[J.A.R. Marriott, The Eastern Question: An Historical Study of European Diplomacy. Oxford University: The Clarendon Press, 1919. Pp. 95-115]
CHAPTER V
THE DECADENCE OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE, 1566-1699
CONTEST WITH VENICE AND THE HABSBURGS
'My last judgment is that this Empire may stand, but never rise again.'- SIR THOMAS ROE (1628).
Change in character of problem. This far the main factor in the problem of the Near East has been the advent and progress of the Ottoman Turk. To, an analysis of that factor the two preceding chapters have ] been devoted We now enter upon a new period, which win disclose a considerable modification in the conditions of the problem. When the Sultan Suleiman passed away in 1566 the Ottoman Empire had already reached and passed its meridian. In the seventeenth century the symptoms of decay are manifest. Sultan succeeds Sultan, and, as one brief reign gives place to another, the decadence of the ruling race becomes more and more obvious. Anarchy reigns in the capital, and corruption spreads from Constantinople to the remotest corners of the empire. Lepanto has already announced that the Turks are no longer invincible at sea; Montecuculi's great victory at St. Gothard, the failure to capture Vienna in 1683, Prince Eugene's victory at Zenta in 1697, combine to prove that the army is going the way of the navy. The Treaties of Carlowitz, Azov, and Passarowitz afford conclusive evidence that the Eastern Question has entered upon a new phase; that the problem presented to Christendom will no longer be how to arrest the advance of the Ottomans, but hour to provide for the succession to his inheritance.
Contest with Venice and the Habsburgs. The main interest of the period under review in the present chapter concentrates upon the prolonged duel between the Turks and the Habsburgs for supremacy in the valleys of the Danube and the Save. By the end of the period the issue of that duel is no longer in doubt. Hardly secondary is the interest attaching to the contest with the Venetian Republic. In the latter, fortune inclines now to this side now to that; nor is this remarkable, for it is a struggle between combatants both of whom have passed their prime.
The successors of Suleiman. The most palpable symptom of Ottoman decadence is afforded by the deterioration in the personal character of the Sultans. Mustapha, the idiot son of Mohammed III, was declared incapable of reigning when in 1617 he succeeded to the throne. Excluding Mustapha no less than thirteen sovereigns occupied the throne between 1566 and 1718. Of these only two, Murad IV (1623--40) and Mustapha II (1695-1703) showed any anxiety to effect reform and to arrest the decrepitude of the empire. One out of the thirteen was murdered, three others were dethroned. Not one led an army to victory; most of them devoted all the time they could spare from the neglect of their duties to the pleasures of the harem. The son, for whom Roxalana had intrigued and Suleiman had murdered, was known as Selim, ' the Sot ' (1566-74). His son and successor, Murad III (167495), spent the twenty-one years of his reign in his harem. He began it by strangling his five brothers, and was otherwise remarkable only for the number of his children. Of the 103 who were born to him 47 survived him. As twenty of these were males, his successor, Mohammed III (1595-1603), had to better his father's example by the simultaneous slaughter of no less than nineteen brothers. The next Sultan, Achmet I (1603-17), was a lad of fourteen when he succeeded, and died at the age of eight-and-twenty. His brother Mustapha was declared incapable of reigning owing to mental deficiency, and the throne accordingly passed to another minor, Othman II, whose brief reign of four years (1618-22) was only less disturbed than that of his successor, Mustapha I (1622-3), whose reign of fifteen months was the shortest and perhaps the worst in Ottoman history. His son, Murad IV (1623-40), was unspeakably cruel, but by no means devoid of ability, and he made a real effort to carry out much needed reform. But all the ground gained under Murad was lost under Ibrahim I, whose reign of eight years (1640-8) was brought to a close by a revolution in the capital and the violent death of the Sultan. His son, Mohammed IV (164887), was a child of six at the time of his father's murder. The anarchy which prevailed during the first years of the reign was unspeakable, but it was dissipated at last by the emergence (1656) of the Kiuprili 'dynasty', who throughout the rest of the century provided the distracted empire with a succession of remarkable grand viziers.
The Kiuprilis might provide rulers, but they could not secure a succession of even tolerably efficient Sultans, and in the absence of the latter no permanent reform of Ottoman administration could be effected. Mohammed IV was dethroned in 1687, and was succeeded by two brothers, Suleiman I (1687-91), who at the age of forty-six emerged from his mother's harem to assume an unwelcome crown; and Achmet II (1691-5), who was a poet and a musician, and would have liked to be a monk. In 1695 the throne fell to Mohammed's son, Mustapha II, who in his reign of eight years (1695-1703) made a real effort to recall the virtues of the earlier Sultans, but was dethroned in 1703. The same fate befell his successor, Achmet III, in 1730.
