Great Turkish War
Great Turkish War | |||||||||
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Part of the Azov campaigns, the Battle of Zenta | |||||||||
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Belligerents | |||||||||
| Ottoman Empire | ||||||||
Commanders and leaders | |||||||||
Vasily Golitsyn Boris Sheremetev Francesco Morosini Bajo Pivljanin † Wilhelm Königsmarck Girolamo Corner |
Mehmed IV Suleiman II Ahmed II Mustafa II Mustafa Pasha Kara Ibrahim Pasha Süleyman Pasha Köprülü Pasha † Mehmed Pasha † Hüseyin Pasha Morto Hüseyin Pasha | ||||||||
Strength | |||||||||
88,100[1] 27,000[2] 200,000 | 150,000[3] | ||||||||
Casualties and losses | |||||||||
135,000 killed or wounded[4] | 125,000 killed or wounded[4] | ||||||||
384,000 military deaths[4] |
The Great Turkish War (German: Großer Türkenkrieg), also called the Wars of the Holy League (Turkish: Kutsal İttifak Savaşları), was a series of conflicts between the Ottoman Empire and the Holy League consisting of the Holy Roman Empire, Poland-Lithuania, Venice, Russia, and the Kingdom of Hungary. Intensive fighting began in 1683 and ended with the signing of the Treaty of Karlowitz in 1699. The war was a defeat for the Ottoman Empire, which for the first time lost substantial territory, in Hungary and the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, as well as in part of the western Balkans. The war was significant also for being the first instance of Russia joining an alliance with Western Europe.
The French did not join the Holy League, as France had agreed to reviving an informal
Initially, Louis XIV took advantage of the start of the war to extend France's eastern borders in the
As a result, the advance made by the Holy League stalled, allowing the Ottomans to retake Belgrade in 1690. The war then fell into a stalemate, and peace was concluded in 1699 which began following the Battle of Zenta in 1697 when an Ottoman attempt to retake their lost possessions in Hungary was crushed by the Holy League.
The war largely overlapped with the Nine Years' War (1688–1697), which took up the vast majority of the Habsburgs' attention while it was active. In 1695, for instance, the Holy Roman Empire states had 280,000 troops in the field, with England, the Dutch Republic, and Spain contributing another 156,000 specifically to the conflict against France. Of those 280,000, only 74,000, or about one quarter, were positioned against the Turks; the rest were fighting France.[5] Overall, from 1683 to 1699, the Imperial States had on average 88,100 men fighting the Turks, while from 1688 to 1697, they had on average 127,410 fighting the French.[6]
Background (1667–1683)
Following
Sultan Mehmed IV, who knew that the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth was weakened by internal conflicts, in August 1672 attacked Kamenets Podolski, a large city on the border of the Commonwealth. The small Polish force resisted the siege of Kamenets for two weeks but was then forced to surrender. The Polish army was too small to resist the Ottoman invasion and could score only some minor tactical victories. After three months, the Poles were forced to sign the Treaty of Buchach in which they agreed to cede Kamenets, Podolia and to pay tribute to the Ottomans. When the news of the defeat and treaty terms reached Warsaw, the Sejm refused to pay the tribute and organized a large army under Sobieski; subsequently, the Poles won the Battle of Khotyn (1673). After the death of King Michael in 1673, Sobieski was elected king of Poland. He tried to defeat the Ottomans for four years, with no success. The war ended on 17 October 1676 with the Treaty of Żurawno in which the Turks retained control over only Kamianets-Podilskyi. This Turkish attack also led in 1676 to the beginning of the Russo-Turkish Wars.
Overview
After a few years of peace, the Ottoman Empire, encouraged by successes in the west of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, attacked the Habsburg monarchy. The Turks almost captured Vienna, but John III Sobieski led a Christian alliance that defeated them in the Battle of Vienna (1683), stalling the Ottoman Empire's hegemony in south-eastern Europe.
