Great Turkish War

Overview

After a period of peace, the Ottoman Empire, feeling confident after its western campaigns against the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, turned its forces on the Habsburg monarchy. The Ottomans came close to taking Vienna, but King John III Sobieski rallied a Christian coalition that turned them back at the Battle of Vienna in 1683, putting a halt to Ottoman dominance in southeastern Europe. In 1684, Pope Innocent XI helped form a new Holy League, which included the Holy Roman Empire under the Habsburgs, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and the Venetian Republic.

Russia joined this alliance in 1686. That same year, League forces laid siege to and captured Buda, a city that had been in Ottoman hands since 1541. The second Battle of Mohács in 1687 was a severe blow to the Sultan. On the Polish front, however, the Ottomans fared better, managing to hold onto Podolia during their clashes with the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

Russia’s participation in this alliance was its first formal entry into a coalition of European powers, sparking a long series of Russo-Turkish wars that continued into World War I. Through the Crimean and Azov campaigns, Russia seized the important Ottoman fortress of Azov. The war effectively ended with the decisive Battle of Zenta in 1697, along with smaller fights like the Battle of Podhajce in 1698. The Holy League emerged victorious in 1699, forcing the Ottoman Empire to sign the Treaty of Karlowitz.

Serbia

Under its terms, the Habsburg monarchy gained most of Hungary, Transylvania, Slavonia, and parts of Croatia, while Podolia was given back to Poland. Venice received most of Dalmatia and the Morea, though the Ottomans later retook the Morea in 1715 and secured it again in the 1718 Treaty of Passarowitz. After the League’s capture of Buda in 1686, Serbs from the Pannonian Plain—areas in modern-day Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, and Romania—began fighting for the Habsburgs in units called the Serbian Militia.

Many Serbs volunteered for the Habsburg side. In early 1688, the Habsburg army, alongside these Serbian Militia units, took the towns of Gyula, Lippa, and Borosjenő from the Ottomans. Following the capture of Belgrade in 1688, Serbs living south of the Sava and Danube rivers also started joining the Serbian Militia.

Battle of Vienna

For the Ottoman Empire, taking Vienna was a long-term goal, as the city sat at a crossroads controlling both the Danube route from the Black Sea to Western Europe and the overland path from the Eastern Mediterranean into Germany. In the years before this second attempt—the first had been in 1529—the empire, guided by grand viziers from the powerful Köprülü family, made huge logistical moves. They fixed and built roads and bridges leading toward the Holy Roman Empire and its supply hubs, and shipped ammunition, cannons, and other materials from across the empire into the Balkans.

Meanwhile, Vienna had been suffering from a major plague outbreak since 1679. The main Ottoman force began its siege on July 14, 1683. That same day, commander Kara Mustafa Pasha issued the usual call for the city to surrender. Ernst Rüdiger Graf von Starhemberg, who led the defending force of 15,000 soldiers, 8,700 volunteers, and 370 cannons, turned it down.

Just days earlier, he had learned what happened at Perchtoldsdorf, a town south of Vienna: its citizens had handed over the keys after being given the same choice, only to be massacred. The siege itself started on July 17. On September 6, Polish forces under King John III Sobieski crossed the Danube about 30 kilometers northwest of Vienna at Tulln. There they joined up with Imperial troops and additional soldiers from Saxony, Bavaria, Baden, Franconia, and Swabia.

France’s Louis XIV, who had just taken Alsace, refused to aid his Habsburg rival. An agreement between Sobieski and Emperor Leopold I brought the Polish hussars into the allied army. Overall command of the European coalition—numbering between 70,000 and 80,000 men—went to the Polish king, who faced an Ottoman force of 150,000. Sobieski was already famous across Europe for his bravery and sharp command skills.

In early September, 5,000 experienced Ottoman sappers repeatedly blew up large sections of the walls between the Burg bastion, the Löbel bastion, and the Burg ravelin, opening gaps about 12 meters wide. The Viennese dug their own tunnels to try to intercept the placement of large gunpowder charges. On September 8, the Ottomans finally took control of the Burg ravelin and the low wall nearby. Expecting a full breach in the city walls, the remaining defenders in Vienna got ready to fight inside the inner city.

