1593?1606 Habsburg-Ottoman war
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Hungary and the Balkans
Mediterranean
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The
Long Turkish War
(
German
:
Langer Turkenkrieg
),
Long War
(
Hungarian
:
Hosszu haboru
;
Serbo-Croatian
:
Дуги рат
,
romanized
:
Dugi rat
), or
Thirteen Years' War
was an indecisive land war between the
Habsburg Monarchy
and the
Ottoman Empire
, primarily over the principalities of
Wallachia
,
Transylvania
, and
Moldavia
.
[8]
It was waged from 1593 to 1606, but in Europe, it is sometimes called the
Fifteen Years War
(
Hungarian
:
Tizenot eves haboru
), reckoning from the 1591?1592 Turkish campaign that
captured
Biha?
. In Turkey, it is called the
Ottoman?Austrian War of 1593?1606
(
Turkish
:
1593-1606 Osmanlı-Avusturya Sava?ı
).
[9]
In the series of
Ottoman wars in Europe
, it was the major test of force in the time period between the
Ottoman?Venetian War (1570?1573)
and the
Cretan War (1645?1669)
. The next of the major
Ottoman?Habsburg wars
was the
Austro-Turkish War (1663?1664)
. Overall, the conflict consisted in a large number of costly battles and sieges, but with little gain on either side.
Overview
[
edit
]
The major participants of the war were the Habsburg Monarchy, the
Principality of Transylvania
,
Wallachia
, and
Moldavia
opposing the
Ottoman Empire
.
Ferrara
,
Tuscany
,
Mantua
, and the
Papal State
were also involved to a lesser extent.
[10]
War funding
[
edit
]
The
Turkenkriege
rallied larger than usual support behind the Holy Roman Emperor. The Reichstag convened in 1594 and voted a substantial tax grant, renewing this four years later and again in 1603. Some 20 million florins were promised and at least four-fifths actually reached the imperial treasury. A further 7 to 8 million florins were paid when Rudolf appealed to the Circle assemblies as well, giving a total of 23 to 28 million florins yielded by the minor German princes. The Habsburg monarchy itself raised around 20 million florins. Another 7.1 million flowed in from Italy, including both Imperial Italy and Papal and Spanish territories outside of the Emperor's formal rule, as well as from Spain itself.
[11]
Prelude
[
edit
]
Skirmishes along the Habsburg?Ottoman border intensified from 1591. In 1592, the fort of
Biha?
fell to the Ottomans following the
siege of Biha?
.
History
[
edit
]
1593
[
edit
]
In the spring of 1593, Ottoman forces from the
Eyalet of Bosnia
laid siege to the city of
Sisak
in
Croatia
, starting the
Battle of Sisak
that eventually ended in a victory for the Christian forces on June 22, 1593. That victory marked the end of the
Hundred Years' Croatian?Ottoman War
(1493?1593).
The Long Turkish War started on July 29, 1593, when the Ottoman army under
Sinan Pasha
launched a campaign against the Habsburg Monarchy and captured
Gy?r
(
Turkish
:
Yanıkkale
) and
Komarom
(
Turkish
:
Komaron
) in 1594.
1594
[
edit
]
In early 1594, the
Serbs in Banat rose up against the Ottomans
.
[12]
The rebels had, in the character of a
holy war
, carried
war flags
with the
icon
of
Saint Sava
.
[13]
The war banners were consecrated by Patriarch
Jovan Kantul
, and the uprising was aided by Serbian Orthodox
metropolitans
Rufim Njegu?
of
Cetinje
and
Visarion
of
Trebinje
.
[14]
In response, Ottoman
Grand Vizier
Koca Sinan Pasha
demanded that the green flag of the Prophet
Muhammed
be brought from
Damascus
to counter the Serb flag and ordered that the sarcophagus containing the relics of Saint Sava be removed from the
Mile?eva monastery
and transferred to
Belgrade
via military convoy.
[13]
Along the way, the Ottoman convoy killed all the people in its path as a warning to the rebels.
