post of Wallachian voivode had at first been given, by the Ottomans, to Vlad’s younger brother, Radu III ‘the Handsome’ (‘Frumos’). Like Vlad, Radu had also been sent to the Ottoman court as a child hostage, but became more acclimated, and a very close friend to the Sultan’s son, Prince Mehmet. It is thought the teen boys became lovers, and Radu may have converted to Islam. Once Mehmet became Sultan (Mehmet II) in his own right in 1451, Radu was given a place of honour in his court (perhaps as a Janissary commander), and took part in the conquest of Constantinople (1453). Ten years later he was named voivode of Wallachia, promising to restore the privileges of the urban boyars and merchants in Târgoviște and Braşov that his brother had so brutally repressed. His reign was troubled, however, and he was deposed and restored several times, including by his son-in-law, Prince Stefan III of Moldavia, who was opposed to Radu’s loyalty to the Sultan. He died sometime in 1475 and was replaced as voivode by his cousin (from the Dan branch), Basarab III ‘Laiota’. It was this ruler Vlad the Impaler unseated in 1476; but by the end of the next year, the latter returned with Ottoman support, and drove Vlad from power once more. He was killed in battle in early 1477, probably on the outskirts of Bucharest.

(I’m sad I can’t find any contemporary images of Radu Dracula, but there’s a lot of sweet fan art depicting him and Mehmet… He was played by Serbian trans supermodel Andreja Pejić in a recent Turkish television drama)

Accounts vary about Vlad the Impaler’s death; one Italian diplomatic source says his body was cut into pieces and his head sent to Mehmet II and impaled (fittingly) on a high stake in Constantinople. One of his possible burial sites is Comana Monastery, to the south of Bucharest, which had been built by Prince Vlad in 1461. It was demolished and rebuilt in 1589, but the crypt remained, where archaeologists in the 1970s claimed to have found the headless body of a prince.

The city of Bucharest, or București, was at this time starting to be regarded as the new princely capital. A relatively new settlement, possibly taking its name from the Romanian word for ‘joy’ (bucurie), it was the preferred summer residence of Vlad III who built what later became known as the Curtea Veche (‘Old Court’) sometime before 1460. The palace was extended and renovated in the late 17^th century, but was replaced with a ‘New Court’ in 1775. A church was added to the princely complex in the mid-16^th century, with tombs associated with the Basaraba dynasty in this period. București and Târgoviște alternated as Wallachian capitals, with the former predominating in periods of more pro-Ottoman relations due to its proximity, then formally becoming the sole capital towards the end of the 17^th century.

The successors of Vlad III came and went in quick succession, with the two branches of the family continuing to vie for power with or without Ottoman support. Basarab IV, from the Dănești branch, was in a way the inheritor of The Impaler’s mantle, known as Țepeluș, ‘the Little Impaler’ (how sweet!). He ruled as voivode twice in the late 1470s-80s and sided with the Ottomans in a great clash with the Hungarians in 1479. He was killed in 1482, either in battle or in a boyar conspiracy. His successor was again from the Drăculești branch, an illegitimate half-brother of Vlad III, known as Vlad IV ‘the Monk’, put on the throne by the neighbouring Prince of Moldavia, but soon forced to accept Ottoman suzerainty once more. Strangely, he seems to have died in his bed, of old age, in 1495, and even was succeeded peacefully by his own son, Radu IV ‘the Great’, who ruled for another decade, and also seems to have died peacefully. His epithet ‘the Great’ refers not to any great victories, but to his position as a great patron of the arts and protector of the Orthodox Church, not just in Wallachia, but across the Orthodox world.

Radu the Great was succeeded by his cousin, Vlad the Impaler’s son Mihnea, who, like his father, pressed for Wallachian independence but was challenged by boyars who enjoyed the favour of the Ottoman court and the profits to be gained from being part of that vast eastern empire (which makes sense to a non-nationalist historian like me). Mihnea was given the nickname ‘the Wicked’ by his enemies, including one of these boyar families, the Craioveşti, who would later take on the role of voivode themselves. Prince Mihnea was run out after only a year, followed only a few months later by his son, Mircea III Dracul.

He was succeeded by yet another cousin, Vlad V ‘the Younger’ (a son of Vlad ‘the Monk’), in 1510, placed on the throne by the increasingly powerful Craioveşti family with Ottoman support. But a year later, he switched allegiances and swore fealty to the King of Hungary—this of course led to his deposition the following year by the same boyars and Ottoman soldiers, and he was decapitated. A different kind of ruler succeeded in 1512: Neagoe, who claimed to be from the Dănești line, a son of Basarab IV, and not his mother’s husband, one of the Craioveşti boyars. He was voivode for nearly a decade, and proved to be a capable administrator and a skilled diplomat, desiring to act as mediator between eastern and western branches of Christianity. He sponsored the building of Curtea de Argeş Monastery (1517) and the Metropolitan Cathedral in Târgoviște. He was also a scholar, and published a Romanian translation of the Gospels in 1512. He was canonised by the Orthodox Church in 2008.

The sixteenth century continued in much the same fashion: princes named either Vlad or Radu had relatively short reigns, either with support or in defiance of the Ottomans. The principality was basically independent but paid heavy tributes to the Sultan. Prince Patrascu ‘the Good’ (‘Bun’) ruled in the 1550s and helped the Ottomans restore John Sigismund Zápolya as Prince of Transylvania in defiance of the Habsburgs. His cousin Alexandru II was raised at the Turkish court and put on the throne in the 1570s, but like his great-grandfather Vlad the Impaler, he soon became known for his cruelty and was deposed and murdered by his boyars. His son followed in the 1580s, Mihnea II ‘Turcitul’ (‘turned Turk’) who earned his nickname late in life by converting to Islam (having been thrown out of Wallachia in 1591), and accepting an appointment as sanjak (governor) of Nikopolis in Bulgaria (as Mehmet Bey).

By the mid-1590s, the voivode of Wallachia was no longer appointed exclusively from within the Basarab family, with other local families filling the post. But the dynasty had one more burst of glory in the person of Michael ‘the Brave’ (or Mihail ‘Viteazul’), who not only restored Wallachia’s autonomy, but briefly united all three Romanian principalities for the first time in their history. He is thus seen as one of the major national heroes of Romania and a symbol of unity. He is described as a son of Patrascu the Good, but some claimed he only assumed that kinship to hide his more plebeian origins. Michael was first a regional governor in Ottoman service, then invested as Voivode of Wallachia by the Sultan, Murad III, in 1593. In 1595, he renounced this loyalty, declared Wallachian independence, and defeated a much larger Ottoman army at Călugăreni, near the Danube, allied with Emperor Rudolf II of Austria (as King of Hungary) and Sigismund Báthory, the Prince of Transylvania. He also defeated the Turks at an important crossing of the river, near Giurgiu. Peace was brokered with the Ottomans in June 1599, and Michael (encouraged by Rudolf) turned on and defeated Sigismund’s successor, András Báthory in October. Rudolf named him governor, not prince, of Transylvania, but he was de facto its ruler, following a triumphal entry into its capital of Alba Julia. In the spring of 1600, Michael travelled east to Moldavia and deposed his rival from the Movilă family, and named himself prince there as well.

This unity did not last long, and by the end of 1600, the Transylvanian nobles, unnerved by Michael’s ambitions, threw him out. He was then defeated in Moldavia by troops sent by the king of Poland, and was even chased out of most of Wallachia. Prince Michael went to Prague to the court of Rudolf II to plead for Imperial support; eventually given Habsburg funds and supplies, he re-took Wallachia, then Moldavia, but when he tried to retake Transylvania in 1601, Rudolf thought it was too far and sent orders for the Vlach prince to be murdered. Nice.