A new Holy League was initiated by Pope Innocent XI and encompassed the Holy Roman Empire (headed by the Habsburg monarchy), the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Venetian Republic in 1684,[7] joined by Russia in 1686. Holy League's troops besieged and conquered Buda in 1686 what was under Ottoman's rule since 1541. The second Battle of Mohács (1687) was a crushing defeat for the Sultan. The Turks were more successful on the Polish front and were able to retain Podolia during their battles with the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.
Russia's involvement marked the first time the country formally joined an alliance of European powers. This was the beginning of a series of Russo-Turkish Wars, the last of which was World War I. As a result of the Crimean campaigns and Azov campaigns, Russia captured the key Ottoman fortress of Azov.
Following the decisive Battle of Zenta in 1697 and lesser skirmishes (such as the Battle of Podhajce in 1698), the League won the war in 1699 and forced the Ottoman Empire to sign the Treaty of Karlowitz.[8] The Ottomans ceded most of Hungary, Transylvania and Slavonia, as well as parts of Croatia, to the Habsburg monarchy while Podolia returned to Poland. Most of Dalmatia passed to Venice, along with the Morea, which the Ottomans reconquered in 1715 and regained in the Treaty of Passarowitz of 1718.
Serbia
After allied Christian forces
Kosovo
Kosovo Albanian Roman Catholic Bishop and philosopher Pjetër Bogdani returned to the Balkans in March 1686 and spent the next years promoting resistance to the armies of the Ottoman Empire, in particular in his native Kosovo. He and his vicar Toma Raspasani played a leading role in the pro-Austrian movement in Kosovo during the Great Turkish War.[11] He contributed a force of 6,000 Albanian soldiers to the Austrian army which had arrived in Pristina and accompanied it to capture Prizren. There, however, he and much of his army were met by another equally formidable adversary, the plague. Bogdani returned to Pristina but succumbed to the disease there on 6 December 1689.[12] His nephew, Gjergj Bogdani, reported in 1698 that his uncle's remains were later exhumed by Turkish and Tatar soldiers and fed to the dogs in the middle of the square in Pristina.[13]
Among the papers of Ludwig von Baden in Karlsruhe, there is a copy of an intercepted letter, in French, written by a secretary of the English embassy in Constantinople on 19 January 1690. It reported that the "Germans" in Kosovo had made contact with 20,000 Albanians who had turned their weapons against the Turks.[14]
Associated wars
Morean War
The
In 1683, a new war broke out between the Habsburg monarchy and the Ottomans, with a large Ottoman army advancing towards Vienna. In response to this, a Holy League was formed. After the Ottoman army was defeated in the Battle of Vienna, the Venetians decided to use the opportunity of the weakening of Ottoman power and its distraction in the Danubian front so as to reconquer its lost territories in the Aegean and Dalmatia. On 25 April 1684, the Most Serene Republic declared war on the Ottomans.[15]
Aware that she would have to rely on her own strength for success, Venice prepared for the war by securing financial and military aid in men and ships from
Operations in the Ionian Sea
In mid-June, the Venetian fleet moved from the Adriatic towards the Ottoman-held Ionian Islands. The first target was the island of Lefkada (Santa Maura), which fell, after a brief siege of 16 days, on 6 August 1684. The Venetians, aided by Greek irregulars, then crossed into the mainland and started raiding the opposite shore of Acarnania. Most of the area was soon under Venetian control, and the fall of the forts of Preveza and Vonitsa in late September removed the last Ottoman bastions.[16] These early successes were important for the Venetians not only for reasons of morale, but because they secured their communications with Venice, denied to the Ottomans the possibility of threatening the Ionian Islands or of ferrying troops via western Greece to the Peloponnese, and because these successes encouraged the Greeks to cooperate with them against the Ottomans.
