To turn to Sir William Temple's views again, so convinced was he that a Turkish invasion of Austria would tend to the great advantage of France, that he believed that the Turks themselves would see it, and for that very reason refrain from the enterprise; it being against their interest to make any one Christian power so strong as France would then become.[5]
It is certain that Louis XIV. fully appreciated the value of that diversion of their attention from himself, which an attack from Hungary upon the rear of the German powers would cause. It is equally certain that he, the eldest son of the Church, the most Christian King, the persecutor of the Huguenots, had some understanding with Mohammedans and with Hungarian Protestant malcontents. And this, too, at a time when religious passions still ran high; when the forces of Europe were everywhere divided, owing to religious intolerance; when France herself was about to be fatally injured by the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. Louis, however, intrigued as readily with Hungarian Protestants as with Irish Romanists, and the intolerance of the Emperor gave every opportunity for interference. Indeed, the attacks of the Emperor Leopold upon the religion of some of his Hungarian subjects well nigh proved fatal to Austria. The Protestants preferred Mohammedan rule, which, if contemptuous, may he just, and is not avowedly persecuting, to the oppressions of a court dominated by the Jesuit fathers. Attempts to Germanize their nation and to override their laws united Hungarians of all religions in a common hostility to Vienna. A dangerous conspiracy, fomented by France, was discovered, and crushed in 1671 by the execution of the principal leaders. But Emerich Count Tekeli, the son of one of the chiefs involved, escaping into Transylvania, threw himself upon the protection of the Turks, and with their assistance commenced a guerilla warfare in Hungary. Numbers of the inhabitants, irrespective of their religion, joined his standard. A levy, under French officers, was made even in Poland for the assistance of the insurgents. With the almost open aid of the Pasha of Buda, their operations assumed the character of regular warfare, and they fully held their own against the Imperial generals.