Ottoman–Habsburg wars
The Ottoman–Habsburg wars were fought from the 16th to the 18th centuries between the Ottoman Empire and the Habsburg monarchy, which was at times supported by the Kingdom of Hungary, Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, The Holy Roman Empire, and Habsburg Spain. The wars were dominated by land campaigns in Hungary, including Transylvania and Vojvodina, Croatia, and central Serbia.
By the 16th century, the Ottomans had become a serious threat to European powers, with Ottoman ships sweeping away Venetian possessions in the Aegean and Ionian seas and Ottoman-supported Barbary pirates seizing Spanish possessions in the Maghreb. The Protestant Reformation, French–Habsburg rivalry and the numerous civil conflicts of the Holy Roman Empire distracted Christians from their conflict with the Ottomans. Meanwhile, the Ottomans had to contend with Safavid Empire and also to a lesser extent the Mamluk Sultanate, which was defeated by the Ottomans under Selim I rule and later fully incorporated into the empire.
Initially, the Ottoman conquests in Europe made significant gains with a decisive victory at Mohács, and reducing around one third of central Hungary to the status of an Ottoman tributary. Later, the Peace of Westphalia and the War of the Spanish Succession in the 17th and 18th centuries respectively left the Austrian Empire as the sole firm possession of the House of Habsburg. After the siege of Vienna in 1683, the Habsburgs assembled a large coalition of European powers known as the Holy League to fight the Ottomans and regain control over Hungary. The Great Turkish War ended with the decisive Holy League victory at Zenta. The wars ended after Austria's participation in the war of 1787–1791, which Austria fought allied with Russia. Intermittent tension between Austria and the Ottoman Empire continued throughout the nineteenth century, but they never fought each other in a war and ultimately found themselves allied in World War I, after which both empires were dissolved.
Historians have focused on the second siege of Vienna of 1683, depicting it as a decisive Austrian victory that saved Western civilization and marked the decline of the Ottoman Empire. Recent historians have taken a broader perspective, noting that the Habsburgs at the same time resisted internal separatist movements and were fighting Prussia and France for control of central Europe. The key advance made by the Europeans was an effective combined arms doctrine involving the cooperation of infantry, artillery and cavalry. Nevertheless, the Ottomans were able to maintain military parity with the Habsburgs until the middle of the eighteenth century. Historian Gunther E. Rothenberg has emphasized the non-combat dimension of the conflict, in which the Habsburgs built up military communities that protected their borders and produced a steady flow of well-trained, motivated soldiers.
Origins
While the Habsburgs were occasionally the Kings of Hungary and Emperors of the Holy Roman Empire, the wars between the Hungarians and the Ottomans included other dynasties as well. Naturally, the Ottoman Wars in Europe attracted support from the West, where the advancing and powerful Islamic state was seen as a threat to Christendom in Europe. The Crusades of Nicopolis and of Varna marked the most determined attempts by Europe to halt the Turkic advance into Central Europe and the Balkans.For a while the Ottomans were too busy trying to put down Balkan rebels such as Vlad Dracula and Skanderbeg. However, the defeat of these and other rebellious vassal states opened up central Europe to Ottoman invasion. The Kingdom of Hungary now bordered the Ottoman Empire and its vassals.
The Ottoman conquest of Bosnia in 1463 brought their frontier closer to the Habsburg lands under Frederick III, setting the stage for more intense incursions. The Ottomans raided Carniola in 1469 and launched almost annual raids into Styria after 1471. Carinthia saw five Turkish incursions into its territory between 1473 and 1483, with much plundering and killing at the hands of Ottoman cavalry. These raids led to the Carinthian Peasant Revolt of 1478, as peasants, left unprotected by the nobility, tried to defend themselves and formed a peasants' league to organize their own defense. The raids also prompted the construction of defensive structures like fortified churches and castles. In 1491, Ottoman raids in the Habsburg territories of Styria and Carniola ended after a significant Ottoman defeat by the Kingdom of Croatia at the Battle of Vrpile.
After King Louis II of Hungary was killed at the Battle of Mohács in 1526, his widow Queen Mary of Austria fled to her brother the Archduke of Austria, Ferdinand I. Ferdinand's claim to the throne of Hungary was further strengthened by his marriage to Anne, the sister of King Louis II and the only family member claimant to the throne of the shattered kingdom. Consequently, Ferdinand I was elected King of Bohemia, and at the Diet of Pozsony he and his wife were elected king and queen of Hungary. However another assembly of the nobility elected John Zápolya, who as the voivode of Transylvania had gained popularity among the magnates, setting the stage for a conflict between the Hapsburgs and the Ottoman Empire.
