Yet it was not only the Turks who complained about Bálint Magyar. From the Hungarian side too, complaints against him flooded in like a rising tide. He was a forceful man, like Miklós Zrínyi, and when his soldiers were pressed for food, they did not hesitate to thrust their sickles into another man's wheat. Moreover, Bálint Magyar himself did not return to their former owners the villages and farmsteads recaptured from the Turks, but instead attached them to the castle domain so that the garrison might have something to live on. The owners of the occupied estates then raged against Bálint Magyar with bitter hatred. They denounced him at court and in parliament. And since they managed to win over a county or two, the parliament — where no one spoke in Magyar's defence — declared him a malefactor, that is, a criminal. There was even talk of sending troops against him. However, the royal commissioners dispatched to investigate also heard Bálint Magyar's defence, and it emerged that the many charges laid against him were largely fabrications of the interested parties. And not a hair on Bálint Magyar's head was harmed. He had done no more than his contemporaries — the other border captains. Miklós Zrínyi, Markó Horváth, Ferenc Tahy and others were likewise showered with accusations. Royal commissioners were sent to deal with them too, but to very little effect. It could not be helped — the circumstances in Hungary at that time were such that castle captains could only keep their unpaid garrisons together by personally using force to provide them with the means of survival! The border captains defended many towns and villages from Turkish plunder. They shed their blood defending the castle domains entrusted to them. No one mentioned that! But when a starving garrison took something out of necessity, those who suffered the loss raised such a clamour that it was heard all the way to parliament.
All of this Bálint Magyar set out more than once in his letters. He also explained that the estates and villages recaptured from the Turks were needed for the upkeep of the castles and the provisioning of the soldiers. When in 1559 György Thúry, captain of Palota, claimed such villages for himself, Bálint Magyar wrote in exasperation to the Palatine: "Truly I would not have expected this of my good friend, that he should defame me thus in a letter to Your Lordship. Thúry — he says — doubtless wants those villages for himself so that there might be a little wine for them. But the villages cannot be defended from Palota. Until now he alone has defended them against the Turks. 'Why — what His Majesty gave me, won from Turkish hands at the cost of my kinsmen's and my servants' lives! — all of that he distributed to the castles up there, some to Újvár, some elsewhere. I know of few places closer to the Turkish throat than Fonyód! Now let His Majesty give the house to someone else too; for God sees that I have nothing left to sustain it with — I am utterly spent.'"
The Hajdú marauders roaming and plundering Transdanubia were also attributed to Bálint Magyar. Yet they were not his men. But the king still had a reprimanding letter sent to Bálint Magyar. "I believe," Magyar writes in reply, "that whoever made this unjust complaint against me to His Majesty is no friend of mine!… The captain of Sziget, Markó Horváth, could tell you who keeps the masterless Hajdúk! He punishes them often enough — some are from Csurgó, some from Palota, some from Tihany."
Not long after this letter was written, Bálint Magyar's soldiers captured Mihály Pribék, one of the leaders of the masterless Hajdúk — and László Gyulaffy freed him by force, for he had been in his service! The other chief of the plundering Hajdúk, Tamás Majsai, served at Palota. Given all this, it seems rather strange that it was still Bálint Magyar who was accused.
Magyar was quite right to write of such things: "no one can stop the mouth of those who make false complaints behind one's back."
Bálint Magyar — as we can see from the foregoing — was a true son of the sixteenth century, full of both the faults and the virtues of his time. Hungarian was his name, Hungarian was his heart, Hungarian was his thinking. He had always lived on the bread of a Hungarian lord; he served as court captain of the forces of Palatine Tamás Nádasdy and remained in his service to the very end. The king offered him a higher position on two occasions, but Bálint Magyar had no desire to change masters. Nádasdy held him in high esteem and, when necessary, defended him — and Magyar repaid this with loyalty and devotion. He was a warrior through and through, and valued knightly honour and reputation above all else. For him it would have been a living death had any stain fallen upon his name and knightly standing. For this reason, even in old age, he took up the challenge against the finest Turkish warriors. Hence his name became very well known among the Turks. They feared him, yet at the same time respected his martial qualities. He did not waste words on his own deeds. He knew nothing of boasting and bragging. In his letters he scarcely thought it worth mentioning his personal merits. As a man, he always proved a good companion among his warriors — their helper in need, their defender in trouble. He gladly raised a toast among them, and when he had the means, he was happy to reward them with wine. But when his mood turned to anger, he could strip even the baptismal water from his opponent. Being a quick-tempered man, he fell out with his neighbours readily, but once his anger had passed, he made peace just as quickly. Being a poor nobleman, he was obliged to expand the domains of the castles entrusted to him — for in times of non-payment, the burden of maintaining his soldiers fell on his own shoulders. That such acquisitions earned him many enemies goes without saying. But knowing no fear, he was undaunted by the accusations of his enemies. Besides, he firmly believed that what he had done was right. For this reason he was always ready to submit his case to the law — knowing that it was his accusers who would end up in trouble there.
It was around this time that Bálint Magyar's enemies — Miklós Zrínyi, Ferenc Tahy, and András Pernezy — stirred up Somogy County to lodge complaints against Magyar at court and in parliament. This was easy enough for them to achieve, since feeling against Bálint Magyar was already running high on account of the outrages committed by his free Hajdúk. The Palatine received the charges against Bálint Magyar with understandable anger. In his fury he wrote to him, telling him to make peace first with God and then with his fellow men! Bálint Magyar replied to the Palatine thus: "Your Lordship understands the ways of the Hungarians — that they always wish to devour the very man who has served them! But it is not Somogy County that complains against me, but those who live beyond the Dráva, such as Ferenc Tahy and András Pernezy, who rest in my shadow!"
The king sent commissioners to Somogy to investigate the complaints. "I fear nothing from the commissioners," writes Bálint Magyar, "for I trust I can stop the mouths of all the chatterers!" He adds to this declaration that the Turks are carrying bloody spears through the villages. It is common knowledge that they are preparing to march on Fonyód. "With God's help," he writes, "they will find us here."