This tedious and catalogic enumeration will suffice to show that the student of the Eastern Question need not concern himself overmuch with the Ottoman Sultans of the seventeenth century. Until the accession of the Kiuprilis the internal history of the empire presents one monotonous vista of anarchy and decay. To follow it in detail would mean the repetition of features which become tiresomely familiar as one incompetent Sultan succeeds another. Fortunately, there is no reason for inflicting this tedium upon the reader.
The interest of the period, as already stated, centres in the contests between the Ottomans on the one hand, and, on the other, the Venetian Republic and the Habsburg Empire.
Venice and the Turks. From the moment when the Ottoman Turks obtained command of the great trade-routes[1] the ultimate fate of Venice as a commercial power was sealed. She had already lost to the Turks many of her possessions on the mainland of the Peloponnese and in the Aegean archipelago, but the Republic still carried her head proudly, and still held a position which was in many ways threatening to the Ottoman Empire. Planted in Dalmatia she headed off from the Adriatic the Turkish provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina; mistress of the Ionian isles she threatened the security of the coasts of the Morea; while the continued possession of Crete and Cyprus not only rendered precarious the Ottoman hold on the Levant, but offered a convenient naval base to the Knights of St. John and the other Christian pirates who infested the Mediterranean.
One of the first exploits of the Sultan Suleiman was, as we have seen, the conquest of Rhodes; one of the last was the capture of Chios (1566). A year later Naxos fell to his son Selim, who then proceeded to demand from Venice the cession of Cyprus.
The moment seemed favourable for the enterprise. The destruction by fire of her naval arsenal had just maimed the right hand of Venice (September, 1569), while the Sultan had freed his hands by concluding a truce with the Emperor Maximilian (1569) and completing (1570) the conquest of Yemen. The grand vizier, Mohammed Sokoli, had lately conceived the idea of cutting a canal through the Isthmus of Suez and thus strengthening the strategical position of the empire. The outbreak of a revolt in Arabia deferred the execution of this interesting project and led to the conquest of Yemen. This accomplished, the Turks were free to turn their attention to Venice.
The Holy League (1570). The Republic, gravely perturbed by the insolent demand for the cession of Cyprus, appealed to the Pope. Pius V promised to pay for the equipment of twelve galleys, sanctioned the levy of a tithe on the Venetian clergy, and appealed for help not only to the Christian princes but to the Persian Shah. The emperor's hands were tied by his recently concluded truce, but Philip II of Spain, Cosmo de Medici, Duke of Tuscany, and the States of Parma, Mantua, Lucca, Ferrara, and Genoa joined Venice and the Papacy in a Holy League against the Ottomans. The command of the combined armada was entrusted to a brilliant young sailor, Don John of Austria, a natural son of the Emperor Charles V.
Battle of Lepanto, Oct. 7, 1571. The two fleets, each with-a large and well-equipped army on board, met near the entrance of the Gulf of Patras, and there, on the 7th of October, 1571, Don John fought and won the great battle of Lepanto. The battle was stubbornly contested, and the losses on both sides were enormous.[2] The victory of the Holy Allies resounded throughout the world; Te Deums were sung in every Christian capital; the Pope preached on the text, ' There was a man sent from God whose name was John ', but the actual fruits of a gigantic enterprise were negligible. The Turks, though hopelessly defeated in battle, retained command of the sea; a new and splendid fleet was rapidly built and equipped; the conquest of Cyprus was completed, and in May, 1573, Venice concluded peace with the Ottoman Empire. The terms of that peace reflected the issue of the campaign, not that of Don John's brilliant sea-fight. The Republic agreed to the cession of Cyprus; to the payment of a war indemnity of 300,000 ducats; to increase her tribute for the possession of Zante from 500 to 1,500 ducats, and to re-establish the status quo ante on the Dalmatian and Albanian coasts.
The terms were sufficiently humiliating to the victors at Lepanto. Yet the victory itself was by no means devoid of significance. Coming, as it did, so soon after the great days of Suleiman and Barbarossa, it was interpreted as a sign that the Turks were no longer invincible, and that their political decadence had set in. Nor was the interpretation
The Habsburgs and the Turks. The truce concluded in 1569 between the Emperor Maximilian and the Turks lasted, mirabile dictu, for nearly 1 a quarter of a century. But the truce between the rulers did not deprive the local chieftains on either side the artificial frontier from perpetual indulgence in the pastime of irregular war. Nominally, however, the truce was not broken till 1593. The breach of it was followed by thirteen years of war; the Turks achieved one brilliant victory, but much of the fighting was of a desultory character, and the vassal rulers of Moldavia, Wallachia, and Transylvania allied themselves with the enemy of their suzerain; the war went, on the whole, decidedly in favour of the Habsburgs; it became clear that the Turks had reached the limits of expansion beyond the Danube. Peace was accordingly concluded, in 1606, at Sitvatorok. The Sultan renounced his suzerainty over Transylvania, and in exchange for a lump sum surrendered the annual tribute of 30,000 ducats which ever since 1547 the emperor had paid in respect of that portion of Hungary which he had then been permitted to retain. Thenceforward there was no question, on either side, of superiority. Sultan and emperor were on a footing of formal equality.