[13]
The Ottomans
publicly incinerated the relics of Saint Sava
on a pyre atop the
Vra?ar plateau
on April 27 and had the ashes scattered.
[13]
1595?96
[
edit
]
In 1595, an alliance of
Christian
European powers was organized by
Pope Clement VIII
to oppose the Ottoman Empire (the
Holy League of Pope Clement VIII
); a treaty of alliance was signed in
Prague
by the
Holy Roman Emperor
,
Rudolf II
and
Sigismund Bathory
of Transylvania.
Aron Vod?
of
Moldavia
and
Michael the Brave
of Wallachia joined the alliance later that year. The Spanish Habsburgs sent an army of 6,000 experienced infantry and 2,000 cavalry from the
Netherlands
under
Karl von Mansfeld
, commander-in-chief of the Spanish
Army of Flanders
, who took command of the operations in Hungary.
[15]
The Ottomans' objective in the war was to seize
Vienna
,
[
citation needed
]
while the Habsburg Monarchy wanted to recapture the central territories of the
Kingdom of Hungary
controlled by the Ottoman Empire. Control of the Danube line and possession of the fortresses located there was crucial. The war was mainly fought in Royal Hungary (mostly present-day western Hungary and southern
Slovakia
),
Transdanubia
, Royal Croatia and
Slavonia
, the Ottoman Empire (
Rumelia
? present-day
Bulgaria
and
Serbia
), and Wallachia (in present-day southern
Romania
).
In 1595, the Christians, led by Mansfeld, captured
Esztergom
and
Visegrad
, strategic fortresses on the Danube, but they did not lay siege to the key fortress of
Buda
. The Ottomans launched a siege of
Eger
(
Turkish
:
E?ri
), conquering it in 1596.
In 1595 in the Balkans, a Spanish fleet of galleys from the
Kingdom of Naples
and
Kingdom of Sicily
under
Pedro de Toledo, marquis of Villafranca
, sacked
Patras
, on the
Rumelia Eyalet
of the Ottoman Empire, in retaliation for Turkish raids against the Italian coasts.
[16]
The raid was so spectacular that Sultan
Murad III
discussed exterminating the Christians of Constantinople in revenge. He finally decided to order the expulsion of all unmarried Greeks from the city.
[17]
In the following years, Spanish fleets continued to raid the
Levant
waters, but large-scale naval warfare between Christians and Ottomans did not resume.
[18]
Instead,
privateers
such as
Alonso de Contreras
took on the role of harassing Ottoman ships.
[16]
[18]
On the eastern front of the war, Michael the Brave, prince of Wallachia, started a campaign against the Ottomans in the autumn of 1594, conquering several castles near the Lower
Danube
, including
Giurgiu
,
Br?ila
,
Har?ova
, and
Silistra
, while his Moldavian allies defeated the Ottoman armies in
Ia?i
and other parts of Moldova.
[19]
Michael continued his attacks deep within the Ottoman Empire, taking the forts of
Nicopolis
,
Ribnice
, and Chilia,
[20]
and even reaching as far as
Adrianople
.
[21]
At one point his forces were only 24 kilometres (15 mi) from the Ottoman capital,
Constantinople
.
He was however forced to fall back across the Danube, and the Ottomans in turn led a massive counter-offensive (100,000 strong) which aimed to not only take back their recently captured possessions but also conquer Wallachia once and for all. The push was initially successful, managing to capture not only Giurgiu but also Bucharest and
Targovi?te
, despite fierce opposition at
C?lug?reni
(23 August 1595). At this point the Ottoman command grew complacent and stopped pursuing the retreating
Wallachian army
, focusing instead on fortifying Targovi?te and Bucharest and considering their task all but done. Michael had to wait almost two months for aid from his allies to arrive, but when it did his counter-offensive took the Ottomans by surprise, managing to sweep through the Ottoman defences on three successive battlefields, at Targovi?te (18 October), Bucharest (22 October), and Giurgiu (26 October). The
Battle of Giurgiu
in particular was devastating for the Ottoman forces, which had to retreat across the Danube in disarray.