Though it was short, under Michael the Brave’s reign, boyar power in Wallachia increased and serf freedoms were curtailed—as a result voivoides in the 17^th century had much less autonomy, and were made and unmade by Ottoman sultans from multiple boyar families, never allowing any one to gain too much power or stability. Yet Michael’s memory remains solid in Romania, as responsible for strengthening the authority of the Romanian Orthodox Church in all three principalities, and awakening (it is claimed) some form of early Romanian nationalism. Centuries later, a new royal order of chivalry was created by King Ferdinand of Romania during World War I: the Order of Michael the Brave.

Michael’s immediate successor was Radu IX Mihnea, who ruled on and off in both Wallachia and Moldavia—at one point trying to control both by installing himself in the Moldavian capital of Iaşi (Jassy), and his son Alexandru in Bucharest. This Radu was a reformer, of government and of foreign policy, trying to align with the leading mercantile power in the east, Venice. His son Alexandru was nicknamed ‘Coconul’ (‘the Cocoon’) because he began his reign at such a young age. He ruled at times both Wallachia and Moldavia in the 1620s, sometimes paying large sums to obtain his appointment, but never proving to be that effective as a ruler. He was removed from power in 1630 and died in Istanbul in 1632. He was the last of the direct descendants of Vlad Țepeș, the last of the House of the Dragon.

There were others who claimed affiliation with the Basarab family in the 17^th century. Many of these were in fact from the Craioveşti family (or the related Brâncovenești family), as above, including Radu Şerban, one of the better rulers of the period (1602-11), preserving Wallachian independence and reforming the government. Matei Basarab, with one of the longest reigns (1632-54), adopted this dynastic name to associate himself more securely with Wallachian identity, in competition with the increasing number of outsiders, especially Greeks, being appointed by the Ottomans as voivodes. He was an enlightened ruler, introducing the printing press, codifying the laws and founding schools. He also allied with the Prince of Transylvania, George II Rákóczi, with an aim to create an independent state, but this idea was crushed in the next reign (Constantin II, son of Radu Şerban) by the troops of Sultan Mehmet IV in 1658. The Sultan therefore appointed Mihnea III Radu, who claimed to be a son of Radu IX, but many said he was a Greek money lender from Constantinople and had agreed to pay the Sultan a rather large sum for the privilege of serving as voivode—but only for a year.

After this point, appointments to the post of voivode were much more clearly servants of the Ottoman court, often noblemen from Greek families known as Phanariots. These families, notably Cantacuzenos and Mavrocordatos, will be the topic of a future blog post on their own. Wallachian autonomy continued to decline, and after 1716, the Ottomans no longer even pretended the post of voivode was an elective position, depriving the local boyars of even the pretence of self-rule. The idea of a united state of the two Romanian principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia was revived in the 1820s, in the wake of the Greek War of Independence, and although they were formally tied together in 1859, Romania remained nominally a vassal state of the Ottoman Empire until formally proclaiming its sovereignty in 1877 (with Transylvania remaining a part of Hungary until after the First World War). Twenty years later Bram Stoker would popularise the name Dracula and its association with Transylvania and the Carpathian Mountains, but it was not until the cinematic versions of the story were produced that people began to associate the Prince of Darkness with Vlad III, voivode of Wallachia.

(images Wikimedia Commons)

Basarab Dynasty, simplified

At the start of a recent episode of Who Do You Think You Are?, British comedian and presenter Sue Perkins meets with her long-time sparring partner Mel Giedroyc, and shares hopes that she would discover in the programme that one of her ancestors originated from Lithuania, as it would be an amazing thing for them to share, knowing that Mel’s own ancestors also came from there. Nothing further is said about Mel’s Giedroyc ancestry, and the show moves on to focus on Perkins’ interesting journey.

Not only does Mel Giedroyc’s family come from Lithuania, and indeed from a town named for them, Giedraičiai, but her family were princes, with dynastic roots stretching back into the late 13^th century. And like their kin, the Radziwill princes discussed in a recent post here, their history is intertwined with the stories of not just Lithuania, but Poland and Russia too. They split into so many different branches that by the 20^th century there were Polish branches, Russian branches and those in France, England and America. This post will, as usual, focus on the origins and development of the family and on the residences they lived in, but, as a nod to Mel Giedroyc—my favourite comedian, whose morning show helped welcome me to Britain so many years ago—will highlight in particular the strong role played by several women of the family.

Like many grand aristocratic families, a certain amount of mystery shrouds the origins of the Giedroyć family—this is the Polish spelling, with a mark on the c to make it a ‘ts’. The traditional story is that there was a Prince Giedrius, brother of a Grand Duke of Lithuania from the dynasty that ruled this area before the reign of the Gediminids (the 14^th to 16^th century). Giedrius built a castle at Giedraičiai, about 45 km north of Vilnius, on estates acquired from the Livonian Order of knights in about 1340, and gave the surname Giedraitis to his descendants. There is no castle there now, but there is a fine old tower on the Church of St Bartholomew, built in 1410 and rebuilt four hundred years later by one of the family bishops, Józef Giedroyć (Juozapas Giedraitis in Lithuanian).

Prince Giedrius’ son, Ginwill, was a candidate for the throne of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the next generation, but after that the family drifted further away from the direct seat of power, and by the end of the 15^th century, had split firmly into two lines, that of Prince Alexander and that of Prince Bartholomew. Earlier in the century, they had begun to use the symbol of the centaur (or ‘hippocentaur’) for their coat of arms, as one of the noble families adopted into the Polish system of heraldry following the Union of Hrodło (1413), drawing together the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Kingdom of Poland. At other times they also used the Poraj coat of arms, the five-pointed rose. I’m not exactly sure why they used both.

The only other major figure to emerge from the 15^th century is the family saint (or nearly): Blessed Michael (Mykolas in Lithuanian), a hermit renowned for prophecy and miracles, who died in 1485. He was born unable to walk unaided, became an Augustinian canon in a convent in Bystryca (which is now just over the border in Belarus), then moved to the capital of the Polish Kingdom, Krakow, where he was allowed to live in a simple hut attached to the Church of St Mark where he served as a sacristan. He lived as a recluse, eating little and self-flagellating, but people came to seek him out for his gift of prophecy. After his death, his cult spread across Poland and Lithuania and there were unsuccessful attempts to make him a saint, but he was beatified (a step towards canonisation) only in 2018.

Meanwhile the family were expanding, and acquired an estate a bit further to the north, Videniškiai, supposedly named for Prince Vidas, a grandson of Giedrius. This became the family seat in the 16^th century, and where they built a monastery of the Canons Regular of Penance of the Blessed Martyrs (the religious order to which their ‘house saint’ Michael, had belonged). Its chapel became the family burial place after the 1620s. The church, dedicated to St Lawrence, remains, though the monastery was closed by the Russians in 1832.

Just a short distance outside the village of Videniškiai was the castle Baltadvaris. It was built in the mid-16^th century by Prince Matas or his son Prince Marcin, from the line of Prince Bartholomew (see below), with a particular role to guard the strategic road that passed through this district on the way between Vilnius to Riga. Baltadvaris means ‘white manor’, but was built of red brick, so presumably was painted. Very little remains today but earthworks and an archaeological site that is covered by a wooden structure. It had lost its strategic value in the 17^th century, was sold off by the family, and fell into ruins.

Of the senior line, that of Prince Alexander, there is less of a story to tell. Some members did become Calvinist like many grand nobles of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in this era, but most did not. Generation after generation were landowners and governors of local towns and fortifications on behalf of the Crown. The right to a princely title was confirmed by the 1569 Act of Union between the crowns of Poland and Lithuania, but for the next two centuries, they don’t emerge as major actors on the stage of Polish-Lithuanian history.