The Thirty Years' War (1618-48). Fortunately for the Habsburgs, and indeed for Western Christendom, the half century which followed upon the Peace of Sitvatorok was, as we have seen, a period of anarchy and corruption in the Ottoman Empire. Were other proof lacking, sufficient evidence of the degeneracy of the Sultans would be found in their neglect to take advantage of the embarrassments of their chief opponent. From 1618 until 1648 the empire was in the throes of the Thirty Years' War; the Habsburg dynasty did not finally emerge from the contest until 1659. In one sense, indeed, the fight did not cease until Louis XIV had ' erased' the Pyrenees and put a Bourbon on the throne of Spain. The preoccupation of the Habsburgs ought to have been the opportunity of the Turk. Had the latter advanced from Buda to Vienna when the Habsburgs were engaged with the recalcitrant Calvinists of Germany; with Denmark, Sweden, or France, the Austrian capital could hardly have failed to fall to them. But the Turk let all the chances slip, and when, in 1648, the Treaties of Westphalia were concluded, the conditions of the secular contest were essentially altered.
The Thirty Years' War fatally weakened the Holy Roman Empire, but out of the welter the House of Austria emerged as a first-rate European Power. The Treaty of Westphalia, even more definitely than that of Prague (1866), marks the real beginning of the new orientation of Habsburg policy: the gravitation towards Buda-Pesth had begun. The Holy Roman Empire belonged essentially to the Western States-system; the interests of Austria-Hungary have drawn her irresistibly towards the East. This gravitation has necessarily accentuated the antagonism between the Habsburgs and the Ottomans, and the second half of the seventeenth century is largely occupied by a contest between them for supremacy in the Danube and the Save valleys.
Turkey and Venice (1646-1718). Before we pass to the details of that contest it will conduce 1 to lucidity if we dismiss briefly the subsidiary, but at times ' interdependent, war between the Turks and the Venetian l Republic. So long as the latter retained Crete Ottoman supremacy in the Eastern Mediterranean lacked completeness. In 1645 the Sultan Ibrahim roused himself to the task of putting the coping stone upon the edifice. A pretext was soon found. In 1638 the Venetians, in pursuit of some Barbary pirates, had bombarded Valona on the Albanian coast. In 1644 a buccaneering raid was made by some galleys upon a valuable Turkish merchant fleet in the Levant. The successful assailants came, indeed, from Malta, but it sufficed that they found a refuge in a Cretan harbour. The disastrous failure, in 1565, of the last Turkish attack upon the Knights Hospitallers in Malta, had made the Sultan shy of renewing the attempt. The Venetian Republic seemed to be a less redoubtable enemy and Crete a more important prize. Against Crete, accordingly, the attack was delivered in 1645, and Candia was besieged. The town held out for just a quarter of a century, in the course of which the Venetian sailors managed to inflict more than one humiliation upon the Turks. The Ottoman fleet suffered an important reverse in the Aegean in 1649, and in 1656 Mocenigo, an intrepid Venetian admiral, won a great victory in the Dardanelles, captured Lemnos and Tenedos, and threatened Constantinople.
The Kiuprilis. The brilliant success of the Venetian fleet, combined with t the degeneracy of the Sultans and the complete corruption of Ottoman administration, seemed to threaten the imminent dissolution of the Turkish Empire. The nadir of its fortunes was reached, however, in 1656, and in the same year there was initiated a remarkable revival. The revival was due to the stupendous energy and splendid ability of one man, Mohammed Kiuprili. To him the mother of the young Sultan turned, in the hour of the empire's deepest need. Belonging to an Albanian family which had long been resident in Constantinople, Mohammed Kiuprili was, in 1656, an old man of seventy, but he agreed to attempt the task demanded of him, on one condition. He stipulated that he should be invested with absolute authority. The condition was accepted, Kiuprili became grand vizier, and entered forthwith upon his work.
The strong hand upon the reins was felt at once, and the high-mettled steed immediately responded to it. The Janissaries were taught their place by the only method they could now appreciate-the simultaneous execution of 4,000 of their number; the administration was purged of the corrupting and enervating influences to which it had long been a prey; chaos gave way to order in the finances, and discipline was promptly restored in the army and navy.
In no sphere were the effects of the new regime more quickly manifested than in the prosecution of the war. Within twelve months the Venetian fleet was chased from the Dardanelles; the guardian islands, Lemnos and Tenedos, were recovered by the Turks; the operations against Crete were conducted with new vigour; and in 1658 the grand vizier undertook in person, despite his years, a punitive expedition against George Rakoczy II, the Voyvode of Transylvania Rakoczy himself was deposed, and two years later was killed; Transylvania had to pay a large war indemnity and an increased tribute to the Porte.