The conquest of the Morea
Having secured his rear during the previous year, Morosini set his sights upon the Peloponnese, where the Greeks, especially the Maniots, had begun showing signs of revolt and communicated with Morosini, promising to rise up in his aid. Ismail Pasha, the new military commander of Morea, learned of this and invaded the Mani Peninsula with 10,000 men, reinforcing the three forts that the Ottomans already garrisoned, and compelled the Maniots to give up hostages to secure their loyalty.[17] As a result, the Maniots remained uncommitted when, on 25 June 1685, the Venetian army, 8,100 men strong, landed outside the former Venetian fort of Koroni and laid siege to it. The castle surrendered after 49 days, on 11 August, and the garrison was massacred. After this success, Morosini embarked his troops towards the town of Kalamata, in order to encourage the Maniots to revolt. The Venetian army, reinforced by 3,300 Saxons and under the command of general Hannibal von Degenfeld , defeated a Turkish force of ca. 10,000 outside Kalamata on 14 September, and by the end of the month, all of Mani and much of Messenia were under Venetian control.[18][19]
In October 1685, the Venetian army retreated to the Ionian Islands for winter quarters, where a plague broke out, something which would occur regularly in the next years, and take a great toll on the Venetian army, especially among the German contingents. In April 1686, the Venetians helped repulse an Ottoman attack that threatened to overrun Mani, and were reinforced from the Papal States and
Despite losses to the plague during the autumn and winter of 1686, Morosini's forces were replenished by the arrival of new German mercenary corps from
Polish–Ottoman & Austro-Turkish Wars (1683–1699)
After a few years of peace, the Ottoman Empire attacked the Habsburg monarchy again. The Turks almost captured Vienna, but King John III Sobieski of Poland led a Christian alliance that defeated them in the Battle of Vienna, which shook the Ottoman Empire's hegemony in south-eastern Europe.[26]
A new Holy League was initiated by Pope Innocent XI and encompassed the Holy Roman Empire (headed by the Habsburg monarchy), joined by the Venetian Republic and Poland in 1684 and the Tsardom of Russia in 1686. The Ottomans suffered three decisive defeats against the Holy Roman Empire after siege of Buda: the second Battle of Mohács in 1687, the Battle of Slankamen in 1691 and the Battle of Zenta a decade later, in 1697.[27]
On the smaller Polish front, after the battles of 1683 (Vienna and Parkany), Sobieski, after his proposal for the League to start a major coordinated offensive, undertook a rather unsuccessful offensive in Moldavia in 1686, with the Ottomans refusing a major engagement and harassing the army. For the next four years Poland would blockade the key fortress at Kamenets, and Ottoman Tatars would raid the borderlands. In 1691, Sobieski undertook another expedition to Moldavia, with slightly better results, but still with no decisive victories.[28]
The last battle of the campaign was the Battle of Podhajce in 1698, where a Polish hetman named Feliks Kazimierz Potocki defeated the Ottoman incursion into the Commonwealth. The League won the war in 1699 and forced the Ottoman Empire to sign the Treaty of Karlowitz. The Ottomans thereby lost much of their European possessions, with Podolia (including Kamenets) returned to Poland.
Russo-Turkish War (1686–1700)
During the war, the Russian army organized the
Battle of Vienna
Capturing Vienna had long been a strategic aspiration of the Ottoman Empire, because of its interlocking control over Danubian (Black Sea to Western Europe) southern Europe, and the overland (Eastern Mediterranean to Germany) trade routes. During the years preceding this second siege (
The main Ottoman army finally laid siege to Vienna on 14 July 1683. On the same day, Kara Mustafa Pasha sent the traditional demand for surrender to the city.[31] Ernst Rüdiger Graf von Starhemberg, leader of the garrison of 15,000 troops and 8,700 volunteers with 370 cannon, refused to capitulate. Only days before, he had received news of the mass slaughter at Perchtoldsdorf,[32] a town south of Vienna, where the citizens had handed over the keys of the city after having been given a similar choice. Siege operations started on 17 July.