[22]
The war between Wallachia and the Ottomans continued until late 1599, when Michael was unable to continue the war due to poor support from his allies.
The turning point of the war was the
Battle of Mez?keresztes
, which took place in the territory of Hungary on October 24?26, 1596. The combined Habsburg-Transylvanian force of 45?50,000 troops was defeated by the Ottoman army. The battle turned when Christian soldiers, thinking they had won the battle, stopped fighting in order to plunder the Ottoman camp.
[
citation needed
]
This battle was the first significant military encounter in Central Europe between a large Christian army and the Ottoman Turkish Army after the
Battle of Mohacs
. Nevertheless, Austrians recaptured
Gy?r
and
Komarom
in 1598.
In 1599, the Turks and their Tatar allies attacked
Prievidza
,
Topo??any
and other towns in the
Nitra river
valley in
Upper Hungary
, in what is now Slovakia, and took thousands of people
into slavery
.
1601?06
[
edit
]
In August 1601, at the
Battle of Gurusl?u
,
Giorgio Basta
and Michael the Brave defeated the Hungarian nobility led by
Sigismund Bathory
in Transylvania, who accepted Ottoman and Polish protection. After the assassination of Michael the Brave by mercenary soldiers under Basta's orders,
[23]
the Transylvanian nobility, led by
Mozes Szekely
, was again defeated at the
Battle of Bra?ov
in 1603 by the Habsburg Empire and Wallachian troops led by the voivode of Wallachia,
Radu ?erban
. Hence, the Austrian Habsburgs seemed to be able to win a decisive victory.
[
clarification needed
]
In September 1601, armies of the Holy Roman Empire laid siege to
Nagykanizsa
. Despite the numerical superiority, coalition armies had to abandon the siege 2 months later, due to heavy losses.
The last phase of the war (from 1604 to 1606) corresponds to the uprising of the Prince of Transylvania
Stephen Bocskay
. When Rudolf ? mostly based on false charges
[
citation needed
]
? started prosecutions against a number of noble men in order to fill up the court's exhausted treasury, Bocskay, an educated strategist, resisted. He collected desperate Hungarians together with disappointed members of the nobility to start an uprising against the Habsburgs ruler. The troops marched westwards, supported by the
Hajduk
of Hungary, won some victories and regained the territories that had been lost to the Habsburg army until Bocskay was first declared the Prince of Transylvania (
Marosvasarhely
, February 21, 1605) and later also of Hungary (Szerencs, April 17, 1605
[
clarification needed
]
). The Ottoman Empire supported Bocskay with a crown that he refused (being Christian). As Prince of Hungary he accepted negotiations with Rudolf II and concluded the
Treaty of Vienna (1606)
.
Aftermath
[
edit
]
The Long War ended with the
Peace of Zsitvatorok
on November 11, 1606, with meagre territorial gains for the two main empires – the Ottomans won the fortresses of
Eger
,
Esztergom
, and Kanisza, but gave the region of
Vac
(which they had occupied since 1541) to Austria. The treaty confirmed the Ottomans' inability to penetrate further into Habsburg territories. It also demonstrated that Transylvania was beyond Habsburg power. Although Emperor Rudolf had failed in his war objectives, he nonetheless won some prestige thanks to this resistance to the Ottomans, by presenting the war as a victory. The treaty stabilized conditions on the Habsburg?Ottoman frontier. Also, Bocskay managed to retain his independence, but he also agreed to give up the title of "King of Hungary".
Rudolf portrayed himself as victorious in the Long War, but this did not protect him from the Habsburg family's internal politics. Rudolf, by the end of the war, had massive debts to lenders, border troops and the field army, made concessions with the Hungarian nobility, and disappointed the princes of the Holy Roman Empire who had subsidized the Habsburg-Ottoman frontier. Once peace was concluded with the Ottomans, the Habsburgs turned on one another. This struggle forced the family to confront the unresolved matter of Rudolf's successor and culminated in the childless Emperor Rudolf being pitted against his brother Matthias in the
Brothers' Quarrel
.
[24]
Battles
[
edit
]
References
[
edit
]
- ^
a
b
Csorba, Csaba; Estok, Janos; Salamon, Konrad (1998).