Achmet Kiuprili (1661-76). Mohammed Kiuprili died in 1661, but was immediately succeeded by his son Achmet, a man of a vigour and ability not inferior to his own. After an expedition into Hungary, to which reference will be made presently, Achmet, in 166d, assumed personal control of the operations against Venice. In 1669 Louis XIV, in order to avenge an insult offered to the French ambassador in Constantinople, sent a force to the help of the Republic, but at last, after a siege which had dragged on, with intervals, for twenty-five years, Candia capitulated in 1669, and the whole island of Crete-except the three ports of Suda, Carabusa, and Spina-Lurga- passed into the hands of the Turks. The conquest of the great Greek island was doubly significant: it was the last notable conquest made in Europe by the Ottomans, and marked the final term of their advance; it marked also the complete absorption of the last important remnant of the Greek Empire. Not until 1913 did the Hellenes formally recover an island by which they have always set exceptional store.
Renewal of war with Venice (1684). The capitulation of Candia was immediately followed by the conclusion of peace between the Porte and the Republic But, after the disaster to Turkish arms before Vienna in 1683, the Venetians again determined to try their fortunes against their old enemies. A Holy League, under the patronage of the Pope, was in 1684 formed against the infidel. Austria, Venice, Poland, and the Knights of Malta were the original confederates, and in 1686 they were joined by Russia The Venetians invaded Bosnia and Albania, and a little later, under Francesco Morosini, they descended upon the Morea Brilliant success attended the expedition; Athens itself was taken in September, 1687, and though it was restored by the Treaty of Carlowitz (1699), the whole of the Morea, except Corinth, together with the islands of Aegina and Santa Maura and a strip of the Dalmatian coast, were retained by the Republic.
Venetian rule in the Morea was not popular. The Venetians did something to improve education, and much of the lost trade between the Levant and Western Europe was, during the period of their occupation, recovered. But their domination wag almost as alien as that of the Turks, and the Greeks gained little by the change of masters. When therefore the Turks, in 1714, declared war against the Venetians, they were able in some sort to pose as the liberators of the Morea. In places they were indubitably welcomed as such, and the progress of their arms was consequently rapid. But in 1716 Austria intervened in the war, and in 1718 the Porte was glad enough to conclude a peace by which she regained the Morea, though Venice retained her conquests in Dalmatia, Albania, and Herzegovina If the Ottoman Empire was decadent, the Republic too had fallen from its high estate.
Hungary and Transylvania. For the sake of lucidity we have anticipated the progress of events; we must now retrace our steps and follow the course of the struggle on the northern frontiers of the empire. For more than a century the Sultan had been direct sovereign of the greater part of Hungary, and had claimed a suzerainty, not always conceded, over Transylvania By the middle of the seventeenth century it seemed possible that the latter principality, after many vicissitudes, might become hereditary in the house of Rakoczy. That possibility was dissipated, as we have seen, by the vigorous action of Mohammed Kiuprili. On the death of George Rakoczy II (1660), the Transylvanian nationalists elected John Kaminyi as Voyvode, while the Turks nominated a candidate of their own, Apafy. Kaminyi appealed to the Emperor Leopold, who sent a force under Montecuculi to his assistance. The succour did not, however, prove effective, and in 1662 Kaminyi was killed. Apafy, mistrustful of the disinterestedness of his patrons, sought, in his turn, help from the emperor. Meanwhile, Achmet Kiuprili collected a force of 200,000 men, and in 1663 crossed the Danube at their head. He captured the strong fortress of Neuhausel, ravaged Moravia, and threatened Vienna Smarting under the diplomatic insult to which reference has been made, Louis XIV dispatched a force to the assistance of the emperor, and at St. Gothard, on the Raab, Montecuculi, commanding the imperial forces, inflicted, with the aid of the French, a decisive defeat upon Kiuprili.
Treaty of Vasvar (1664). St. Gothard was the most notable victory won by the arms of Christendom against those of Islam for three hundred years. But the emperor, instead of following it up, suddenly concluded a truce for twenty years with the Turks. The terms obtained by the latter, and embodied in the Treaty of Vasvar, were unexpectedly favourable. The emperor agreed to pay an indemnity of 200,000 florins; the Turks retained Grosswardein and Neuhausel. and thus actually strengthened their position in Hungary, while their suzerainty over Transylvania was confirmed. The concession of such terms after such a victory as that of St. Gothard evoked resentment in some quarters, and astonishment in all. The explanation of the paradox must be sought in the repercussion of Western politics upon those of the East, and in the dynastic preoccupation of the Habsburg emperor. Philip IV of Spain was on his death-bed; the succession to the widely distributed dominions of the Spanish crown was a matter of great uncertainty; French help in Hungary, though acceptable at the moment, might well prove to have been too dearly purchased; and it was intelligible that the emperor should desire to have his hands free from embarrassments in the East, in view of contingencies likely to arise in the West.
