First published in 2005. The Bethlen family was an ancient noble house of considerable wealth and influence in Transylvania. The writer of this autobiography Count Miklos (born 1642) was a General in 1682, Privy Councillor in 1689, Foispan in 1690 and Chancellor in 1691, after an excellent education and distinguished career in public life. He then clashed with General Rabutin, from 1696 the Austrian Commander in chief in Transylvania, which led to his arrest and imprisonment on a charge of treason in 1703. His autobiography, one of the most extensive of the literary memoirs that came from Transylvania at the period (among them the Letters from Turkey of Kelemen Mikes and Metamorphosis Transylvaniae of Peter Apor, both published by Kegan Paul in Bernard Adam’s English translation), was written in prison and under sentence of death in Hungary and Austria. Transferred to Viennese confinement in 1708 and pardoned by Emperor Charles III in 1712, Bethlen was never allowed to return to Transylvania, spent his last years in relative freedom in Vienna, and died in 1716.
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