page_title: Burgenland
section_title: Habsburg administration
hierarchical_section_title: Burgenland / History / Habsburg administration
caption_attribution_description: English: Habsburg mortgages in Burgenland between 15th and 17th centuries.
context_page_description: Burgenland; is the easternmost and least populous state of Austria. It consists of two statutory cities and seven rural districts, with a total of 171 municipalities. It is 166 km long from north to south but much narrower from west to east. The region is part of the Centrope Project.
context_section_description: In 1440 the territory of present-day Burgenland was controlled by the Habsburgs of Austria, and in 1463 the northern part of it (with the town of Kőszeg) became a mortgage-territory according to the peace treaty of Wiener Neustadt. In 1477 King Matthias Corvinus of Hungary had retaken the area, but in 1491 it was mortgaged again by King Vladislaus II of Bohemia and Hungary to Emperor Maximilian I. In 1647 Emperor Ferdinand II returned it to the Kingdom of Hungary (which itself was a Habsburg possession in this time).
  In the 16th century, the medieval Kingdom of Hungary lost its independence and its north-western part that was not conquered by the Ottoman Empire was included in the Habsburg Empire. This Habsburg possession was known as Royal Hungary and it included territory of present-day Burgenland and western Hungary. Royal Hungary still had counties. What is today Burgenland was in those times the Moson, Sopron and Vas counties of Hungary.
  In the 16-17th centuries German Protestant refugees arrived in Western Royal Hungary to shelter from the religious wars of the Holy Roman Empire, particularly from the suppression of the Reformation in Austrian territories, then ruled by the staunchly Roman Catholic Habsburgs. After the Habsburg military victory against the Ottomans at the end of the 17th century, the Habsburg Kingdom of Hungary was enlarged to include much of the territory of the former medieval Kingdom of Hungary. In the 17th and 18th centuries the region of Western Hungary was dominated by the wealthy Catholic landowning families, for example the Esterházys and Batthyánys. In 1867, the Habsburg Empire was transformed into the dual monarchy of Austria-Hungary.
caption: Habsburg mortgages in Burgenland between the 15th and 17th centuries
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