When the great time of trial for the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth came about, the period of the three partitions between 1772 and 1795, several members of this branch were in prominent positions to either combat it or support it. Like the English or American civil wars, many aristocratic families were split in this period, either willing to die in the defence of Polish-Lithuanian independence, or considering that absorption within the powerful Russian Empire was the best chance to preserve stability and order. Prince Krzysztof Giedroyć, owner of the estates at Giedraičiai, and his four brothers faced this question from their positions within the government or military. His brother Jan Stefan, Bishop of Samogitia from 1778, was active in the Sejm (or parliament), first advocating independence, then an alliance with Russia.

Their cousin, Prince Romuald Tadeusz, was also a deputy at the Sejm, but took a more active stance against Russia, serving in the Polish-Lithuanian army in the 1790s, and becoming a general of Lithuanian troops that joined the French Grande Armée that pushed into Russia in 1812. His brother, Piotr Kacper, a priest, also tried to preserve the independence of their homeland, serving as a Secretary of State in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in its last years, 1790-95. Once most of Lithuania was absorbed into the Russian Empire, however, Prince Romuald was reconciled (it appears) with the new government, and retired as a Lieutenant-General in the army of the new client state, a reformed ‘Kingdom of Poland’. His son, Józef Stefan, however, was not: he too had served in the Grande Armée, and continued to serve in Napoleon’s armies, promoted to Brigadier-General on the fields of Waterloo in 1815. He remained in France after the war, was naturalised in 1835, and died there in 1855.

It is in Prince Romuald’s daughters that we find the first women of great interest in this story. Both were known as writers and supporters of the Polish cause for liberty. The elder, Kunegunda, had served briefly as a lady-in-waiting to the Empress Elisabeth (the wife of Alexander I) in Russia, then transferred to Empress Josephine in France. She spent the rest of her long life in Paris, publishing books, but also pamphlets in support of, for example, the November Uprising of 1830. Her sister, Princess Lucia (or Łucja), moved to France a bit later, in 1836, and also became known for her novels, but returned to Poland in the 1840s, and became known as a travel writer. Both were part of the great fascination seen in Western Europe, and France in particular, for Polish music, art and fashion.

In Lithuania, the family of Prince Romuald had lived at a prominent estate, Bobcin (or Bobtyna), in a village now known as Žemaitkiemis, near Lithuania’s second capital, Kaunas. Originally a 16^th-century manor house, it was acquired and aggrandised by the Giedraitis / Giedroyć family in the late eighteenth century, then sold once they were mostly living in exile in the 1830s.

But not all members of this branch were in exile: the youngest son of Prince Romuald, Alexander, became a chamberlain at the Imperial court in Russia. His son, and other cousins living in the Russian Empire, had their princely rank and titles formally confirmed by the Tsar in 1866. This main line became extinct in 1899.

One cousin, Prince Szymon Tadeusz, from a junior line, continued the family tradition of serving as Bishop of Samogitia (north-western Lithuania), from 1838 to 1844. His branch of the family ended up emigrating to Belgium after the Russian Revolution of 1917 and took the form of the name ‘Guédroïtz’. Prince Alexis was a prominent professor of Russian literature in Brussels and published translations of most of the great Russian classic plays, from Pushkin to Chekhov to Dostoevsky. His daughter Ania Guédroïtz (b. 1949) is a Belgian theatre actress.

The next line of this branch were also mostly in Russian service, but not entirely. Two cousins, Witold and Mikołaj, took part in a Polish anti-Russian conspiracy in 1863, and thus were excluded from the general confirmation of princely titles in 1866; the latter, who had been governor of the Vilnius region, was sent to prison. A century later, several members of this branch were deported to prisons in the Soviet Union in the 1940s and from there emigrated to the UK or Canada where many of them currently reside.

A final member of this senior branch (that of Prince Alexander) worth noting before moving on to the junior branch, is Jerzy Giedroyć (1906-2000) who had been a journalist and political activist in Poland before the Second World War, then emigrated to Paris where he founded a literary salon and a journal, Kultura, for Polish émigrés. His political ideas were to encourage exiled Poles, and the emerging European Union more generally, to accept the post-war boundaries of Poland and to foster reconciliation amongst all the states of Eastern Europe with an ultimate goal of coaxing an independent Belarus and Ukraine out of the Soviet Union. These ideas suddenly feel quite topical again. There is a Jerzy Giedroyć Square in Warsaw, located near the Łazienki Palace.

The second major branch of the family, that of Prince Bartholomew (Baltramiejus in Lithuanian) was at first more prominent than the senior branch. Bartholomew’s son, Matas (or Mathias) was sent as an envoy to Muscovy to make peace with Tsar Ivan the Terrible in 1551, then took up important posts as Governor of Vilnius and Marshal of the Court of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. When he died in 1562, his sons were all well placed: the eldest, Kaspar was a signatory of the Act of Union between Poland and Lithuania in 1569, and a Chamberlain of the court; Merhelis (of Melchior) was Bishop of Samogitia from 1576; and Marcin was Voivode (or governor) of the sensitive frontier province of Mstislav (now eastern Belarus) and a commander in the ongoing wars against Muscovy. Of these brothers, Merhelis left the most enduring historical legacy, as a champion of Lithuanian language and culture, sponsoring some of the first books printed in that language (religious and historical), and in supporting the reforms of the Catholic Church following the Council of Trent—building new seminaries, schools, etc.

The line continued through descendants of Prince Kaspar. This branch, like the senior branch, then split into many, many sub-lineages. The main line, who resided at the manor of Aviliai in northern Lithuania (Owile in Polish), but became Polonised over the centuries and were more based in Warsaw. In the early 20^th century, the head of this branch, Prince Franciszek Ignacy, became a celebrated historian of medicine, professor at the University of Warsaw from 1920, and was instrumental in setting up the new public health service in a newly independent Republic of Poland after 1918.

In a parallel branch at about the same time, Princess Vera Gedroits made a name for herself as well in medicine, but in Imperial Russia. The daughter of Prince Ignacy who had moved to Russia following the failed Polish uprising of 1863 (and had his princely title confirmed by the Tsar in 1878), Vera (or Wiera) wrote later that she had been inspired to study medicine by her brother Sergei’s early death as a child (and in fact used her brother’s name sometimes as her pen name). She led a truly fascinating life: it is fairly well established that she was a lesbian and arranged a marriage of convenience with a family friend to enable her to study abroad, which she did, in Lausanne. Back in Russia, she gained experience as a surgeon in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05, and received high honours, then was invited to work as a surgeon in the hospital at the Imperial residence at Tsarskoe Selo in 1909. When the First World War broke out, Princess Vera helped the Empress Alexandra establish her role as a nurse (and it is said, tried to speak reason to her to mitigate the damage being done by her blind faith in the faith-healer/conjurer Rasputin). After the war she became professor of medicine at the Kiev Medical Institute, where she was known as a pioneer in the area of abdominal surgery, and (so notes her online biography), lived fairly openly as part of a married couple with Countess Maria Nirod, a former maid of honour of the Empress and one of the nurses she had trained back at the Imperial court. She died in 1932 in Kiev (Kyiv).

Many other members of this Russian branch served in the Imperial armies and then emigrated during the Revolution. One, Prince Nikolai, moved to China and became an advisor to Chiang Kai-shek, head of the Nationalist Government. Another settled in Gdansk in Poland and another in Leeds in the UK. Still another moved to New Jersey in the early 20^th century, and it is I believe (but can’t seem to confirm) this branch that produced the American actor from 1990s TV shows, Jason Gedrick, born in 1965 in Chicago.