On 6 September, the Poles under John III Sobieski crossed the Danube 30 km north-west of Vienna at
During early September, the experienced 5,000 Ottoman sappers had repeatedly blown up large portions of the walls between the Burg bastion, the Löbel bastion and the Burg ravelin, creating gaps of about 12m in width. The Viennese tried to counter this by digging their own tunnels to intercept the depositing of large amounts of gunpowder in caverns. The Ottomans finally managed to occupy the Burg ravelin and the low wall in that area on 8 September. Anticipating a breach in the city walls, the remaining Viennese prepared to fight in the inner city.
Staging the battle
The relief army had to act quickly to save the city and so prevent another long siege. Despite the binational composition of the army and the short space of only six days, an effective leadership structure was established, centred on the Polish king and his
Kara Mustafa Pasha was less effective at ensuring his forces' motivation and loyalty, and preparing for the expected relief-army attack. He had entrusted defence of the rear to the Khan of Crimea and his light cavalry force, which numbered about 30,000–40,000. There is doubt as to how far the Tatars participated in the final battle before Vienna. The Ottomans could not rely on their Wallachian and Moldavian allies.
The confederated troops signalled their arrival on the Kahlenberg above Vienna with bonfires. Before the battle a Mass was celebrated for the King of Poland and his nobles.
Battle
At around 6:00 pm, the Polish king ordered the cavalry to attack in four groups, three Polish and one from the Holy Roman Empire. Eighteen thousand horsemen charged down the hills, the largest cavalry charge in history.[35]: 152 Sobieski led the charge[33]: 661 at the head of 3,000 Polish heavy lancers, the famed "Winged Hussars". The Lipka Tatars who fought on the Polish side wore a sprig of straw in their helmets to distinguish themselves from the Tatars fighting on the Ottoman side. The charge easily broke the lines of the Ottomans, who were exhausted and demoralised and soon started to flee the battlefield. The cavalry headed straight for the Ottoman camps and Kara Mustafa's headquarters, while the remaining Viennese garrison sallied out of its defences to join in the assault.[33]: 661
The Ottoman troops were tired and dispirited following the failure of both the attempt at sapping and the assault on the city and the advance of the Holy League infantry on the Turkenschanz.[33]: 661 The cavalry charge was one last deadly blow. Less than three hours after the cavalry attack, the Christian forces had won the battle and saved Vienna. The first Christian officer who entered Vienna was Margrave Ludwig of Baden, at the head of his dragoons.[36]
Afterwards, Sobieski paraphrased Julius Caesar's famous quotation Veni, vidi, vici in saying "Veni, vidi, Deus vicit" – "I came, I saw, God conquered".
Conclusion
On September 11, 1697, the Battle of Zenta was fought just south of the Ottoman ruled town of
See also
- Croatian-Slavonian-Dalmatian theater in Great Turkish War
- Enea Silvio Piccolomini (general), among the first Christian victims of the war.
- Scutum (constellation)
References
- ^ Wilson 2016, pp. 460–461, table 13.
- ^ Podhorodecki, Leszek (2001), Wiedeń 1683, Bellona, p. 105
- ^ Forst de Battaglia, Otto (1982), Jan Sobieski, Mit Habsburg gegen die Türken, Styria Vlg. Graz, p. 215 of 1983 Polish translated edition
- ^ a b c Clodfelter, M. (2008). "Warfare and Armed Conflicts: A Statistical Encyclopedia of Casualty and Other Figures, 1492–2015" (2017 ed.). McFarland. p. 59.
- ^ Wilson 1998, p. 92.
- ^ Wilson 2016, p. 461.
- ^ Treasure, Geoffrey 1985, The making of modern Europe, 1648–1780, Methuen & Co, 614.
- ^ Sicker, Martin 2001, The Islamic world in decline, Praeger Publishers, 32.