Turkish War with Poland (1672-6). For the time being, however, his enemies were even more deeply involved than he was. The Venetian War was not ended until 1669, and three years later the Turks plunged X into war with Poland.
The lawlessness of the border tribes to the north of the Euxine had already threatened to bring the Ottoman Empire into collision with the Russian Tsars. Towards the end of Ibrahim's reign (1640-8) the Tartars of the Crimea had pursued their Cossack enemies into Southern Russia and had brought away 3,000 prisoners. The Russians in turn advanced against Azov but were badly beaten, with the result that the Tartars sent 800 Muscovite heads as a trophy to Constantinople .
There were similar troubles on the side of Poland. In 1672 the Cossacks of the Ukraine, stirred to revolt by the insolence of the Polish nobles and the extortions of their Jewish agents, offered to place themselves under the suzerainty of the Sultan in return for assistance against their local oppressors. Achmet Kiuprili, nothing loth, declared war upon Poland, and, accompanied by the Sultan, Mohammed IV, led a strong force to an assault upon Kaminiec, the great fortress on the Dniester, which strategically commanded Podolia Kaminiec, though hitherto deemed impregnable, quickly yielded to the Turks, and the Polish King Michael hastily concluded with the Sultan a treaty, which involved the payment of an annual tribute and the surrender of Podolia and the Ukraine. The Polish Diet, however, refused to ratify the treaty, and entrusting the command of their forces to John Sobieski, they waged for four years an heroic struggle against the Ottomans. Thanks to the commanding character and the military genius of Sobieski, the Poles not only rallied their forces, but inflicted a crushing defeat upon the Turks at Khoczim (November, 1673). In 1674 the victorious general was elected to the Polish throne, and in the following year he again defeated the Turks at Lemberg. But despite this defeat the Turks steadily persisted and maintained their hold upon Podolia, and in 1676 both sides were glad to conclude the Peace of Zurawno. Under the terms of this treaty the Turks retained Kaminiec and the greater part of Podolia, together with a portion of the Ukraine, but agreed to forgo the tribute promised by King Michael.
The Peace of Zurawno may be regarded as a further triumph for Achmet Kiuprili, but it was his last. In the same year he died, having substantially advanced the borders of the empire at the expense of Austria-Hungary, of Poland, and of Venice. He was succeeded, as grand vizier, by his brother-in-law, Kara Mustapha, who almost immediately found himself involved in war with Russia.
Russo-Turkish War (1677-81). The war brought little credit to the new vizier, and nothing but disaster to his country. Kara Mustapha led a large army into the Ukraine, but he was driven back across the Danube by the Russians, and in 1681 the Porte was glad to conclude a peace by which the district of the Ukraine, obtained from Poland in 1676, was ceded to Russia, and the two Powers mutually agreed that no fortifications should be raised between the Dniester and the Bug.
East and West. Kara Mustapha had more important work on hand. Lacking both character and ability he was nevertheless devoured by ambition. He determined to associate his name with the conquest of Vienna and the extension of the Ottoman Empire to the Rhine. The moment was not unfavourable to such a design. The attention of Western Europe was concentrated upon Louis XIV, who had now reached the zenith of his power. War had succeeded war and treaty had followed treaty, and from all France had extracted the maximum of advantage. By the Treaty of Westphalia, supplemented by that of the Pyrenees (1659), Louis XIV had gone some way towards realizing the dream of all patriotic Frenchmen, the attainment of les limites naturelles: the Rhine, the Alps, the Pyrenees, and the Ocean. France pushed her frontier to the Pyrenees and got a firm grip upon the middle Rhine; Pinerolo guarded her frontier towards Savoy, and, on the north-east, a large part of Artois passed into her hands. Louis's marriage with Marie Louise, eldest daughter of Philip IV of Spain, opened out a still larger ambition. The War of Devolution gave him an impregnable frontier on the north-east, and ten years later, by the Treaty of Nimeguen (1678), he obtained the ' Free County ' of Burgundy, and made the Jura, for the first time, the eastern frontier of France. His next annexation was the great fortress of Strasburg (1681), and in 1683 he threatened Luxemburg.
The Habsburgs and Hungary. The emperor could not remain indifferent to these assaults upon the western frontiers of the empire; but as Archduke of Austria and King of Hungary he had troubles nearer home The Turks were still, it must be remembered, in possession of by far the larger part of Hungary-the pashalik of Buda. In Austria-Hungary, moreover, there had long been much discontent with Habsburg rule. The Emperor Leopold, like his predecessors, was much under the influence of his Jesuit confessors, and his hand was heavy on the Hungarian Protestants, who looked with envy upon the lot of their brethren living under the tolerant rule of the Ottoman Turks.