Returning to the Aviliai (Owile) branch, the line of Prince Jerzy (b. 1742) stayed in Poland and Lithuania in the nineteenth century. One of his descendants was Prince Tadeusz, born in Aviliai (then in the Russian Empire), and later owner of the Łobzów estate and manor house (now Labzova in western Belarus), which he inherited in the 1920s from aristocratic Polish relatives. After training with the Imperial army, after the First World War he helped establish border relations for the new Polish Republic and its neighbours in Ukraine and Lithuania. In the 1930s, Tadeusz worked in various administrative posts in the region of Łobzów which was by then eastern Poland, and in 1938 became a Senator of the Republic. Following the Soviet invasion of eastern Poland in 1939, he was arrested, imprisoned and tortured, and eventually executed in June 1941. His wife Anna and their three children were held in a Gulag in Western Siberia for two years until they escaped to Persia in 1942, and then made their way to the United Kingdom in 1947.

The youngest of these three children was Michal Jan Giedroyć, or Michael, who was 18 at the time of this dramatic escape in 1947. He went on to study in a British university then became an aircraft engineer and designer. Later in life he re-ignited his interest in family history and the history of medieval Lithuania, and after the re-emergence of Lithuania as an independent state in the 1990s, Michael worked to help reconstruct some of its historical monuments, including some of the Giedraitis churches and manors, notably the monastery at Videniškiai and the archaeological remains of Baltadvaris Castle. He and his English wife had four children, including one son, Michael, and three daughters: Kasia, a children’s book author and wife of former UK ambassador to the UN Philip Parham; Coky, a director of loads of British television shows (and now married to a baronet, so technically Lady Bowyer-Smyth); and Mel, the comedian and presenter with whom this post began. For a woman who is often presented as quintessentially English, she has a lot of fascinating non-English family history behind her.

(images mostly Wikimedia Commons)

(see here for Part I)

The seventeenth century was a century of great conflict in Transylvania, but also so its longest periods of stable autonomy and the emergence of its most famous national heros. Prince Gábor Bethlen’s 15-year reign, 1613 to 1629, and the 18 years of the reign of György I Rákóczy, 1630-1648, are seen as islands of respite in a mostly turbulent history.

There are two Bethlen noble houses in Hungarian/Transylvanian history. Both (probably) derive their name from the town of Bethlen (today Beclean) in northern Transylvania. Sources differ as to whether they were branches of the same family or not (they bear different coats of arms which is usually a strong indicator they are distinct). The family known as Bethlen de Bethlen was probably descended from the Apafi (see below), and while they were consistently one of the most prominent noble families in the region—all the way up to becoming Chancellor of Transylvania in the 1670s—they were not princely, so are not ‘on topic’ here. They outlived the princely Bethlen dynasty, continued to dominate local administration in the Austro-Hungarian monarchy of the 19^th century, and even remained prominent in the 20^th century: Count István Bethlen de Bethlen was Prime Minister of Hungary, 1921-31.

The other branch had their ancestral seat at Iktár, in a region of the old Kingdom of Hungary known as the Banat, which, following the conquest by the Ottomans in the 1520s, became a province directly ruled by the Sultan, the Eyalet of Temeşvar (the Temesvári vilajet, in Hungarian). The family moved their seat therefore in 1576 to Marosillye, to a fortified castle a short distance across the frontier in Transylvania. This castle was demolished in 1670 (leaving just a bastion), and the castle there today was one rebuilt by new owners in the 18^th century, the Bornemisza family.

Farkas Bethlen de Iktár was given lands in Transylvania by Stephen Báthory, and named Captain-General of the Principality, but left his two sons as orphans in 1591. The elder, Gábor, was raised under the aegis of István Bocskai, then supported the rule of Mózes Székely as one of his leading commanders. When the latter was defeated, Bethlen fled to the Ottoman Empire and became leader of the Transylvanian refugees. He returned to join Bocskai’s Uprising and was rewarded with lands in Hunyad County and the job of Lieutenant there (1605). He fell out with Gábor Báthory so went into exile once again into Ottoman lands. When Báthory was then replaced by the annoyed Sultan in 1613, Bethlen was the logical choice. He was soon endorsed by the Transylvanian Diet, then by the Emperor Matthias in Vienna in 1615.

Prince Gábor Bethlen (or Bethlen Gábor—remember it is traditional in Hungarian to reverse the names) was seen as an ‘enlightened’ ruler, and developed the area’s mines and industry. He built a new grand palace in Gyulafehérvár, founded a Protestant college here and sponsored Protestant students to go abroad and study in England and the Netherlands. Disliking increasing Habsburg persecution of Protestants in Royal Hungary, he invaded in August 1619, captured the chief cities of Kassa and Pozsony (the royal capital), and advanced into Austria but by November was pushed back out by Habsburg forces. After a temporary peace, in August 1620, he was elected King of Hungary by an anti-Habsburg assembly, though this was never recognised by all parties, and by December 1621, he renounced the election and signed another peace accord—in exchange he was given more counties on the eastern margins of Royal Hungary to govern, and the Emperor agreed to tolerate religious freedom in Bethlen’s domains. He was also given one of those small Silesian duchies that were always being handed out to solidify alliances (Opole), but did not hold on to it very long.

As the Thirty Years War, which broke out in 1618, started to heat up for the new Habsburg Emperor (Ferdinand II), Bethlen pressed for more advantages, including a Habsburg bride for himself (always a good thing for raising the status of your dynasty). When he was turned down, he negotiated instead for a Calvinist Hohenzollern bride from Brandenburg, Princess Catherine. She was the daughter of the Elector of Brandenburg, but also, crucially, the sister-in-law of King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, the Protestant military champion. The couple married in 1626, but had no children before Gábor died in November 1629.

Catherine of Brandenburg was named Princess of Transylvania in her own right in November 1629, and even minted her own coins, but she was replaced by her husband’s younger brother István in September 1630. She converted to Catholicism in 1639 to marry the Duke of Saxe-Lauenburg and died in 1649.

Prince István Bethlen resigned only a few months later in favour of György Rákóczi, the son of Prince Zsigmond. Rákóczi had been the leader of the Protestant faction of nobles in Hungary in the reign of Gábor Bethlen, but also enjoyed the favour of the Habsburg regime in Vienna. He married a wealthy heiress, Zsuzsanna Lórántffy, and settled in her estate of Sárospatak.

The magnificent castle of Sárospatak, in the far northeast corner of Hungary (bordering on Slovakia) is today one of the crown jewels of the Hungarian National Museum network of museums. It is considered amongst the best-preserved Renaissance architecture in Hungary. The central fortified tower, the ‘red tower’, was built by King Andrew II in the 13^th century, and is thought to be the birthplace of one of Hungary’s national saints, Saint Elizabeth. The Perényi family added a Renaissance palace in the 1530s and 40s, a period when this area became known as a place for Protestant education and thinking—the first Protestant college in Hungary was founded here in 1530, and the famous Czech theologian Comenius (Komenský) was given safe have to write and teach here in the 1650s, by which time it was one of the main Rákóczy strongholds. After the tumults of the end of the century, much damaaged, the castle was handed over by the Habsburgs to various Austrian families, and today, restored, it serves as the Rákóczi Museum—it even features on the back of the 500 forint note.

György Rákóczi led troops in Gábor Bethlen’s war against the Habsburgs in the early 1620s, then (eventually) succeeded him as Prince of Transylvania from November 1630. The reign of György I is mostly uneventful, though he survived an attempt by the Ottomans to replace him in 1636 and unrest from neighbouring Wallachian and Moldavian princes later in the decade; but a mostly peaceful reign gave him time to continue to develop Bethlen’s princely court at Gyulafehérvár, and elevate his residences at Sárospatak and Munkács as truly princely residences in the 1630s and 40s, receiving ambassadors with lavish attention to augment his reputation in the diplomatic world.

