their tactics and style of war were typical of light cavalry. the main subgroups were protestants, who were disgruntled by habsburg ambitions of the counter-reformation; nobles (from the minor nobility, holding on to their privileges, while the habsburg court made attempts to deprive impoverished nobles of their nobility) and soldiers from the "végvár"s (frontier castles) who were sacked by habsburg generals. later, when the turks lost ground to the imperial armies and austrian despotism intensified, habsburg oppression of hungarians played an increasingly important role in the motivation of the kuruc.