Nor was religious persecution their only ground of complaint against the Habsburgs. The proud Magyar aristocracy denounced the Treaty of Vasvar as a craven betrayal of Hungarian interests on the part of a ruler by whom Hungary was regarded as a mere appendage to Austria. Their nationalist instincts were further offended by the attempt of the Emperor Leopold to administer his Hungarian kingdom through German officials responsible solely to Vienna So bitter was the feeling that in 1666 a widespread conspiracy was formed under the nominal leadership of Francis Rakoczy, a son of the late Prince of Transylvania The plot was betrayed to the Viennese Government. Louis XIV had lately concluded a secret agreement with the Emperor Leopold in regard to the Spanish succession, and hence was not, at the moment, disposed to help the Hungarian malcontents; above all, the Turks were busy in Crete. The movement, therefore, collapsed; Rakoczy was treated with contemptuous lenity, but the rest of the leaders were punished with pitiless severity, and the yoke of the Habsburgs was imposed with tenfold rigour upon what was now regarded as a conquered province. The office of Palatine was abolished; the administration was entrusted exclusively to German officials; the Hungarian aristocracy were exposed to every species of humiliation and crushed under a load of taxation; the Protestant pastors were sent to the galleys or driven into exile.
Hungarian revolt under Tököli (1674). The reign of terror issued, in 1674, in a renewed revolt under the patriotic and devoted leadership of a Magyar aristocrat, Emmerich Tököli. The moment was propitious. The emperor was now at war with Louis XIV, who, in 1672, had launched his attack upon the United Provinces. Louis was, it is true, too much engaged on his own account to send help to the Hungarian nationalists, but he used his influence at Warsaw and Constantinople on their behalf. Not that either Poles or Turks engaged in fighting each other (1672-6) could at the moment do much for the Magyars. Kara Mustapha, however, promised that he would send help immediately his hands were free of the Polish War. But, as we have seen, that war was no sooner ended than the Turks were involved in war with Russia The latter war ended, in its turn, in 1681, and at last Kara Mustapha was in a position to embark upon the larger designs which from the first he had entertained.
Promptly, the emperor attempted to conciliate the Hungarian nationalists. The administrative system was remodelled in accordance with their wishes; the governor-generalship was abolished; the German officials were withdrawn; the more oppressive taxes were repealed; the rights of citizenship were restored to the Protestants, both Calvinists and Lutherans, who were to enjoy liberty of conscience and of worship; the chief administrative offices were confided to natives; and the dignity of Palatine was revived in favour of Paul Esterhazy.
Concession could hardly have gone further, but the emperor's change of front was suspiciously coincident with the modification of the external situation. Emmerich Tököli refused to be beguiled into the acceptance of conditions so obviously inspired by prudential considerations. On the contrary, he entered into closer relations with the enemies of the emperor. He married the widow of Francis Rakoczy, and so strengthened his position on the side of Transylvania, and at the same time proclaimed himself Prince of Hungary under the suzerainty of the Sultan.
Austro-Turkish War (1683). In 1682 Mohammed IV advanced to the support of his; vassal. He led from Adrianople a magnificent army of 200,000, amply supplied with guns and siege trains. At Belgrade he surrendered the command to the grand vizier, who, having effected a junction with Tököli, advanced in 1683 towards Vienna.
John Sobieski. The Emperor Leopold, isolated by the diplomacy of Louis XIV in Western Europe, and even in the empire itself, turned for help to Poland, and, thanks to the king, not in vain. . Sobieski undertook, notwithstanding an appeal from Louis XIV, to come with a force of 40,000 men to the rescue of the emperor and of Christendom.
Meanwhile Kara Mustapha was marching with leisurely confidence upon Vienna. The emperor and his court retired in haste to Passau, and Charles IV, Duke of Lorraine, the commander of the imperialist forces, having entrusted the defence of the capital to Count Stahremberg, withdrew to await the arrival of Sobieski and the Poles. Stahremberg proved equal to one of the heaviest responsibilities ever imposed upon an Austrian general. He burned the suburbs to the ground, and did his utmost to put the city itself into a posture of defence. The fortifications were in a most neglected condition; the walls were in no state to resist an assault; the garrison consisted of no more than 10,000 men; while the defence was hampered by crowds of peasants who had fled for refuge to the city before the advance of the Ottomans.
Siege of Vienna. Stahremberg, however, kept a stout heart, and inspired the garrison with his own grim determination. On July 14 the Ottoman host encamped before the walls, and proceeded to invest the city. The siege lasted for 60 days, and the beleaguered garrison was reduced to the last extremity. On September 5 Sobieski had joined the Duke of Lorraine, and had assumed command of their combined forces; on the 9th a message reached him from Stahremberg that unless succour arrived immediately it would be too late; on the 11th the relieving army took up its position on the Kahlenberg, the hill which overlooks the capital; on the 12th it advanced to the attack upon the besiegers.