Magyarorszag Kepes Tortenete
. Budapest: Hungarian Book-Club. pp. 62?64.
ISBN
963-548-961-7
.
- ^
In the Long War few thousand Cossacks and Polish soldier were in the Austrian, Hungarian and Transylvanian army. Ervin Liptay,
Military history of Hungary
, Zrinyi Military Publisher, 1985.
ISBN
963-326-337-9
- ^
A Global Chronology of Conflict: From the Ancient World to the Modern Middle East, Spencer C. Tucker, 2009, p. 547
- ^
Attila Weiszhar ? Balazs Weiszhar : Csatak kislexikona
(Small lexicon of the Battles),
Maecenas Publisher 2000.
ISBN
963-645-080-3
- ^
The Encyclopaedia of Islam Vol. 6 Mahk-Mid p. 1030
- ^
Ervin Liptai: Magyarorszag hadtortenete I. 1984.
ISBN
963-326-337-9
- ^
Zsigmond Pach: Magyarorszag tortenete 1526?1686, 1985.
ISBN
963-05-0929-6
- ^
Cathal J. Nolan (2006).
The age of wars of religion, 1000?1650: an encyclopedia of global warfare and civilization
. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 846.
ISBN
978-0313337345
. Retrieved
2012-03-23
.
- ^
"Turkce Bilgi: 1593?1606 Osmanlı-Avusturya Sava?ı"
.
Turkce Bilgi
.
- ^
"Great Turkish War (1683?1699)"
.
Military History Books
. Helion
. Retrieved
2023-03-19
.
- ^
Wilson, Peter H. (2009). "Europe's Tragedy: A History of the Thirty Years War." Allen Lane. p. 98.
- ^
Rajko L. Veselinovi? (1966).
(1219?1766). Ud?benik za IV razred srpskih pravoslavnih bogoslovija. (Yu 68?1914)
. Sv. Arh. Sinod Srpske pravoslavne crkve. pp. 70?71.
- ^
a
b
c
d
Nikolaj Velimirovi? (1989).
The Life of St. Sava
. St. Vladimir's Seminary Press. p. 159.
ISBN
978-0-88141-065-5
.
- ^
Editions speciales
. Nau?no delo. 1971 – via Google books.
- ^
Mugnai, Bruno; Flaherty, Christopher (2014).
Der Lange Turkenkrieg (1593?1606): The long Turkish War
, Vol. 1 (ebook).
Soldiershop Publishing
.
ISBN
978-889651991-2
, p. 67
- ^
a
b
Braudel, Fernand (1995).
The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II
, Volume 2. Berkeley: University of California Press.
ISBN
0-52020330-5
, p. 1229
- ^
Hutton, William Holden (1900):
Constantinople: the story of the old capital of the empire
. London: J.M. Dent & Co, p. 172.
- ^
a
b
Teneti, Alberto (1967).
Piracy and the Decline of Venice, 1580?1615
. Berkeley: University of California Press, p. 47
- ^
Constantin C. Giurescu
, Istoria Romanilor. Bucharest: Editura All, 2007 (Romanian), p. 183.
- ^
Coln, Emporungen so sich in Konigereich Ungarn, auch in Siebenburgen Moldau, in der der bergischen Walachay und anderen Oerten zugetragen haben, 1596
- ^
Marco Venier, correspondence with the Doge of Venice, 16 July 1595
- ^
Florin Constantiniu, "O istorie sincer? a poporului roman",
ISBN
973-8240-67-0
. Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, 2002 (Romanian), pp. 128?129.
- ^
"Michael | prince of Walachia"
.
Britannica
. 27 March 2024.
- ^
Peter Wilson, The Thirty Years War: Europe's Tragedy
- ^
"Gy?r ostroma. | Borovszky Samu: Magyarorszag varmegyei es varosai | Kezikonyvtar"
.
Arcanum
(in Hungarian)
. Retrieved
2018-09-26
.
Sources
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Medieval
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Foreign rule
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19th century
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20th century
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21st century
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