Every thing turned out quite differently from what the royal electors had hoped and expected. The Turks were decidedly averse to any augmentation of the power of the Hapsburgs by the acquisition of the Hungarian throne. They desired to see Hungary under a separate king of her own, and to accomplish this the Turks shrank from no sacrifices, and succeeded in embroiling the unfortunate country in continual wars. Unhappy Hungary was placed between the hammer and the anvil. The Turks were unwilling to yield, and the Hapsburgs, quite as reluctant to give up the country, were, nevertheless, unable to defend it. The result of the cruel war, waged for over thirty years, was, in the end, that Hungary was torn into three parts. The heart of the land, the Alföld, was seized by the Turks; the hilly plateau of Transylvania was ruled by native princes, acknowledging the suzerainty of the sultan; and the remaining portion only, the northern and western part, owned the supremacy of the Hapsburgs in their capacity of kings of Hungary. Thus the new dynasty, so far from proving a protection to the country, rather led to its dismemberment. The condition of Transylvania was, comparatively speaking, more favorable than that of either of the two other sections of the country. She had to pay her tribute to the Turks, but beyond that she experienced no interference on the part of her paramount lord. She was allowed to elect her own rulers, to convene her national assemblies, to keep up an army of her own, and to live as before under the ancient laws of Hungary. The Alföld, in the hands of the Turks, was governed in Turkish fashion. The Turks never settled down in the country they conquered; they only garrisoned it, as it were. The government and the spahis were the new landlords, and their chief care was, not to watch over the welfare of the people, but to fleece them and to extort from them heavy taxes and all sorts of vexatious imposts. The effects of such an administration became soon visible. The ancient culture perished, the population gradually decreased, and the once fertile soil relapsed into barrenness.