Reconquest of Hungary

After their defeat at Vienna, the Imperial army, alongside Polish allies, pushed back to reclaim Ottoman-held Hungary. Following a victory at Párkány in October 1683, Esztergom surrendered quickly under siege. In 1685, Field Marshal Aeneas de Caprara beat the Ottoman army near Kassa. With the Ottoman field force crushed near Esztergom that same year, besieged cities lost hope of rescue. Érsekújvár fell on August 19, soon followed by Eperies, Kaschau, and Tokaj.

In 1686, two years after a failed attempt on Buda, a new European campaign targeted the city. The Duke of Lorraine laid siege to Buda, the old royal capital and Ottoman Hungary’s center, in June. After 78 days, the city fell on September 2, and Turkish resistance crumbled across the region, reaching into Transylvania and Serbia. In 1687, the Ottomans gathered fresh armies and marched north again.

Charles V, Duke of Lorraine, met them at the Second Battle of Mohács, avenging the defeat inflicted over 160 years earlier by Suleiman the Magnificent. The Ottoman loss was so severe that their army mutinied, sparking a revolt that reached Constantinople. The Grand Vizier, Sarı Süleyman Pasha, was executed, and Sultan Mehmed IV was deposed. Only after another crushing defeat at the Battle of Zenta in 1697 did the Ottomans seek peace.

The Treaty of Karlowitz in 1699 gave Austria the rest of Hungary and overlordship of Transylvania. Across Europe, both Protestants and Catholics hailed Prince Eugene of Savoy as the savior of Christendom.

Associated wars

The Republic of Venice had controlled several islands in the Aegean and Ionian Seas, along with key forts on the Greek mainland, ever since the Byzantine Empire was divided up after the Fourth Crusade. But as the Ottoman Empire grew stronger, Venice lost most of these territories during the 1500s and early 1600s, including Cyprus and Euboea. From 1645 to 1669, Venice and the Ottomans fought a long and expensive war over Crete, which was the last major Venetian island in the Aegean.

During that conflict, the Venetian commander Francesco Morosini worked with the rebellious Maniots to launch a joint campaign in the Morea. In 1659, Morosini landed there and, with Maniot help, captured Kalamata. He soon had to leave for Crete, however, and the effort in the Peloponnese failed. In 1683, a new war started between the Habsburg monarchy and the Ottomans, with a large Ottoman army marching toward Vienna.

In response, a Holy League was formed. After the Ottomans were beaten at the Battle of Vienna, Venice saw a chance to take back its lost lands in the Aegean and Dalmatia, since the Ottomans were weakened and busy on the Danube front. On April 25, 1684, Venice declared war on the Ottomans. Knowing it would have to succeed mostly on its own, Venice gathered financial and military support—men and ships—from Hospitaller Malta, the Duchy of Savoy, the Papal States, and the Knights of St. Stephen.

It also hired many mercenaries from Italy and German states like Saxony and Brunswick. In mid-June 1684, the Venetian fleet left the Adriatic for the Ottoman-held Ionian Islands. Their first target was the island of Lefkada, which they captured after a 16-day siege on August 6. With help from Greek irregulars, the Venetians then moved to the mainland and began raiding the coast of Acarnania.

Soon, most of the area was under Venetian control. The fall of the forts at Preveza and Vonitsa in late September wiped out the last Ottoman strongholds there. These early wins boosted Venetian morale, secured their supply lines back to Venice, stopped the Ottomans from threatening the Ionian Islands or moving troops through western Greece to the Peloponnese, and encouraged local Greeks to side with Venice against the Ottomans.

Did You Know?

• Following Bohdan Khmelnytsky's rebellion, the Tsardom of Russia in 1654 acquired territories from the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, while some Cossacks stayed in the southeastern part of the Commonwealth.
• In August 1672, Sultan Mehmed IV attacked Kamenets Podolski, and after a two-week siege the small Polish force was forced to surrender.
• In August 1691, the Austrians under Louis of Baden heavily defeated the Turks at the Battle of Slankamen, securing Habsburg possession of Hungary and Transylvania.