At the first charge of the Poles the Turks were seized with panic, and, before they could recover, Sobieski flung his whole force upon them. The great host was routed; Vienna was saved'; 10,000 Turks were left dead upon the field; 300 guns and an enormous amount of equipment and booty fell into the hands of the victors. Two days later the emperor returned to his capital to greet the saviour of Christendom.
Sobieski, however, started off at once in pursuit of the Turks, defeated them near Parkan in October, at Szecsen in November, and drove them out of Hungary. Kara Mustapha fled to Belgrade, and there on Christmas Day paid with his life the penalty of his failure.
The significance of that failure can hardly be exaggerated. Had Kara Mustapha's ability been equal to his ambition and superior to his greed, Vienna must have fallen to an assault. Had Vienna fallen, the Ottoman Empire might well have been extended to the Rhine. In view of the decadence of the Sultans and the corruption which had already eaten into the vitals of their empire, it is more than doubtful whether the advance could have been maintained; there is, indeed, ground for the belief that even the absorption of Hungary was a task beyond their strength, and that the Danube formed their 'natural limit' towards the north But even the temporary occupation of Vienna, still more the annexation, however transitory, of lands wholly Teutonic in race and essentially ' western' in their political connexions, could not have failed to administer a severe moral shock to Christendom. That shock was averted by the valour and intrepidity of Sobieski, the Pole. The 'most Christian King', Louis XIV of France, so far from stirring a finger to save Christendom, regarded the advance of the Turks as a welcome military diversion; he exhausted all the unrivalled resources of French diplomacy to assure the success of their enterprise, and annihilate the only Power in Europe which seemed, at the moment, capable of circumscribing the ambition of the Bourbons.[3] It was five years later that the English Revolution gave to the Dutch stadholder the chance, which he did not neglect, of saving Europe from the domination of France.
Reconquest of Hungary, &c. Meanwhile, the war between the Habsburgs and the Turks continued for fifteen years after the raising of the siege of Vienna Sobieski, having successfully accomplished the task which has won him imperishable fame, soon retired from the war. The French party reasserted itself at Warsaw; domestic difficulties, ever recurrent in Poland, demanded the personal intervention of the king, and in 1684 he surrendered the command of the imperialist forces to Charles of Lorraine. The formation of the Holy League, in that same year, gave to the war against the Turks something of the nature of a crusade, and volunteers flocked to the standard of the emperor from many countries besides those which actually joined the League.[4]
Led by Charles of Lorraine, by the Margrave Lewis of Baden, by the Elector of Bavaria, by Prince Eugene of Savoy, and other famous captains the imperialists won a succession of significant victories against the Turks. They stormed the strong fortress of Neuhausel, and drove Tököli and the Hungarian nationalists back into Transylvania in 1685, and in the following year they retook Buda, which for 145 years had formed the capital of Turkish Hungary. The Habsburg emperor, now master of the whole of Hungary, proceeded to deal with his rebellious subjects. A reign of terror ensued, and the embers of the insurrection were quenched in blood. Important modifications were introduced into the constitution. The Hungarian Crown, hitherto nominally elective, became hereditary in the House of Habsburg, and in 1687 the Austrian Archduke Joseph was crowned king.
Second battle of Mohacz (1687). In that same year the imperialist forces met the Turks on the historic field of Mohacz, and by a brilliant victory wiped out the memory of the defeat sustained at the hands of Suleiman the Magnificent 161 years before. The second battle of Mohacz was followed by the reduction and recovery of Croatia and Slavonia This prolonged series of defeats in Hungary led to the outbreak of disaffection in Constantinople. The Janissaries demanded a victim, and in 1687, as we have seen, Sultan Mohammed IV was deposed. But the change of Sultans did not affect the fortunes of war. In 1688 the imperialists invaded Transylvania, and the ruling Prince Apafy exchanged the suzerainty of the Ottomans for that of the Habsburgs. Henceforward Transylvania became a vassal state under the crown of Hungary.
Fall of Belgrade (1688). But a much more important triumph awaited Austrian arms. In September, 1688, the great fortress of Belgrade was stormed by the imperialists, and for just half a century was lost to the Turks. From Belgrade the conquering Teutons advanced into Serbia and captured Widdin and Nish.
Once more, however, the repercussion of Western politics was felt in the East, and, in 1688, the outbreak of the war of the League of Augsburg and the French invasion of the Palatinate, relieved the pressure upon the Turks. But this advantage was cancelled by the appearance of a new antagonist. In 1689 Peter the Great of Russia invaded the Crimea, and in 1696 captured the important fortress of Azov.[5] Meanwhile, for the Turks the situation was temporarily redeemed by the appointment as grand vizier of a third member of the famous Albanian family which had already done such splendid service for the State. Mustapha Kiuprili (III) was the brother of Achmet; he was in office only two years (1689-91), but the effect of a strong hand at the helm was immediately manifested: the finances were put in order; the administration was purified, and new vigour was imparted to the conduct of the war.
