Long Turkish war
Hans von Aachen , around 1603/04, HGM )
The Long Turkish War was a war between the Ottoman Empire and several Christian states, especially the Habsburg Monarchy , that lasted from 1593 to 1606 . The war ended with the Peace of Zsitvatorok on November 11th, 1606. The conflict areas were mainly Royal Hungary , Transdanubia , today's Croatia and Wallachia .
The war was characterized above all by years of trench warfare and was therefore also known as the castle war. In the end, none of the parties involved in the conflict was able to achieve greater territorial gains.
prehistory
The decades after the unsuccessful Ottoman siege of Vienna in 1529 and the receipt of bills at the siege of Kőszeg in 1532 had led to a relative calming of the political situation in Hungary. The division of the kingdom into three was an accomplished fact. In the east was the principality of Transylvania , which was under Turkish hegemony , in the west, Western Transdanubia was under Habsburg administration and in the middle was the Turkish rule.
In the decades of relative calm, the neighboring European powers had taken precautions and built new frontier fortresses and renewed existing ones. The main fortifications on the Habsburg side were in Kanizsa , Raab , Komorn and Erlau . The Ottoman fortress places were in Gran , Ofen , Stuhlweissenburg and Temesvár .
course
Since 1555 there was constant guerrilla warfare in the region. On November 29, 1590, the Habsburg Emperor Rudolf II signed the fourth and final confirmation of the treaty of 1547, which provided for tribute payments to the Ottoman Sultan . Due to large-scale bilateral border violations in Hungary by Ottoman Akıncıs and Habsburg Uskoks , the guerrilla war expanded into an open war. In the summer of 1592, Ottoman forces conquered the Habsburg border fortress Bihać , crossed the border river Kupa and besieged the fortress Sissek twice without success . When the Ottomans, led by the Beylerbey of Bosnia (Telli Hassan Pascha), besieged Sissek for the third time in June 1593, the Habsburgs sent a relief army under the command of Ruprecht von Eggenberg . This defeated the Ottoman forces in the Battle of Sissek on June 22, 1593. Although these Ottoman raids were not carried out on behalf of the Sultan , he then declared war on Emperor Rudolf, as he felt the defeat as a disgrace and also a nephew of the Sultan in the battle had died.
The first two years were militarily undecided. The Ottoman army was initially able to conquer a number of Hungarian fortresses, including the main fortress Raab in 1594. On the diplomatic front, however, the Habsburgs managed to enter into cooperation with Mihai Viteazul , the voivode of Wallachia , as he was dissatisfied with the ever increasing financial demands from Istanbul and he started a revolt against the Sultan in November 1594, in which all Muslims found were killed. This was significant because it meant that the Ottomans lost an important supplier of wheat and the traditional Ottoman supply line with heavy war material from the Black Sea across the Danube into the war zone was blocked. The aging Grand Vizier Sinan Pasha was replaced by the Albanian Ferhat Paşa . Under his leadership, the good position that the Ottoman army had won under Sinan Pasha was quickly lost. In 1595, the Habsburgs were able to recapture most of the areas in northern Croatia that had been conquered by the Ottomans. On September 7th, Gran fell back into Austrian hands after a siege of several months by Karl von Mansfeld . This broke through the Danube defense line and put Ottoman Bosnia in danger. Sinan Pasha was reinstated as Grand Vizier, but he too could not turn the tide.
The Ottoman defeats eventually led to the fact that the new Turkish Sultan Mehmed III. (1595–1603) took over military command. He was the first sultan since Suleyman I to lead the army directly. By taking the important fortress of Erlau , he wanted to break the connection between the allied Austrians and Transylvania and thus turn the military situation around. On October 12, 1596, the Sultan succeeded in taking the fortress with his 100,000-strong army. He continued his advance to provide the Habsburg army. The Ottomans won the battle of Mezőkeresztes , the only major battle of the war, on October 26th . As a result, the way into the Holy Roman Empire was opened. It was considered necessary to put Vienna in a state of defense. Emperor Rudolf II convened the Reichstag from 1597/98 to enforce further aid to the Turks . Quarrels within the Ottoman Army prevented the military successes from being taken advantage of.
