Polish-Turkish Wars

At issue: Influence over southern Ukraine, Transylvania, and Wallachia

Date: 1620–1699

Location: Central and eastern Europe

Combatants: The Polish Commonwealth, Ottoman Empire, Cossacks, Austrians

Principal commanders:Polish, John III Sobieski (1629–1696); Turkish, Kara Mustapha (d. 1683)

Principal battles: Cecora, Khotin, Chocim, Vienna

Result: Both nations were drained, with the regional balance of power shifting to Russia and Austria

Background

The Polish-Turkish wars of the seventeenth century were the side effect of other conflicts that caused significant losses of blood and treasure for both nations. Poland’s interminable wars with Sweden brought it into alliance with Austria, a major Turkish adversary. At the same time, Polish attention was increasingly drawn to its southeastern borders, policed by Cossacks who protected the area from raids by the Tatar khanate of Crimea, a Turkish dependency. Khmelnytsky’s Cossack Revolt, beginning in 1648, the result of Poland’s mishandled Cossack policy, changed the balance of power. At the same time, Turkish eyes were drawn to its northern border in Hungarian and Romanian lands, areas where Poland had an abiding interest since the 1300’s.

Action

The first Polish-Turkish war took place in 1620–1621 and began over an anti-Austrian revolt in Transylvania. When the Poles sent troops to help put down the insurrection, the revolt’s leaders called on the Ottoman Empire for aid. The Turks inflicted a crushing defeat on the Poles at Cecora in 1620. The following year, the Turks under the personal command of Osman II besieged a force of Poles and Cossacks at Khotin under Hetman Jan Karo Chodkiewicz. A furious defense and numerous sallies by the Polish cavalry inflicted heavy losses on the besiegers, who sued for peace after two months of fighting. The peace treaty signed by the two sides would, in the main, endure for almost fifty years.

Bohdan Khmelnytsky’s rebellion took advantage of factions in the polity of the commonwealth and played off these factions. Khmelnytsky formed a series of temporary alliances with the Tatar khans. The revolt was not strong enough to completely defeat Poland, but weakened it and opened it up to invasions by Muscovy, Sweden, Brandenburg, and Wallachia, initiating the period of Polish history known as the Deluge. The Tatars, too, played the game of alliances and at times Crimean Tatar troops were sent to aid the Poles. Although often forgotten, these light cavalry were formidable fighters. In the words of Polish nobleman Jan Pasek, “To see three or four hundred dead Tatars . . . meant a great victory, while the dead of other nations one could see as many as logs in a pile. It is preferable to fight with a German. When he conquers me he does not pursue me; when I conquer him he does not escape . . . . It is difficult to escape a Tatar and to pursue him is . . . burdensome.”

Conflicts by proxy aside, the Polish-Turkish peace did not break down until 1672. Continuing unrest in Ukraine opened the door for a Turkish attack. A large army under the command of the Sultan Mehmed IV invaded Podolia and took the great fortress of Kamieniec Podolsk. An assault on the key city of Lwów was forestalled by a Polish ransom and a humiliating treaty that gave Podolia to the Turks. The war also brought to the fore John III Sobieski, who distinguished himself in a brilliant series of raids against Crimea. The following year, the war resumed and a Polish army commanded by Sobieski retook the fortress of Chocim.

In 1674, Sobieski was elected king, but a proposed anti-Austrian coalition of Poland, France, and Turkey fell apart when the Poles and Turks were unable to reach a permanent peace. The Poles continued to hammer Turkish strongholds in Podolia but were unable to carry the fight to Ottoman lands or retake Kamieniec. A truce in 1676 restored part of Podolia to Poland, but the two sides remained at odds.

As Poland gradually turned away from its alliance with France toward the Habsburgs, the Turks attacked Austria in 1683 with an army of 140,000, under Kara Mustapha, laying siege to Vienna. Unable to oppose the Turks in the field, the Austrians called on Sobieski to lead a combined Austrian-Polish relief force of 74,000. On the morning of September 12, the allied army began its attack from the heights of Mount Kahlenberg. After a fierce struggle to clear the lower slopes and repulse Turkish counterattacks, Sobieski led 2,500 winged Hussars, Poland’s devastatingly effective heavy cavalry, on a direct attack that broke the Ottoman defenses. The rout was total, and the army captured epic amounts of booty. Following the victory at Vienna, Sobieski led the allies into Hungary. Although its vanguard was defeated at Paskany on October 9, Sobieski led the army to victory again, trapping a large Turkish force against the Danube, near Buda, and destroying it almost completely. At the same time, a Polish-Cossack attack in Crimea ravaged large portions of the country and defeated a Tatar force at Kilia. The Hungarian campaign marked the end of serious Polish-Turkish hostilities, although the Ottomans retained control of Podolia until 1699, when the Treaty of Sremski Karlovci returned it to Poland.

Aftermath

The failure of either the commonwealth or the empire to gain significant ground in their wars with each other contributed to and was a symptom of internal weaknesses on both sides. Although a brilliant general, Sobieski was unable to rein in Poland’s fractious magnates. In Turkey, the disaster of 1683 ended Ottoman expansion and started the slow reconquest of the Balkans. Ironically, in the following century, the two weakened nations found a basis of cooperation in opposing Russian expansion, but by then both were far too feeble to do more than slow the rapacious czars.

Bibliography

Davies, Norman. God’s Playground: A History of Poland. Vol. 1. New York: Columbia University Press, 1982.

Jasienica, Pawel. Calamity of the Realm. Miami, Fla.: American Institute of Polish Culture, 1992.

Swiecicka, Maria A. J., ed. The Memoirs of Jan Chryzostom z Goslawic Pasek. New York: Kosciuszko Foundation, 1978.