enjoyed by his other subjects. Under Ladislaus' successor, Louis II (1516–1526), persecution of the Jews was a common occurrence. The bitter feeling against them was in part augmented by the fact that the baptized Emerich Szerencsés, the deputy treasurer, embezzled the public funds. War against the Ottomans (1526–1686) The Ottomans vanquished the Hungarians at the Battle of Mohács (29 August 1526), on which occasion Louis II lost his life on the battlefield. When the news of his death reached the capital, Buda, the court and the nobles fled together with some wealthy Jews, among them the prefect. When the grand vizier, Ibrahim Pasha, preceding Sultan Suleiman I, arrived with his army at Buda, the representatives of the Jews who had remained in the city appeared garbed in mourning before him, and, begging for grace, handed him the keys of the deserted and unprotected castle in token of submission. The sultan himself entered Buda on September 11; and on September 22 he decreed that all the Jews seized at Buda, Esztergom, and elsewhere, more than 2,000 in number, should be distributed among the cities of the Ottoman Empire. They were sent to Constantinople, Plevna (Pleven) and Sofia, where they maintained their separate community for several decades. In Sofia, there existed four Jewish communities in the second half of the 16th century: Romaniote, Ashkenazi, Sephardi and "Ungarus". The overflow of Hungarian Jews from Sofia also settled in Kavala later. Although the Ottoman Army turned back after the battle, in 1541 it again invaded Hungary to help repel an Austrian attempt to take Buda. By the time the Ottoman Army arrived, the Austrians were defeated, but the Ottomans seized Buda by ruse. While some of the Jews of Hungary were deported to Anatolia, others, who had fled at the approach of the sultan, sought refuge beyond the frontier or in the free royal towns of western Hungary. The widow of Louis II, the queen regent Maria, favored the enemies of the Jews. The citizens of Sopron (Ödenburg) began hostilities by expelling the Jews of that city, confiscating their property, and pillaging the vacated houses and the synagogue. The city of Pressburg (Bratislava) also received permission from the queen (9 October 1526) to expel the Jews living within its territory, because they had expressed their intention of fleeing before the Turks. The Jews left Pressburg on November 9. On that same day the diet