The monumental fortress of Munkács was for centuries one of the most famous in Hungary, yet ironically isn’t in Hungary at all today. Called Mukachevo in Ukrainian, it is one of the major tourist attractions of the Zakarpattia (Trans-Carpathia) region of the far southwest of Ukraine. It was also called Plankenburg in German or Palanok in Ruthenian (early Ukrainian). Perched high on a volcanic hill, it was built as early as the founding of the Hungarian kingdom by Saint Stephen in the 11^th century to guard the Vereche Pass, over which the Magyar tribes had come from the steppes north of the Black Sea. Indeed, it proved a useful guardian against further tribes who crossed the same pass: the Pechenegs, the Mongols, the Tatars. By the mid-13^th century it was the largest, best defended fortress in the Kingdom of Hungary. Munkács was held by various noble families in the 14^th and 15^th centuries, then directly by the Crown in the 16^th, until Maximilian II gave it in 1573 to Gábor Mágócsi, whose sons were raised (and fleeced, it looks like) by their stepfather, Zsigmond Rákóczi. It again passed through different aristocratic hands until it was returned by Prince Gábor Bethlen to the Rákóczi in 1629.

Munkács remained the seat of the Rákóczi princes for much of the rest of the seventeenth century, and was famously defended by the widow of Prince Ferenc I, Ilona Zrínyi, in sieges lasting for several years in 1685 to 1687. Until she finally surrendered it in January 1688, Munkács was the only castle the Habsburgs were unable to take by force. It was retaken by Ferenc II Rákóczi in 1703, then retaken again by Imperial forces in 1711. But across the 18^th century, it lost its strategic value (especially once Galicia became part of the Habsburg domains following the partition of Poland), and it became a state prison. Many significant prisoners were held here until it was decommissioned by Emperor Franz Josef in 1896 in commemoration of the Millennium of the founding of the Hungarian Kingdom. In the 20^th century it was used as a barracks for the Czech, Hungarian, then Soviet armies, then restored and re-opened as a museum (as Mukachevo) by the Ukrainian government in the 1990s.

As the Thirty Years War was already starting to wind down, Prince György I Rákóczi decided to intervene, and attacked the forces of Emperor Ferdinand III in 1644. But the Sultan was not in a mood to wage war, and ordered his vassal to withdraw in 1645. The resulting peace treaty confirmed the earlier treaties (rule over some of the eastern counties of north-eastern Hungary and religious freedom for Protestants), and the Prince died soon after in 1648.

His son, Prince György II, had been elected as successor already in 1642, and in 1643 married Zsófia Báthory (from above), the last of her family. Her mother had forced her to convert from Catholicism in a bid to keep relevant in Transylvanian magnate politics, and she was a most unwilling bride. In 1657, the Prince joined Sweden in its war against Poland-Lithuania, with the aid of the rulers of Wallachia and Moldavia, and Cossack troops disgruntled with Polish rule in the eastern steppes of what is now Ukraine. György decided to claim the Polish throne itself, perhaps drawing on the reputation of his wife’s Báthory name. Like his father, he did not consult with his overlord, the Sultan Mehmed IV, and was thus not supported when things went wrong. After initial successes in Poland, his forces were were thrown into disarray in the late summer, and as he fled back to Transylvania, his abandoned army was almost entirely captured by the Crimean Tatars, allies of Poland. György II was deposed formally by the Sultan in November, but defiantly reinstated by the Transylvanian Diet in January 1658. He was driven out then returned again in March 1659. The Turks invaded the principality in Spring 1660, and Rákóczi died from wounds he received in the fierce battle at Szászfenes (today’s Florești) in May.

György’s son, Ferenc (Francis), had been pre-elected like his father in 1652 (aged only 7), but was passed over for the throne following the debacle of 1657. His mother, Zsófia Báthory, hastily converted herself back to Catholicism, and her young son too, earning Habsburg favour, and even obtained from the Imperial court the title of count for the Rákóczi family (in 1664). As noted above, Hungarian nobles rarely sported any title at all, so this was a relatively rare privilege. We will return to Ferenc below.

In the confusion of 1657-58, a number of very short-lived princely reigns followed in quick succession: Rhédey, Barcsay, Kemény. The first was Ferenc Rhédey, who ruled from November 1657 to January 1658. The Rhédey were ancient nobles, a cadet branch of the powerful Clan Aba (one of the first families of Hungary, see below), who adopted the name Rhédey in the late 13^th century, taken from their properties of Kisréde and Nagyréde in Heves County, northeast of Buda. With the Turkish occupation of central Hungary in the 1540s, they moved east into Transylvania and were given lands in Maros County, and gradually built up lands there, and the title of baron, 1606. They acquired the castle of Erdőszentgyörgy there in 1627 (today’s Sângeorgiu de Pădure); as Rhédey Castle it was rebuilt in the 18^th century, then renovated in a classical style in the early 19^th century, and was the birthplace of Countess Claudine Rhédey who became the grandmother of Princess Mary of Teck, queen-consort of King George V of Great Britain. It is this connection that has brought Prince Charles to Transylvania in support of renovating its built heritage and conserving its wildlife. Rhédey Castle served as the local primary school in the 20^th century, and is now a museum. There is also a Rhédey Palace in the city of Cluj (formerly Kolozsvár), originally built by the Székely family in the 17^th century, inherited in the 18^th century by the Rhédeys, and rebuilt in the 1770s to house one of the very first Hungarian theatre companies.

Ferenc Rhédey, Prince of Transylvania, was closely connected to Prince Gábor Bethlen, his mother having remarried the Prince’s brother István Bethlen, and Ferenc himself marrying his step-sister Druzsiána Bethlen. Like his father, he served as lieutenant of Máramaros County, and became a trusted counsellor to Prince György II Rákóczi. He had the wisdom not to try to hold on to power in January 1658, when the latter reclaimed his throne, and was rewarded with the title of count in 1659. His branch of the family went extinct with his death in 1667, but his cousins were re-created counts again in 1744. The family was extinct by the end of the 19^th century.

In September 1658, the Sultan appointed another of Prince György’s chief commanders and advisors, Ákos Barcsay. Despite his stronger position as Rákóczy’s chief of council and one of the governors of Transylvania appointed while the Prince was away in Poland in 1657, he had initially been passed over for Rhédey as he was of lower rank. But only just. The Barcsay family traced their lineage back to the early 14^th century, and were originally based in Transylvania too (unlike the Bethlens or the Rákóczis), at Nagybarca (Bârcea Mare) in Hunyad County. Like most magnates they became Calvinist in the Reformation.

Ákos Barcsay had been a diplomat and counsellor of Prince György I, Lieutenant of Hunyad County from 1648, then, as noted, chief of council for Prince György II. His brother was one of the leaders of the Transylvanian army. In October 1658, the Diet agreed to the Sultan’s choice, and the new Prince Barcsay agreed to pay 40,000 thalers a year in tribute, and to capture the deposed Prince György. But in March 1659, at a time he was away from the capital, consulting with regional Turkish administrators, Rákóczi returned and resumed his government of the Principality. Barcsay was installed by the Turks once again by force in May 1660 (and from this point they occupied directly those counties of the Hungarian kingdom known as the ‘Partium’). One of his main generals was killed in battle by another of Rákóczi’s former commanders, János Kemény, in November 1660, and Prince Ákos himself was defeated in December and abdicated. He was murdered by Kemény’s men in July 1661. The Barcsay family continued for a while, named barons from 1742, but this branch soon died out.

