8/18/2023 0 Comments Battle of vienna imagesSuperstitions aside, spring storms swelled rivers and the usual fords required pontoon bridges to cross. All his men, from the highest-ranking officer to the lowliest conscript, recognized the bad omen. In March of 1683, as the army left Adrianople amidst great fanfare, a sudden squall blew the Sultan’s turban from his head. To the Polish, Lithuanian, and Austrian soldiers who had faced them in battle, they were extraordinary archers capable of a rapid rate of fire and deadly accuracy from their short bows and all from the saddle of a galloping pony. To the villagers on the Christian Ottoman border in Hungary and Poland, however, the Tatars were no mere story to frighten ill-behaved children. Rape, pillage, plunder, and arson composed their modus operandi, tales of which made their way as far as France and England. Like the African corsairs who raided the coastal fishing villages of Italy in the 16 th century, the Tatars were the frontline of the Ottoman slave trade. Descendants of the bloody convergence of Sarmatians, Scythians, and Mongols, these natural horsemen were the stuff of nightmare. Less detestable than Protestants allying themselves with Islam against Catholic Hapsburg rule, but considerably more savage and fearsome, were the Sultan’s mobile shock-action cavalry: the Tatars. Among the sultan’s army were Protestant soldiers loyal to the Magyar Lutheran Imre Thököly who looked to the Islamic east to back his dubious claim to the throne of Hungary. A draft or “ban” was proclaimed for auxiliaries throughout the empire and Arabs, Bosnians, Bulgars, Greeks, Macedonians, and Serbs poured into the White City to await the arrival of Mehmed’s force, led by his 12,000 janissaries. Along the road-of-march to Belgrade (in Ottoman hands since 1521) bridges and roads were repaired. There the sultan wintered his army, and as they trained for war, he read and reread the abundant accounts of earlier Turkish campaigns into Eastern Europe. The Hapsburgs in Vienna were impostors who needed to submit to the rule of Islam.īy the autumn of 1682 the Ottoman Army had crossed the Bosporus and proceeded to Adrianople. Mehmed was determined not to fail, and more than that, he was convinced, like all Sultans before him, that the Ottomans were, as conquerors of Constantinople, the true heirs of the patrimony of the Roman Empire. Kara Mustafa Pasha was the source of Mehmed’s other famous decision: in the summer of 1682 the Grand Vizier persuaded his Sultan to violate the Peace of Vasvár and lay siege to Vienna.Ī century-and-a-half had passed since Suleiman the Magnificent had tried and failed to take the fortress city on the Danube. The first was to give control of the empire to the Koprulu family, which produced a series of Grand Viziers who restored internal order to the empire, recaptured many of the Aegean Islands from Venice, and extended the boundaries of the empire northward through battlefield victories in Transylvania and Poland.īest known and last of these Grand Viziers was Kara Mustafa Pasha. Indeed, history remembers Mehmed for two decisions in particular. Mehmed IV was what we would call today, an “outdoorsman.” He preferred hunting to war, but unlike his recent predecessors, he made decisions and stuck by them. A liaison one night, however, with a Russian concubine produced the son that would reverse Ottoman fortunes. Known as “the Debauched,” Ibrahim was famous for his vigorous and unusual harem enthusiams, although at one point he had the whole lot of them drowned in the Bosporus-280 ladies in all-when he discovered that he was not the only man enjoying their affections. Moreover, they were beset by a turbulent period of harem intrigue and governed-or not-by a string of ineffectual and self-indulgent sultans, one of whom was deposed and two of whom were murdered. Why? They were themselves absorbed with war in Persia. As Christian Europe tore at her own throat during the Thirty Years War (1618-1648) the Ottoman Turks missed a golden opportunity to strike their centuries-old enemy.
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