The death of Apafy, Prince of Transylvania (April, 1690), gave Mustapha a chance of which he was quick to avail himself. Master of Hungary, the Emperor Leopold was most anxious to absorb Transylvania as well, and to this end endeavoured to secure his own election as successor to Apafy. The separatist sentiment was, however, exceedingly persistent among the Roumans of Transylvania, and, with a view to encouraging it, the vizier nominated as voyvode Emmerich Tököli. With the aid of Turkish troops Tököli temporarily established himself in the principality, though his position was threatened by the advance of an imperialist army under Lewis, Margrave of Baden.
Meanwhile, Kiuprili himself marched into Serbia, retook Widdin and Nish, and advanced on Belgrade. That great fortress fell, partly as the result of an accidental explosion, into the hands of the Turks, who, in 1691, advanced into Hungary. Recalled from Transylvania to meet this greater danger, Lewis of Baden threw himself upon the advancing Turks at Salan Kemen, and inflicted upon them a crushing defeat (August 19, 1691). 28,000 Turks were left dead upon the field, and 150 guns fell into the hands of the victors. The grand vizier himself was among the killed. With him perished the last hope of regeneration for the Ottoman Empire.
Conquest of Transylvania. After the defeat and death of Kiuprili III, Tököli could no longer maintain his position in Transylvania, and the Diet came to terms with the emperor (December, 1691). Local privileges were to be respected, but the emperor Mas to become voyvode and to receive an annual tribute of 50,000 ducats S Transylvania thus virtually took it as a province of the Habsburg Empire.
For the next few years the war languished. England and Holland tried to bring about peace in Eastern Europe, while Louis XIV, for reasons equally obvious, did his utmost to encourage the prolongation of the war. But in 1697 Louis XIV himself came to terms with his enemies in the Treaty of Ryswick, and thus the emperor was once more free to concentrate his attention upon the struggle in the Near East.
Battle of Zenta, Sept. 11, 1697. In 1697 Prince Eugene of Savoy assumed command of the imperialist forces, and in the autumn inflicted upon the Turks at Zenta on the Theiss the most crushing defeat their arms had sustained since their advent into Europe. The grand vizier and the flower of the Ottoman army, 20,000 in all, were left dead upon the field; 10,000 men were wounded, and many trophies fell into the hands of the victors. Carlyle's comment on this famous victory is characteristic: 'Eugene's crowning feat; breaking of the Grand Turk's back in this world; who has staggered about less and less of a terror and outrage, more and more of a nuisance, growing unbearable, ever since that day.'
Treaty of Carlowitz , Jan. 26, 1699. A fourth Kiuprili, who succeeded as grand vizier, made a gallant effort to redeem the situation; he raised a fresh army and drove the Austrians back over the Save; but the battle of Zenta was decisive, it could not be reversed, and in January, 1699, peace was concluded at Carlowitz.
The terms were sufficiently humiliating for the Porte. The advantages secured by the Venetian Republic have already been enumerated. To the emperor the Turks were obliged to cede Transylvania, the whole of Hungary except the Banat of Temesvar, and the greater part of Slavonia and Croatia Poland retained the Ukraine and Podolia, including the great fortress of Kaminiec. The peace with Russia was not actually signed until 1702, when she secured the fortress and district of Azov.
No such peace had ever before been concluded by the Turk. The tide had unmistakably begun to ebb. The principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia remained subject to the Sultan for a century and a half to come, but otherwise the boundary of the Ottoman Empire was fixed by the Drave, the Save, and the Danube. Never again was Europe threatened by the Power which for three centuries had been a perpetual menace to its security. Henceforward the nature of the problem was changed. The shrinkage of the Ottoman Empire created a vacuum in the Near East, and diplomacy abhors a vacuum. How was it to be filled ?
The succeeding chapters of this book will be largely concerned with the attempts of Europe to find an answer to that question.
For further reference cf. chapter iii; General Works (Appendix); and also L. Leger, L'Autriche-Hongrie; Rambaud, History of Russia (Eng. trans.); Himly, La formation territoriale; Freeman, Historical Geography.
2. Among the wounded was Cervantes.
3. Voltaire suggests (Le Siècle de Louis XIV, chap. xiv) that the French king was only waiting for the fall of Vienna to go to the assistance of the empire, and then, having posed as the saviour of Europe, to get the Dauphin elected king of the Romans. The idea may well have been present to Louis's mind.
4. See supra, p. 103.
5. See, for further details, infra, p. 119.