Meanwhile, János Kemény was now Prince of Transylvania, this time as a vassal of the Habsburgs, not the Ottomans. His family were also ancient nobles, Transylvanian, from the 13^th century, based around estates at Magyargyerőmonostori (Mănăstireni), near Kolozsvár. In the 1640s, János acquired a castle further north at Aranyosmeggyes (Medieşu Aurit) in the far northwest of the Principality in Szatmár County, through his marriage to an heiress of the noble Lónyai family. The 13^th-century castle had been held for centuries by the Báthorys, then rebuilt in the Renaissance style in the 1620s, before it passed to Anna Lónyay. It was mostly destroyed in the rebellions of the later 17^th century, rebuilt in the 19^th century, then blown up in World War II and left as a ruin.

Like Rhédey and Barcsay, Kemény had been a chief advisor to Prince György II, and went with him to Poland as one of his commanders in 1657. He was held captive by the Tatars in Bağçasaray, the capital of the Crimean Khanate, until his wife paid a huge ransom in August 1659. He wrote a memoir of his experiences, which is considered one of the best of that genre of the 17^th century. So he had been completely out of the way during the confusion of 1658-59. He realised that György II would never regain the support of the Sultan, that Barcsay was unlikely to hold on to his throne, and that Transylvania would not recover any semblance of freedom without help from Vienna. So with authorisation from the Emperor, he organised a Diet to proclaim himself Prince of Transylvania in January 1661, and went further to declare the end of dependence on the Ottomans in April. But the Sultan felt differently, and sent an army back to Transylvania and defeated the ‘false prince’ in June. János Kemény tried again in September, but was killed in battle in January 1662. He left descendants who became barons in 1698, and counts in 1804.

Reasserting Ottoman authority, Küçük Ali Pasha chose another of Rákóczi’s former commanders, Mihály (Michael) Apafi, to be Prince of Transylvania in September 1661. Apparently he had asked three other nobles who had refused. Apafi accepted, was approved by the Diet, and immediately made a secret peace deal with the Habsburgs, who therefore abandoned Kemény. By 1664, in a new peace treaty between the Habsburgs and the Ottomans, Emperor Leopold recognised Mihály Apafi as prince, and he settled in for a nice thirty-year rule.

At this point—for fun—we can delve a bit more into the very ancient history of the Magyar peoples, and look (finally) at the Aba Clan, progenitors of the Apafi. The ‘Gens Aba’ are considered to be amongst the founding fathers of the nation. According to the 13^th-century Gesta Hunnorum et Hungarorum, they descended from Attila the Hun and a daughter of Emperor Honorius, though Honorius (d. 423) had no children, and there aren’t nearly enough generations to their supposed son Csaba in the 9^th century. More historically the founder may have been a tribal leader of Khazars, a Turkic tribe that joined the Magyar federation in the 9^th century on the Pontic Steppes before they emigrated into the Danube Basin. They were given lands by Prince Árpád, the founder of the royal dynasty, in about 900, in the forests of the Matra Mountains, now Heves County (northeast of Buda), centred on Gyöngyös. They built a castle called Pata, or Gyöngyöspata. Prince Shaba (or Csaba) married in about 1009 a daughter of the Magyar chieftain, Géza, and had a son called Sámuel. The family converted to Christianity, perhaps from paganism, but maybe from Judaism (Samuel’s name is a clue)—there were in fact Khazar leaders who had adopted Judaism in the 8^th century. It is an intriguing idea. In any case, the newly Christianised Aba family built the Abbey of Abasár on their lands, around which formed the new Eger diocese. The name Aba could refer to the word for ‘father’, to represent their patriarchal piety.

Sámuel Aba became ‘count palatine’ (head of the court) for his first cousin, King Stephen I. When that king, founder of the Hungarian monarchy, died childless in 1038, he was first succeeded by his nephew Peter the Venetian, then by Sámuel in 1041. It is likely he who built Abaújvár (‘Aba’s New Castle’, a fortified hilltop, today just an archaeological site), which came to form the core of a new county in the northeast of the Kingdom, Abaúj. Peter the Venetian returned however, reclaimed the throne in 1044, and executed his cousin.

Famous Aba descendants include Miklós Aba, Ban of Dalmatia and Croatia, 1272-73, and Makján Aba, Palatine of Hungary, 1286-87. But the most famous was Amadé Aba, also Palatine, on and off several times between 1288 and 1310. After the death of the last king from the Árpád dynasty (András III) in 1301, Amadé led his own more or less independent foreign policy, supporting candidates for the royal throne from dynasties of Bohemia, Poland, Naples (Anjou) and Austria. He ultimately supported the election of Charles of Anjou in 1308, and was appointed Lieutenant of Szepes County—he became virtual ruler of a large domain in this area, centred on Gönc and Boldogkő castles (in Abaúj County), and the town of Kassa (today’s Košice)—stretching towards the Carpathians into what’s now Ukraine (Munkács—see above).

Prince Amadé Aba granted lands to his followers, and noble titles, and ran his own judicial court. But in 1310, he was stripped of his titles by the king he had helped create, and in 1311 was murdered by the citizens of Kassa. His sons tried to continue his powerful dominion but were defeated by King Charles’s army at Rozgony (Rozhanovce, near Košice) in June 1312. After the Battle of Rozgony, the Aba supremacy was crushed. Abaujvár and the core lands around Gyöngyös passed into other noble families. But nearly twenty noble houses trace descent back to the Clan Aba, including the Rhédey and the Bethlen de Bethlen (not the Bethlen de Iktár). And of course the Apafi (or Abafy or Apaffy).

The Apafi surname appeared in the early 14^th century, and they made their base at Apa-Nagyfalva (Nușeni in Romanian) in north-central Transylvania (Beszterce-Naszód County). This castle was destroyed several times in the 17^th century, then passed to the Bánffy family by the end of the century. As far as I can tell, there are no remains.

While the noble family name remained Apafi de Apanagyfalva, their dynastic headquarters, from the 15^th century, was Ebesfalva, in Szeben County (Sibiu), central Transylvania. It was also known just as Apafi Castle. (falva by the way means ‘someone’s village’). In the 1550s, the castle was rebuilt by Gergely Apafi, whose son and grandson rose to the rank of lieutenant of neighbouring Küküllő County. The latter’s son was Mihály Apafi, who became Prince of Transylvania. After the extinction of the family in 1713, the town was bought by Armenian settlers in 1720s, and renamed Erzsébetváros (or Elisabethstadt). The castle later served as a courthouse, a district court, a prison and a town hall; it is now a museum of Armenian culture (renamed Dumbrăveni in Romanian in the 20^th century).

Another residence was the villa at Almakerék (Mălâncrav, southwest of Sighisoara), built in late 16^th century, which passed to the Bethlen family in the 18^th century—this is one of those renovated with the aid of Prince Charles in 2000. The Lutheran church in this town was also the dynastic burial place for the Apafi family.

Mihály Apafi served with Prince György Rákóczy in the disastrous campaign in Poland in 1657, and like János Kemény, was held by the Tatars in Crimea until his wife paid his ransom in 1661. As we’ve seen above, he was appointed Prince of Transylvania by the Turks in September 1661, approved by the Transylvanian Diet, then recognised by the Habsburg emperor in 1664 (Treaty of Vasvár). This treaty, while good for Apafi, annoyed a lot of the Hungarian nobles who sensed the Ottoman Empire was finally on the defensive and potentially challengable. Seeing the Habsburg Emperor do nothing, they rebelled against him in 1666-67. They invited young Ferenc Rákóczy, the son of Prince György, to be their leader. The rebellion was disorganised and quickly put down, with most of its leaders brutally executed. But Ferenc’s mother, Zsófia Báthory, intervened and paid a huge fee (300,000 forints). She was a tremendous force; but so too was her daughter-in-law, Ilona Zrínyi, the immensely rich daughter of the Ban of Croatia, Count Peter Zrínyi (or Zrinski in Croatian) who had initially spearheaded the rebellion, and would be executed in 1671. Prince Ferenc I tried then to stay neutral in the coming years, and died, aged only 31, in 1676.

