Kanizsától Olmützig

Abstract

The incursion of the Swedish army into Moravia in 1642 caught the Habsburg leadership by surprise, and they did everything they could to bolster the numbers of their fighting forces, including the deployment of irregulars recruited from Hungary and Croatia. Until now it hasn’t been common knowledge that by the advice of palatine Miklós Esterházy a thousand soldiers were transferred from the frontier regions of Lower Hungary, Győr and Kanizsa to the imperial theatre. From the region of Kanizsa 219 soldiers accepted foreign deployment for a three month period. It is exceptionally lucky that the whole list of the group’s members remained, and the broader context and circumstances of the foundation of this unit could also be reconstructed fairly well. One company of this contingent participated in the blockade of Olmütz (Olomouc, CZ), a city seized by Swedish forces in the early summer. Interestingly István Svatics, the captain of the Zala castle, who led the group recruited from the forts near Kanizsa, wrote two field reports about the deployment in Hungarian that can still be read today, giving us information about the unit’s involvement in the war. From these reports we can learn so far unknown details about the blockade fights in Olmütz, specifically about the involvement of the Hungarian units, as well as the characteristics and tasks of these groups.