Transylvania was indisputably among the Great Powers of the world, and the election of Cardinal Zápolya as the Holy Father of the Roman Catholic Church simply served as reinforcement to that fact. The recently elected Pope was very much in the pocket of the Transylvanian Emperor though, and his first acts as the Holy Father made that very clear to the world. First he excommunicated the ruler of tiny Bohemia, who held only two provinces – Bohemia and Kurland (a relic from their old past of European dominance), and then he lifted the excommunication on Muhammad IV of Granada, one of the states that had managed to secure independence during Spain’s turbulent time after the First World War.
The Bohemian King is excommunicated by Pope Zápolya, April 24th, 1619
Emperor Ákos was quick to seize upon the opportunity that he had created, and the Army de Ákos crossed the border into Bohemia at the end of August, and the province had fallen within a month. The Transylvania Emperor demanded the Bohemian capital, and with no military to support any sort of resistance the Bohemian king Ladislav IV agreed and began moving his court and capital to far off Kurland. But Ákos was a nasty fellow at times, and before the Bohemian court had even been moved to Kurland, patriot rebels funded by Transylvanian gold had seized control of the province and forced its defection to Lithuania, thus destroying the last remnants of the old Bohemian nation and monarchy. Left in limbo, the Bohemian king and his court settled in Austria, full of rage at the treachery of the Transylvanian Emperor.
The Treaty of Bohemia, October 15th, 1619
Bohemia collapses, November 1st, 1619
An interesting little sidestory during this war was the Lithuanian invasion of Holland, who had joined Bohemia in the defense against Transylvania as their obligation as Holy Roman Emperor had demanded. The Lithuanians marched across Northern Germany and laid siege to the Dutch nation’s capital, and after taking it Emperor Ákos demanded the Dutch abandon their reformed faith and return to the fold of the Roman Catholic Church. It was an arrangement that nobody expected to last, but Ákos didn’t much care, he just wanted the Dutch weakened so that they couldn’t challenge Transylvania’s growing interest in Africa.
Not a whole lot happened for the next three years in Transylvania aside from the battle between Great Britain and Transylvania over whose cardinal should next become Pope, but in May of 1622 Lithuania annexed Moldavia and the Emperor followed suit by staging minor expansions into India and Persia, against Gujarat and Persia, respectively. Ákos had decided he wanted Transylvania to play a more active part in the politics of the Indian sub-continent, which had been largely ignored by Transylvania aside from when it was pertinent (aka when Transylvania was at war with one of the Indian states). The intent on Ákos’ part was to prop up the relatively small state of Bihar and fuel their expansion with Transylvanian gold and weaponry.
The goal for Ákos’ plan was to create an Indian state that was large enough to push the Spanish out of East Asia, but still far away enough and weak that it could not challenge Transylvania for political leadership of the sub-continent, and so aside from pouring Transylvanian gold into the treasury of Bihar, the Emperor set about removing Bihar’s potential rivals in India, setting off a war against Gujarat which drew in a number of Indian states, and another against Persia, whose capital was now in India after having lost Hormuz not too long ago to the Transylvanian Empire.
The war was over very quickly, as Ákos had had two Transylvanian armies on the border with Gujarat and Khandesh, and another on the border of Persia that stormed into the enemy’s cities, and Ákos forced an easy peace upon the defeated.
The Treaty of Ahmadabad, November 27th, 1622
The Treaty of Nagpur, December 19th, 1622
The Treaty of Marv, January 26th, 1624
The Treaty of Ajmer, February 10th, 1625
Tragedy struck the Plater line shortly following these victories in the East, as Ákos’ only son to his first wife Josephine of France died of the fever while on campaign against Russian rebel groups in Northern Lithuania. As Ákos was currently married to his cousin Emilija of Lithuania, it became readily apparent that a Plater heir of royal blood was an impossibility, and finally Ákos decided he would name his bastard son Mihály heir to the Transylvanian Empire.
The Death of Krisztóf and the naming of Mihály as heir to the Transylvanian Empire, September 22nd, 1626
The Emperor had no time to dwell on the thoughts of the Plater dynasty, however, as he had used the wars in India as an excuse to build an ever larger mass of armies, and he was ready to use them. An easy bribe to the current pope, a cardinal elected from the state of Thuringa was all it took to get the excuse he needed to go to war with Transylvania’s old friend and undying rival – Austria. Despite having been crushed in the last war it had with Transylvania, Austria was still a very threatening rival to the Empire, with more men under arms then it had in the two state’s previous encounter, and with a population that itched for a chance to get their revenge.
Austria is excommunicated giving the Emperor justification for armed conflict, January 1st, 1629
The World of 1629