ere left
unaltered, while the Porte expressly renounced all claim to Kiow and
the Russian Ukraine, which had been in the possession of the Czar since
1656. The ratification of the treaty was brought to Constantinople in
the following September by an envoy, whose gifts of costly arctic furs,
and ivory from the tusks of the walrus, might have unfolded to the Turks
the wide extent of the northern realms ruled by the monarch whom they
even yet regarded only as a tributary of their own vassal the Khan of
the Tartars, and scarcely deigned to admit on equal terms to diplomatic
intercourse.

Though the truce for twenty years, concluded between the Porte and the
Empire after the defeat of Ahmed-Kiuprili at St Gotthard in 1564, had
not yet expired by nearly three years, the political aspect of Hungary
left little doubt that the resumption of hostilities would not be so
long delayed. To understand more clearly the extraordinary complication
of interests of which this country was now the scene, it will, however,
be necessary to take a retrospective glance at its history during the
seventeenth century, after the treaty of Komorn with the Porte, in 1606,
had terminated for the time the warfare of which it had almost
constantly been the theatre since the occupation of Buda by Soliman the
Magnificent in 1541, ad had, in some measure, defined the boundaries of
the two great powers between which it was divided. The Emperors of the
House of Hapsburg, indeed, styled themselves Kings of Hungary, and Diets
were held in their name at Presburg; but the territory actually under
their sway amounted to less than a third of the ancient kingdom,
comprehending only the northern and western districts; while all the
central portion of Hungary Proper, as far as Agria on the north, and the
Raab and the Balaton Lake on the west, was united to the Ottoman Empire,
and formed the pashaliks of Buda and Temeswar, which were regularly
divided into sandjaks and districts, with their due quota of spahis and
timariots, who had been drawn from the Moslem provinces of Turkey, and
held grants of land by tenure of military service. The principality of
Transylvania, (called _Erdel_ by the Turks,) which had been erected by
Soliman in favour of the son of John Zapolya, comprehended nearly
one-fourth of Hungary, and (though its suzerainte was claimed by Austria
in virtue of a reversionary settlement executed by that prince shortly
before his death,) was generally, in eff