Ottoman Wars in Europe

1354 – 1699

Overview

The Ottoman Empire began as a small Turkish state in northwest Anatolia. In 1354 Ottoman forces occupied Gallipoli, their first secure base in Europe, and over the next century they conquered most of the Balkans. They defeated the Serbs at Kosovo in 1389 and crushed a crusading army at Nicopolis in 1396 and another at Varna in 1444. In 1453 Sultan Mehmed II took the Byzantine capital in the Fall of Constantinople, and the city became the Ottoman capital. Under Suleiman the Magnificent the empire reached its height. He took Belgrade in 1521, destroyed the Hungarian army at Mohács in 1526, and besieged Vienna in 1529 without success. Most of Hungary came under Ottoman rule. At sea the Ottomans were defeated at the Battle of Lepanto in 1571 but rebuilt their fleet and kept Cyprus. The wars went on through the Long Turkish War of 1593 to 1606 and the struggles with Poland in the seventeenth century. In 1683 a great Ottoman army besieged Vienna again and was defeated at the Battle of Vienna by a relief army under Jan III Sobieski. In the Great Turkish War that followed, the Habsburgs, Poland, Venice and Russia pushed the Ottomans back, and the Treaty of Karlowitz in 1699 gave Hungary and Transylvania to the Habsburgs.

Armies and Weapons

The Ottoman army combined a standing core paid by the sultan with provincial cavalry. The Janissaries were one of the first infantry forces to use firearms on a large scale, carrying the Janissary Tüfek. The sipahi cavalry fought with the Ottoman Composite Bow, lance and the Ottoman Kilij. Ottoman gunfounders cast huge siege guns, and the Bombard made by the founder Orban battered the walls of Constantinople in 1453. Their opponents changed over time. Hungarian and Balkan armies of the fifteenth century relied on heavy cavalry and war wagons, and the Habsburg forces of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries on pike and shot, with the Pike and Matchlock Musket. Poland's answer was its cavalry, above all the Winged Hussars with the Winged Hussar Lance and the Polish Szabla.

Legacy

Karlowitz marked the end of Ottoman expansion in Europe and the start of a slow retreat that lasted into the twentieth century. The wars left the Balkans with a mix of peoples and religions whose effects are still felt, and they made the Habsburg monarchy a great power on the Danube. For more than three centuries, fear of the Turk shaped European politics, fortification and military reform, and the relief of Vienna in 1683 is still remembered in Poland and Austria.

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