List of Habsburg-Ottoman conflicts
Habsburg advance
The Austrian lands were in miserable economic and financial conditions, thus Ferdinand desperately introduced the so-called Turkish Tax. Despite this, he was not able to collect enough money to pay the expenses of the defense costs of the Austrian lands. His annual revenues only allowed him to hire 5,000 mercenaries for two months, thus Ferdinand asked help from his brother Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, and started to borrow money from rich bankers like the Fugger family.File:EmperorSuleiman.jpg|thumb|upright|Ottoman sultan Suleiman the Magnificent in 1530, by Titian.
Ferdinand I attacked Hungary, a state severely weakened by civil conflict, in 1527, in an attempt to drive out John Zápolya and enforce his authority there. John was unable to prevent Ferdinand's campaigning, which led to the capture of Buda and several other key settlements along the Danube. Despite this, the Ottoman sultan was slow to react and only came to the aid of his vassal when he launched an army of about 120,000 men on 10 May 1529. The Austrian branch of Habsburg monarchs needed the economic power of Hungary for the Ottoman wars. During the Ottoman wars the territory of former Kingdom of Hungary shrunk by around 70%; despite these territorial and demographic losses, the smaller, heavily war-torn Royal Hungary remained economically more important than Austria or Kingdom of Bohemia at the end of the 16th century, as it was Ferdinand's largest source of revenue.
Technological advantage of the Western Christian forces
The earliest type of Turkish hand cannons are called as "Şakaloz", which word came from the Hungarian hand cannon "Szakállas puska" in the 15th century.Although Ottoman Janissaries adopted firearms in battles since the beginning of the 16th century, the Ottoman usage of the handheld firearms spread much more slowly than in the Western Christian armies. Wheellock firearms were unfamiliar for Ottoman soldiers until the siege of Székesfehérvár in 1543, despite the fact they had been used for decades by Christian armies in Kingdom of Hungary and in Western Europe. According to a report from 1594, the Ottoman soldiers had not adopted the pistol yet.
In 1602, the grand vizier reported from Hungarian front about the firepower superiority of the Christian forces:
"in a field or during a siege we are in distressed position, because the greater part of the enemy forces are infantry armed with muskets, while the majority of our forces are horsemen, and we have very few specialists skilled in the musket"According to Alvise Foscarini's report in 1637,
"few Janissaries even knew how to use an arquebus"
Siege of Vienna
Ottoman sultan Suleiman the Magnificent easily wrested from Ferdinand most of the gains he had achieved in the previous two years – to the disappointment of Ferdinand I, only the fortress of Pozsony resisted. Considering the size of Suleiman's army and the devastation wrought upon Hungary in the previous few years it is not surprising that the will to resist one of the world's most powerful states was lacking in many of the recently garrisoned Habsburg settlements.The Sultan arrived at Vienna on 27 September 1529. Ferdinand's army was some 16,000 strong – he was outnumbered roughly 7 to 1 and the walls of Vienna were an invitation to Ottoman cannon. However, the heavy cannons on which the Ottomans relied to breach the walls were all abandoned on the way to Vienna, after they got stuck in mud due to heavy rainfall. Ferdinand defended Vienna with great vigour. By 12 October, after much mining and counter-mining an Ottoman war council was called and on 14 October the Ottomans abandoned the siege. The retreat of the Ottoman army was hampered by the resistance of Pozsony, which attempted to attack Ottoman forces. Early snowfall made matters worse, and it would be another three years before Suleiman could campaign in Hungary.
Little War
After the defeat at Vienna, the Ottoman Sultan had to turn his attention to other parts of his domain. Taking advantage of this absence, Archduke Ferdinand launched an offensive in 1530, recapturing Esztergom and other forts. An assault on Buda was only thwarted by the presence of Ottoman Turkish soldiers.As in the previous Austrian offensive, the return of the Ottomans forced the Habsburgs in Austria to go on the defensive. In 1532, Suleiman sent a massive Ottoman army to take Vienna. However, the army took a different route to Kőszeg and was defeated at the Siege of Güns by a mere 700-strong force led by the Croatian earl Nikola Jurišić. Historians have argued that the siege was an excuse rather than a real reason for the caliph's retreat; Arguing instead that Suleiman was demoralized by the mobilization of a large Habsburg army personally commanded by Charles V, Ferdinand's older brother, in Vienna. After the Ottoman retreat, the Sultan was forced to recognize the Ferdinand's gains in Hungary, while forcing Ferdinand to recognize John Zápolya as King of Hungary. Tatar raiders plundered Lower Austria and carried off many people into slavery. However, a massive contingent of these Ottoman raiders was entrapped and annihilated at the Battle of Leobersdorf.
While the peace between the Austrians and the Ottomans would last for nine years, John Zápolya and Ferdinand found it convenient to continue skirmishes along their respective borders. In early 1537, the Ottoman sanjak-bey of Bosnia, Gazi Husrev-beg, occupied the town of Požega in Slavonia. Ferdinand, under pressure from the local nobility, decided to respond by launching an offensive in Slavonia in 1537, sending one of his ablest generals to take Osijek. The siege failed and led to the Battle of Gorjani, which was another Ottoman triumph. Nevertheless, Ferdinand was recognized by the Treaty of Nagyvárad as the heir of the Kingdom of Hungary.