- ^ Matica Srpska, Department of Social Sciences, Proceedings i History, p. 7, archived from the original(PDF) on 16 September 2011, retrieved 21 December 2011,
U toku Velikog bečkog rata, naročito posle oslobođenja Budima 1686. srpski narod u Ugarskoj, Slavoniji, Bačkoj, Banatu, [...] priključivao se carskim trupama i kao "rašanska, racka" milicija učestvovao u borbama [...] u Lipi, Jenovi i Đuli...carska vojska i srpska milicija oslobodile su u proleće i leto 1688, [...] U toku Velikog bečkog rata, ... srpski narod.. od pada Beograda u ruke austrijske vojske 1688. i u Srbiji priključivao se carskim trupama i kao "rašanska, racka" milicija učestvovao u borbama [...] u toku 1689–1691. borbe su prenete na Banat. Srbe u njima predvodio je vojvoda Novak Petrović
- ISBN 978-8675470397,
Велики или Бечки рат Аустрије против Турске, у којем су Срби, као добровољци, масовно учествовали на аустријској страни
- OCLC 269329200.
- OCLC 61822490.
- ISBN 9780810861886.
- ISBN 9780198857297.
- ^ Finlay 1877, pp. 205–206.
- ^ Finlay 1877, p. 209.
- ^ Finlay 1877, pp. 211–212.
- ^ Chasiotis 1975, p. 23.
- ^ Finlay 1877, pp. 213–214.
- ^ Finlay 1877, pp. 215–216.
- ^ Finlay 1877, p. 216.
- ^ Finlay 1877, p. 218.
- ^ Chasiotis 1975, p. 24.
- ^ Finlay 1877, p. 220.
- ^ Finlay 1877, p. 221.
- ^ Polish-Ottoman War, 1683–1699 and Habsburg-Ottoman War, 1683–1699 at History of Warfare, World History at KMLA
- ^ "Map". abtk.hu. Retrieved 9 March 2024.
- ^ "Polish Renaissance Warfare – Summary of Conflicts – Part Eight". Jasinski.
- ^ Lindsey Hughes 1990, Sophia, Regent of Russia: 1657–1704, Yale University Press, 206.
- ^ Brian Davies 2007, Warfare, State and Society on the Black Sea Steppe, 1500–1700, Routledge, 185.
- ^ The original document was destroyed during World War II. German translation Archived 29 May 2008 at the Wayback Machine
- ISBN 1-56619-847-X
- ^ ISBN 978-1-85109667-1
- ^ Stoye, John. The Siege of Vienna: The Last Great Trial between Cross & Crescent. 2011
- ^ ISBN 978-1-46288080-5
- ^ The enemy at the gate, Andrew Wheatcroft
- ^ Virginia Aksan, Ottoman Wars, 1700–1860: An Empire Besieged, (Pearson Education Limited, 2007), 28.
Sources
- Chasiotis, Ioannis (1975). "Η κάμψη της Οθωμανικής δυνάμεως" [The decline of Ottoman power]. Ιστορία του Ελληνικού Έθνους, Τόμος ΙΑ′: Ο ελληνισμός υπό ξένη κυριαρχία, 1669–1821 [History of the Greek Nation] (in Greek). Vol. XI: Hellenism under foreign rule, 1669–1821. Athens: Ekdotiki Athinon. pp. 8–51.
- Finlay, George (1877). A History of Greece from its Conquest by the Romans to the Present Time, B.C. 146 to A.D. 1864. Vol. V: Greece under Othoman and Venetian Domination A.D. 1453 – 1821. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
- Setton, Kenneth Meyer. Venice, Austria, and the Turks in the Seventeenth Century (Memoirs of the American Philosophical Society, 1991)
- Wilson, Peter (1998), German Armies: War and Politics, 1648–1806.
- ——— (2016), Heart of Europe: A History of the Holy Roman Empire, Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
- Wolf, John B. The Emergence of the Great Powers: 1685–1715 (1951), pp 15–53.
Further reading
- ISBN 978-1-40514291-5.