Apafi had stayed mostly out of all of this. As prince he resided mostly at Fogaras Castle (Făgăraș, the capital of the old Fogaras County, now in Brașov County), a traditional seat of Transylvanian princes, built in the 1310s, rebuilt in the 1520s, and transformed by Prince Mihály Apafi into a princely residence (as Gyulafehérvár had been mostly destroyed by the Turks in 1658). In the 20^th century it was used as a prison, and is today a museum—one of the great castle-museums of Romania.

Prince Mihály remained loyal to the Sultan during the Ottoman invasion of western Hungary and the siege of Vienna in 1683, and indeed led some Transylvanian troops in support (but carefully avoided actually engaging in battle), but after the spectacular (and rather surprising) defeat of the Ottomans, Apafi saw his autonomy threatened by Habsburg armies advancing across the Hungarian plain. Buda was liberated from the Turks in 1686, and troops of Duke Charles of Lorraine entered Transylvania. Apafi made a deal in 1687 recognising Habsburg suzerainty, and to pay a very large sum of money; in return, the Emperor recognised his son’s right to the succession, which was approved soon after by the Sultan as well.

Mihály I died in 1690, and was indeed succeeded by his son, Mihály II. He had been ‘associated’ with his father’s reign as prince since 1681. By the mid-1680s, however, the Turks had shifted their interests towards the leader of a new anti-Habsburg rebellion, Imre Thököly (more on him next). Emperor Leopold recognised Mihály II Apafi as Prince of Transylvania in 1691, though under a regency council (he was only 15). His councillors continued to negotiate for a semi-independent state, now under the protection of the Protestant Great Powers: England, the United Dutch Provinces and Brandenburg-Prussia. But in 1692, the young Prince was lured to Vienna and pressed to concede control of the principality. By 1696 it was under the rule of a military governor and he formally abdicated. Apafi was created a Reichsfürst, given a generous pension and lived out his days in Vienna where he died in 1713.

By this point, the attentions of Hungarian and Transylvanian nationalists had firmly shifted to Imre Thököly and his step-son, who happened to be Ferenc II Rákóczy.

The Thököly family are quite different from all the other families surveyed thus far, in that they were not very ancient, and were (at first) not very noble. They were also not from Transylvania, and the individual we need to focus on here, Imre, was only nominally prince of Transylvania for one year. His history mostly belongs to the history of Hungary and to the Ottoman-Habsburg wars more generally, so I’ll focus on his dynastic history here. From a family of horse and cattle merchants from Upper Hungary, Sebestyén Thököly began to accumulate great wealth in the mid-16^th century, so much that he was able loan some to the Habsburg monarchs to fund their wars. They reciprocated generously with ennoblement in 1572, then the title of baron in 1598. In between, he acquired an estate at Késmárk (today Kežmarok), in Szepes County, in 1583. This was a Lutheran town, and Thököly a member of the new faith. Most residents were in fact German (and the name of the town was German for ‘cheese market’), and would remain the majority until about 1910.

The newly minted Baron Sebestyén Thököly de Késmárk left his fortune to his son, István, who then married a great heiress, Katalin Thurzó, and acquired through this union notably the major fortress of Árva, perched dramatically above a river bend in the mountainous frontier between Hungary and Poland. This castle (now Orava) was built in the mid-16^th century on the site of a much older wooden fortification, and was added to by various magnate families, notably the Thurzós. Today it is frequently used as a set for filming, including the 2020 retelling of the Dracula story for BBC and Netflix (so Count Dracula does get into this story!).

Baron István’s son, also called István, became Lieutenant of Árva County, and as a steadfastly loyal supporter of the Habsburg monarchy, was elevated further to the rank of Count in 1654. He married a grand-daughter of Prince István Bethlen, with estates in Transylvania, and close relations with the Rhédey family. But the nervous Habsburg administration grew suspicious about Count István’s loyalties during an anti-Habsburg aristocratic plot in 1670, and when he and his family retreated to Árva Castle, they laid siege, during which he died. His young son Imre was smuggled out to safety to his mother’s estates in Transylvania.

Count Imre (usually translated as ‘Emeric’ in English) thus became the charismatic leader of Hungarian resistance to Habsburg rule for the next three decades, one of the most formidable. As an exile at the court of Prince Mihály I Apafi, he came into contact with a number of disgruntled Protestant nobles and clergy, who as soldiers took on the name kuruc, which some have thought to have come from cruciatus (‘crusader’) but is more likely from the Turkish word kurudsch, ‘rebel’. In 1677, Apafi made some secret deals with the king of France, Louis XIV, who agreed to subsidise a kuruc rebellion, especially if led by young Imre Thököly. He raised troops in Transylvania and initiated a grand revolt in 1678, and initially did extremely well, taking over much of the Kingdom of Hungary and proclaiming himself ‘Prince of Upper Hungary’ in 1681. Playing on his kinship relations with the Bethlen and Rhédey clans, he also married the widow of Prince Ferenc I Rákóczy for good measure— llona Zríniyi would certainly play her part as the ‘Kuruc Queen’. Sultan Mehmed IV went further and recognised Thököly as ‘king’ of Upper Hungary, a title confirmed by some local diets.

A triumphant Prince Imre aided the Ottomans in the siege of Vienna, but when that went badly for them, bore the brunt of the blame. In frustration, he tried to make a deal with Emperor Leopold, offering to end his rebellion in return for acknowledgement of the rights of Protestants in Hungary and of his title as Prince of Upper Hungary. Leopold refused. War re-commenced, and Thököly suffered a major defeat at Eperjes (now Prešov), 11 August 1685. When he sought the help of his Turkish protectors, they sent him in chains to Adrianople, and most of his kuruc followers abandoned him. A year later, however, he was released and sent with a small army to Transylvania to attempt to reclaim his principality. He had little success, nor in the attempt that followed in 1688, but in September 1690, he did defeat a combined Austrian and Apafi army, and was elected Prince of Transylvania by the Diet. But he was ousted soon after in 1691.

For the rest of the decade, Prince Imre Thököly served as an able cavalry commander in Ottoman armies, notably at the Battle of Zenta in 1697. But when a peace treaty was finally made (Karlowitz) in January 1699, his name was explicitly excluded from the amnesty that was offered to most Hungarian rebels. After one last attempt to reclaim his lands, he and his wife retired to the community of Hungarian exiles in Galata (the foreigner settlement across the Golden Horn from Constantinople). He received the title ‘Count of Widin’ (Vidin, Bulgaria) from the Sultan (Mustafa II), and spent the last years of his life in exile. After he died in 1705, in the city of İzmit (ancient Nicomedia), he was buried there, but in 1906 his ashes were returned to Hungarian (for the moment) soil in Késmárk.

The leadership role of anti-Habsburg rebellion in Hungary was now taken up by Thököly’s step-son, Prince Ferenc II Rákóczy. After the death of his father, Ferenc I, the boy had been raised, with his sister Julianna, at the family estates of Munkács and Sárospatak, though under the strict formal guardianship of Emperor Leopold. The powerful Countess Ilona kept her children safe during the three-year siege of Munkács in 1686-88, but after her surrender, all were taken to Vienna to be educated at court and integrated into the Austrian aristocracy. In 1694, young ‘Franz’ married Princess Amalia of Hesse-Rheinfels-Wanfried, and they settled down at Sárospatak Castle from where he could act as a loyal supporter of the Habsburg regime as Lieutenant of Sáros County.