In the following years, therefore, there were no major campaigns, rather the conflict dragged on in the form of a fortress war, in which the conquest and recapture of strategically important fortifications constantly alternated. In 1598 the Habsburg troops under Adolf von Schwarzenberg and Nikolaus II. Pálffy succeeded in recapturing the fortresses Raab and « Veszprém » (Weißbrunn) from the Ottomans. The subsequent siege of Buda was unsuccessful. Although it was foreseeable that the war would not find a victor, Rudolf II delayed the end, believing that the triumph over the Turks would only be a matter of time. However, it was the Turks who took the initiative again in 1600. The Habsburg fortress Pápa was initially lost due to the betrayal of French mercenaries . In 1601 Stuhlweissenburg was conquered by the Ottomans, who were finally able to take the important fortress Kanischa after a two-month siege. Two attempts by the Habsburgs to regain possession of the fortress failed. In 1602 the Habsburgs took back Stuhlweissenburg, but a renewed siege of Buda remained unsuccessful.
In 1603 the Ottoman Sultan Mehmed III died. He was succeeded by the 14-year-old son Ahmed I (1603-1617). Peace negotiations between the two warring parties now seemed in sight, as there were also radical changes on the Christian side: in 1601 the pro-Ottoman Stephan Bocskai was elected Prince of Transylvania, which stood in the way of the Habsburg efforts to free the principality from the Ottoman sphere of influence .
In 1604 the Habsburg policy of recatholization led to a Hungarian uprising (also known as the War of Freedom from Hungarian historiography ), which was led by Bocskai. After an armistice with Bocskai (who was now Prince of Hungary and Transylvania) ended the uprising in November 1605, the Habsburgs turned back to the Turks. Field Marshal Tilly was able to defeat the Turkish-Tatar-Heiduck troops on December 3, 1605 near Rábahídvég and put them to flight.
consequences
The war came to an end with the peace of Zsitvatorok concluded on November 11, 1606 . Because of the threat of a two-front war against the Habsburgs in the north-west and the Persian Safavids in the east of the Ottoman Empire, the sultan had to recognize the emperor as an equal negotiating partner for the first time. A one-off payment of 200,000 guilders ended the Habsburg tribute that had previously been paid annually. A comparatively long phase of peace followed between the Ottoman Empire and Habsburg. It only ended in 1663 with the outbreak of the Turkish War , which was supposed to shift the military balance in favor of the Habsburgs. With regard to the area relocations, there were no changes, but large areas in Hungary and Transylvania were devastated in the course of the mutual exhaustion strategy.
See also
literature
- Jan Paul Niederkorn : The European Powers and the “Long Turkish War” of Emperor Rudolf II (1593–1606). Publishing house of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna 1993, ISBN 3700121113 .
- Stephen Turnbull : The Ottoman Empire 1326-1699. Osprey Publishing, Oxford 2003, ISBN 1-84176-569-4 .
- Ernst August: History of Burgenland . In: International Art History Symposium Mogersdorf, Eisenstadt 1972.
- Stanford Shaw / Ezel Kural Shaw: History of the Ottoman Empire and modern Turkey , Volume 1. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1976/77, ISBN 0-521-21280-4 .
- Claudia Reichl-Ham: The "Long Turkish War" of Rudolf II and its reception in the Army History Museum. In: Viribus Unitis. Annual report 2007 of the Army History Museum. Vienna 2008, ISBN 978-3-902551-06-1 , pp. 7-22.
- Harald Heppner : The long Turkish war (1593–1606) - a turning point in the Habsburg-Ottoman conflict. In: Osmanlı Araştırmaları, Volume 2 (1981), pp. 133–146 ( online ; PDF; 668 kB).
Individual evidence
- ↑ Stephen Turnbull: The Ottoman Empire 1326-1699, p. 62
- ↑ Ive Mažuran: Povijest Hrvatske od 15 do 18 stoljeća stoljeća , p. 148
- ^ Ferdo Šišić : Povijest Hrvata; pregled povijesti hrvatskog naroda 600 - 1918 , p. 305-306, Zagreb ISBN 953-214-197-9
- ↑ Ezel Kural Shaw: History of the Ottoman Empire and modern Turkey, Volume 1, p. 184
- ↑ Ezel Kural Shaw: History of the Ottoman Empire and modern Turkey, Volume 1, p. 185
- ^ Leopold Ranke: On German history. From Religious Peace to the Thirty Years War , Leipzig 1868, pp. 135 ff. Online version
- ↑ Stephen Turnbull: The Ottoman Empire 1326-1699, p. 67
- ^ Ernst August: History of Burgenland . In: Internationales Kunsthistorisches Symposion Mogersdorf, Eisenstadt 1972, p. 122
- ↑ Ernst August: History of Burgenland, p. 124