After the death of John Zápolya in 1540, Ferdinand's inheritance was robbed, given instead to John's son, John Sigismund Zápolya. Attempting to enforce the treaty, the Austrians advanced on Buda where they experienced another defeat by Suleiman; the elderly Austrian General Wilhelm von Roggendorf proved to be incompetent. Suleiman then finished off the remaining Austrian troops and proceeded to de facto annex Hungary. By the time a peace treaty was enforced in 1551, Habsburg Hungary had been reduced to little more than border land.
File:25a After the capture of Temesvár, 1552.jpg|thumb|After the capture of Temesvár, 1552
In 1552 two Ottoman armies crossed the border into the Hungarian kingdom. One of them – led by Hadim Ali Pasha – started a campaign against the western and central part of the country while the second army – led by Kara Ahmed Pasha – attacked the fortresses in the Banat region. Ottoman troops conquered nine-tenths of the castles in the Hont and Nógrád counties. The Habsburg army under made a belated attempt to stop the Ottoman troops at Plášťovce, but was completely defeated in a two-day battle of Palást, and 4,000 German and Italian prisoners were deported to Constantinople. The two armies united under Szolnok, then besieged and conquered the Szolnok Castle, and turned against the gate of Upper Hungary, Eger. At the end of the July there was an enormous gap in the Hungarian border castle system.
In September 1552 the forces of the Ottoman Empire led by Kara Ahmed Pasha laid siege to Eger Castle, located in the northern part of the Kingdom of Hungary, but the defenders led by István Dobó repelled the attacks and defended the castle. The siege of Eger become an emblem of national defense and patriotic heroism in Hungary's occupations
By orders of the king in 1553 and 1578, large areas of Croatia adjacent to the Ottoman Empire were carved out into the Military Frontier and ruled directly from Vienna's military headquarters. In the zone of the Croatian Military Frontier, the Habsburg king-emperors promised free land and freedom of religion to people who came to the area with the majority of the population being Serbs and Vlachs. Carinthian, Carniolan and Styrian nobility agreed to partially finance the Military Frontier in order to hold off the Ottomans in Croatia/Slavonia and therefore prevent them from invading their own lands.
In 1554, the town of Fiľakovo in south-central Slovakia with the castle of the same name was conquered by the Turks and was the seat of a sanjak until 1593, when it was reconquered by the Imperial troops. On 27 March 1562, Hasszán, the sanjak-bey of Fülek castle, defeated the Hungarian army of the Upper Lands at the.
After the seizure of Buda by the Turks in 1541, west and north Hungary recognized a Habsburg as king, while the central and southern counties were occupied by the Sultan, and the east became the Principality of Transylvania. The vast majority of the seventeen and nineteen thousands Ottoman soldiers in service in the Ottoman fortresses in the territory of Hungary were Orthodox and Muslim Balkan Slavs instead of ethnic Turkish people. Southern Slavs were also acting as akinjis and other light troops intended for pillaging in the territory of present-day Hungary.
There were wasted opportunities on both sides in the Little War; Austrian attempts to increase their influence in Hungary were just as unsuccessful as the Ottoman drives to Vienna. Nonetheless, there were no illusions as to the status quo: the Ottoman Empire was still a very powerful and dangerous threat. Even so, the Austrians would go on the offensive again, their generals building a bloody reputation for so much loss of life. Costly battles like those fought at Buda and Osijek were avoided but not absent in the upcoming conflicts. In any case Habsburg interests were split between fighting for devastated European land under Islamic control, trying to stop the gradual decentralization of Imperial authority in Germany, and for Spain's ambitions in North Africa, the Low Countries and against the French. Nevertheless, the Ottomans, while hanging on to their supreme power, could not expand as they had in the days of Mehmet and Bayezid. To the east lay further wars against their Shi'ite opponents, the Safavids. Both the French and the Dutch occasionally worked together against the Habsburgs with the Ottomans.
Suleiman the Magnificent led one final campaign in 1566, ending at the siege of Szigetvár. The siege was meant to be only a temporary stop before taking on Vienna. However, the fortress withstood against the Sultan's armies. Eventually the Sultan, already an old man at 72 years, died. The Royal Physician was strangled to prevent news from reaching the troops and the unaware Ottomans took the fort, ending the campaign shortly afterward without making a move against Vienna.
Peace was finally concluded in Adrianople in 1568 and renewed in 1576, 1584, and 1591. War would not again break out between the Habsburgs and Ottomans until 1593, in the Long Turkish War. However, throughout this period of peace small-scale warfare continued, a conflict known as the "Little War". In 1571 the Turks destroyed the Hodejov castle and in 1575 they conquered the Modrý Kameň castle. In 1588 there was a battle near the town of Szikszó, where the Hungarian army defeated the Turks.