But in April 1700, letters were intercepted by Habsburg authorities that implicated Rákóczy in a developing international plot by which France was attempting to gather allies for its impending war against Austria over the rights to the Spanish Succession. He was arrested, but escaped to Poland and by June 1703 accepted an offer to lead another kuruc uprising, a war of liberation. He convinced and army of peasant soldiers and Hajduks, but this time the bulk of the Hungarian nobility did not rally to the cause. Nevertheless, Rákóczy initially made great gains and occupied much of the Kingdom. In 1704, he assumed the title Prince of Transylvania, the last native son to bear this title.

But by 1705, France was doing badly in the war and was no longer able to send financial support. Still, in September, a diet of ‘Confederated Estates’ from all over Hungary elected Rákóczy as ‘Ruling Prince’. Peace talks with Vienna stumbled over the issue of the sovereignty of Transylvania, and in June 1707, the Habsburgs were formally declared ‘deposed’ by another diet. At the battle of Trencsén (Trenčin), 3 August 1708, the Prince suffered a defeat, and most of his allies abandoned him. He held out in Munkács, waiting for French aid that never came, until he fled once more to Poland in February 1711. The Emperor’s forces made peace with Rákóczy’s remaining troops in May (the Peace of Szatmár), and assured the Prince clemency if he would swear an oath of loyalty. He refused. His lands were confiscated, especially Munkács and others in Trans-Carpathia. He stayed in Poland—supported even as a candidate for the crown there by Tsar Peter I and others—then in 1712 went west on a tour and to press his case at the international peace negotiations then in full swing at Utrecht. He visited England and France and was viewed as a great hero by the fashionable set, but was completely ignored by the diplomats at Utrecht. His welcome in France ran out following the death of his erstwhile ally Louis XIV, so in 1717 he travelled to the Ottoman Empire, with a large entourage, where he settled in the large community of exiled Hungarian nobles at Rodostó on the Sea of Marmara (the ancient Rhaedestus, which was renamed Tekirdağ later in the 18^th century).

The last Prince of Transylvania lived here in comfort for many years and died in 1735. His heart was sent to France and his body to the Jesuit church in Galata, in Constantinople, alongside his mother Ilona. In 1906, their bodies were moved to the Cathedral in Kassa in a great Hungarian nationalist pageant—though of course, this city (Kosiče) is no longer in Hungary either.

Meanwhile, the Prince of Transylvania had become the Habsburg Emperor himself. From 1711 (and legally from 1699), Transylvania was incorporated more fully into the Habsburg monarchy and ruled directly by governors. None of these were from the great Transylvanian magnate families, with the exception of Count György Bánffy, who had a long run in quite challenging times: 1787 to 1822. After 1765, the status of Transylvania was raised to a ‘Grand Principality’ for Emperor Joseph II, as an autonomous realm of the Hungarian Crown. The rising numbers of Romanians in the population were ignored, and even though they were the majority, their numbers could always be balanced by the combined numbers of Hungarian and German subjects (according to some statistics, but not others—and this became controversial). In 1804, Transylvania was declared an Austrian Crownland, severing its link with Hungary, but in the 1848 revolution, it was incorporated into Hungary directly. Once this revolution failed, the situation was reversed, until the great compromise of 1867 joined Transylvania firmly to the Crown of Hungary and the separate Grand Principality was dissolved for good.

As the Habsburg Monarchy collapsed at the end of the First World War, Transylvania was proclaimed to be united with Romania, December 1918 (the Union of Alba Julia). This was sealed by the Treaty of Trianon, June 1920, but was not accepted by Hungary, who argued that 1.6 million Hungarians were now trapped on the wrong side of the border. By 2011, they still have a significant presence in some parts of Transylvania, cited at about 18% of the total population (with the ancient Saxon / German population now measuring only about 0.5%).

After 1711, there were also two ‘pretenders’ to the throne of Transylvania, the two sons of Prince Ferenc II Rákóczy: József and György. Both boys were kept in Vienna after the exile of their father, as ‘guests’ of the Emperor, who gave them an education and new ‘incognito’ titles: the Marchese di San Marco and the Marchese della Santa Elisabetta. I doubt people were fooled. In 1734, their father in far-off Turkey, probably sensing his end, decided to grant them better titles: the Duke of Munkács for the elder and the Duke of Makovica for the younger. József soon left Vienna and travelled through Italy, France and Spain, then visited Rodostó, and was recognised as Prince of Transylvania by the Sultan in 1737 as he prepared to launch a new war against the Habsburgs. This Prince Rákóczy was sent to the Balkans but didn’t get very far and died in 1738. György, on the other hand, had already settled in Paris much earlier (from about 1726) and lived there for many years, a fashionable curiosity in society, but little else. He did travel to the Ottoman Empire in 1742 on the invitation of the Sultan, but declined his offer to take up once more the Rákóczy family claims to Transylvania, and returned to France. He died at St Denis in 1756.

The house at Rodostó (Tekirdağ) in which Prince Ferenc II Rákóczy lived for many years was rebuilt after the property was donated to the Hungarian state in 1982. It now stands proudly as the Rákóczy Museum, a place of pilgrimage nearly four centuries after the Prince’s death. The memory of the Principality of Transylvania lives on.

(images Wikimedia Commons)

–A very big thanks to Dr Gábor Kármán of the Institute of History, Budapest, for helping me spot errors in this complicated story!

Families covered in this post:

• Hunyadi
• Zápolya
• Báthory
• Gutkeled
• Székely
• Bocskai
• Rákóczi
• Bethlen
• Rhédey
• Barcsay
• Kemény
• Apafi
• Aba
• Thököly

Castles visited:

in Romania (Transylvania):

• Hunyad (Hunedoara / Corvin Castle)
• Gyulafehérvár (Alba Julia)
• Somlyó (Şimleu, Báthory Castle)
• Erdőszentgyörgy (Sângeorgiu / Rhédey Castle)
• Aranyosmeggyes (Medieşu Aurit)
• Ebesfalva (Ibașfalău, now Dumbrăveni / Apafi Castle)
• Almakerek (Mălâncrav)
• Fogaras (Făgăras)

in Slovakia (‘Upper Hungary’):

• Trencsén (Trenčin)
• Makovica (Zboró, Zborov)
• Késmárk (Kežmarok)
• Árva (Orava)

in Hungary

• Nyírbátor
• Nagyecsed (Ecsed)
• Szerencs
• Nagykereki (Bocskai Castle)
• Sárospatak
• Boldogkő

in Ukraine (Trans-Carpathia):

• Munkács (Mukachevo or Palanok)

List of Princes of Transylvania and reigns:

1570-71: János Zsigmond Zápolya

1576-86: István Báthory

1586-98: Zsigmond Báthory

1599: András Báthory

1601-02: Zsigmond Báthory

1603: Mózes Székely

1605-06: István Bocskai

1607-08: Zsigmond Rákóczi

1608-13: Gábor Báthory

1613-29: Gábor Bethlen

1629: Catherine of Brandenburg

1630: István Bethlen

1630-48: György I Rákóczi

1648-57: György II Rákóczi

heir only: Ferenc I Rákóczi

1657: Ferenc Rhédey

1658: György II Rákóczi

1658-59: Ákos Barcsay

1659-60: György II Rákóczi

1660: Ákos Barcsay

1661: János Kemény

1661-90: Mihály I Apafi

1690-96: Mihály II Apafi

1690: Imre Thököly

1704-11: Ferenc II Rákóczi