BÁTHORY, Sigismund, Prince of TRANSYLVANIA. — Born in Prague in 1572, died there in 1613. Having been entrusted with the principality at a very young age (1581), he took sole control of its government at sixteen. Contrary to the traditional policy of his country, he rose against the Turks, aligning himself, on the advice of the Jesuit Alfonso Carriello, alongside Emperor Rudolf II. Victorious in Wallachia (1595) and financially supported by Clement VIII, he suffered a severe defeat the following year at Mezökeresztes, after which he abdicated (10 Apr. 1598) in favor of the emperor, requesting in return 100,000 florins and the Duchy of Oppeln. Repenting, he returned to Transylvania in the following August to resume power. He abdicated a second time in 1599; but reelected in 1601, he soon after ceded power once more and definitively to the emperor.
BÁTHORY, SIGISMONDO, PRINCIPE DI TRANSILVANIA
Bibl.: J. Lénaart, *Vita, carattere e politica di S. B., principe di Transilvania*, in *Erdelyi muzeum*, 1880, pp. 217 ff.; Anon., in *Revai Nagy Lexikona*, 13 (1915), p. 404, where the monograph by L. Szadeczky on Maria Cristina, wife of Sigismund, is cited with important data. Niccolò Del Re